My first road bike was a 10-speed Atala Giro D'Italia which came with Simplex Prestige plastic derailleurs. I upgraded to a complete SunTour set of derailleurs and shifters and was very pleased with the improvements. I even got the backwards-shifting front derailleur, which worked like a champ.
It was the V-GT rear, the Compe-V front, and the chunky shifters with the white sleeves.
A couple of years later, at my first bike shop job, the boss was a huge SunTour fan and called Shimano's designs "faulty," so he passed his biases on to me.
