1. aero factors aren’t THAT significant in a pack. In a break, yeah.

3. Comfort. That aero downtube provides an aero benefit with the cost of soaking up very little road buzz. The aluminum cervelo soloists are super-aero and vertically assertive (as opposed to vertically compliant. Even pros don’t want to be beaten up by their bike for 5 hours at a time.

2. Wanna produce turnover in your mechanics? Make them maintain 20 bikes with internally routed cables for 3 weeks in a row.

Didn’t some sanctioning body a few years back put the kibosh on a similar design because they didn’t like the rear wheel tucked so tightly behind the seat tube?

P2K which has a seat tube that curves forward to accomodate the wheel. This looks like it’s borderline. I’m no rules expert though.

very un-aero ksyriums. They couldn’t borrow some Zip 808’s for the shoot?

Lightweight or Reynolds too. Nothing against Ksyriums, but they don’t do well in wind resistance tests.

Regarding Cervelo –
The Soloist was originally intended as a "Jack of all trades" sort of bike capable of supporting the needs of a road racer who’s his/her bike must work in the RR as well as the ITT’s.
Also, Cervelo as a company was founded initially to support the growing triathlon market and the Soloist was also intended for that RR/Tri crossover market.

Before Cervelo and the Soloist, the road market pretty much acted in a fairly conservative manner, but there were always bikes that incorporated a more aerodynamic frame.
One of the companies that always bucked the trend toward what you had pointed out was the old Felt. Unfortunately, those bikes were built out of Aluminum and were both harsh and flexy at the same time.
Litespeed also made the Ultimate, which was a good and very expensive bike.
Also Kestrel made the Talon.
The Kestrel Talon SL is still one of the best frames on the market in what you are describing, and it has been around unchanged for, if my memory serves me, more then 8 years!

But you also need to take into consideration that really only in the last 5 years has carbon fiber manufacturing become proficient enough across the board that designs like the Felt AR can be manufactured consistently within the cost parameters needed for a company like Felt to actually make a profit.

Regarding the wheels, I’d venture to suspect that the Mavics are what will be spec’ed on the bike for 2009.