Oh not so fast. SunTour (Maderia Industries) made great mountain components and they shifted great.
I still have a Bridgestone MB2 with Accushift. It was a bike that retailed for $487 in 85'. I sold a
bunch of them. I also had one of the first Ritchey Commandos it also had ST. Early on ST had it all
over S**tmano in both markets. Good Japanese bikes had ST on them for years until Shimano came out
with their first 600/600EX groups. My TREK 970 on of the few with Columbus tubing has a Suntour
Supurb group on it, still does. Burley's mid-eightys tandems came with ST components on it. My
Burley DUET still has em' although I don't. Suntour was demolished by the larger Shimano and was
purchased by SR (Seki Ringyo). Campy made a foray into MTB components, but thats a different story.
Sachs/Huret virtually owned the 70's euro import mkt. until the late 70's and early 80's when
SunTour brought out the VG slant pantograph design deraileur which is the basis for most every good
deraileur on the market today. Even Campy went to this ST design on the Nuvo Record which replaced
the Record design which was the European standard.
Jude....///Bacchetta AERO St. Michaels and Tilghman Island.. Maryland Wheel Doctor Cycle and Sports,
Inc 1-800-586-6645 "Jeff Wills" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
[email protected] (BentJay) wrote in message
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> > BTW, is anyone else old enough to remember when Suntour gave Shimano a run for its money? What
> > happened? How 'bout those goofy plastic french derailleurs? Is SunRace in any way related?
> >
> > BentJay
>
> Humph. *I* remember when SunTour made the best Japanese derailleurs out there and Shimano made
> goofy stuff that no one would buy.
>
> (Ever seen the first generation Deore crankset? The one with the 1" thread DD pedals? I had
> one... )
>
> Shimano SIS and Suntour Accushift index shifting came along about the same time. Shimano SIS just
> plain worked better- and Suntour blundered by not making components for the mountain bike market.
> Shimano came to its current dominance by simple attrition- SunTour simply *died*.
>
> The French Simplex derailleurs were absorbed into the Sachs machine, which was later bought by
> SRAM. A good deal, IMO... the early Grip Shifters that I had were terrible. The current Grip
> Shifts on my wife's Tour Easy haven't given me a single problem.
>
> AFAIK, SunRace isn't related to any of the old-school bike companies. They're Taiwanese, and
> they've been making derailleurs for 20 years. It's only in the last couple years that their
> reputation and quality have gotten good enough to compete with the likes of Shimano and
> Campagnolo.
>
> Jeff