During the boom there were a number of Canadian, domestic, mid-range models that had aluminum, wired-on rims. CCM had the Mistral. Sekine had the SHS and SHT. Apollo also a model but the name escapes me at the moment. At , the time, the Europeans tended to jump straight from steel, wired-on rims to aluminum, tubular rims but there were some exceptions, notably the Raleigh Super Course and Atala Grand Prix.

My recollection is that the Canadian Japanese mid-range models were a hard sell during the boom. Once consumers stepped up beyond entry level, they wanted something European with a big name behind it. I probably sold more Super Course than all the other lower mid-range models combined. It's really too bad that Peugeot didn't offer a mid-range model with aluminum, wired-on rims in North America during the boom, as I'm convinced it would have been a big seller. As it was, we converted a lot PR10 & PX10 from tubulars to wired-on.

I don't recall Nishiki being a presence in Canada until post boom, when Shields took them on. That's when the Japanese started gaining more presence in the mid-range market. The fact that were more likely to spec aluminum wired-on rims may have played a part, but I think that was a small portion of a much larger strategy. At the time, most European mid-range models featured several components that did double duty on entry level models or where very similar to their entry level counterparts. The Japanese strategy seemed to be to design dedicated mid-range components that were readily distinguishable from the entry level counterparts. Immediately after the boom, we saw 600 from Shimano and Cyclone from SunTour. I believe that unoque mid-range components, particularly trickling down the group concept with Shimano 600, was a prime factor in the Japanese finding mid-range success in the late 1970s.