Originally Posted by
aixaix
-Quoth Sixty Fiver
Killed them? Not hardly. I suspect they sold more Prestige derailleurs than all their previous models combined. Unless you mean the Prestige killed off the earlier, better Simplex models.
You are right about the Prestige being pretty good when new. They wore out rapidly and were prone to breakage. The fronts were worse than the rears, but the rears weren't much good after a short time.
-Quoth Repechage
Yup.
Interesting to contrast the Record family with the Valentino/Velox/Gran Turismo gizmos.
Kind of like Porsche: Record is to 911 as V/V/GT is to 914.
Simplex lost a lot of market share while they pursued Delrin derailleurs and by the time they got back to making high quality derailleurs that would not wear out prematurely or fail catastrophically... by then the Japanese were dominating the market and even Campagnolo was having a fit while other European makers were looking to close down or merge.
This is where SRAM came from as they are a conglomerate of Huret, Sachs, and other European manafacturers that were failing.
The Prestige gets better when you replace the jockey wheels with Suntours which are nearly indestructible... having the jockey wheel crack / break on a Prestige was never a good thing... and I really like how well they shift which is something Simplex usually got right.
The JUY 543 on my 1957 Peugeot shifts like it is indexed although these were never under-rated... they were some top end kit and Campagnolo's new parallelogram derailleurs did not compare to these for some years.