Yeah, I remember SunTour was always more expensive than Shimano, but still far less than Campy.
I never understood what justified the higher prices, seemed like Shimano was always neck and neck with them in technology and machining.
Huret and Simplex, sacre blue!, never seemed to be able to catch up. Simplex had some nice stuff but Huret had been a dinosaur as long as I could remember.
Campy was just expensive. I guess it was better than everything else but I frankly couldn’t tell much difference for the price.
I didn’t know SunTour invented SIS.
It’s been a good system, but before it was developed we could index our own gears, on racing bikes, with as much precision, and much faster, with our hands on the levers due to muscle memory. I could pop the exact gear I wanted without even thinking about it. A good rider could even shift gears with their knees while climbing.
Brake lever shifting was a definite improvement though.
My only gripe against Shimano is that they never developed a Manhattan Project to drop the chain system and develop a belt drive. I guess they tried for a long time, to no avail. But hey, Seiko took years perfecting Spring Drive. They never gave up and it finally succeeded.
If anybody could have done it it was Shimano.
I am reading No Hands right now.
Good book.
Sounds like many US companies, a bunch of big chief wannabes more concerned about power and position, (and partying), than being a fiduciary for the company. Sounds exactly like Detroit, or almost any company now.
The book brings up an interesting point that I hadn’t thought of, that being the idea that Schwinn quality went downhill after 1973. Even as kids we used to remark how fit and finish wasn’t as good as it had been, and believe me, Shwinn F&F was in another league compared to AMF, Huffy, Murray and the rest. It just went downhill from there. By 1976 I was more interested in cars than bikes and definitely more interested in European bikes than the hopelessly antiquated Schwinn offerings, Paramount excluded.