I found the 1983 price - $495 US, so 1982 may be just a bit less.
Originally Posted by
miamijim
It seems like SV980 was bumped out as Reynolds introduced new tubings. Keep in mind the French economy was very bad in the late 80's. The entire French bicycle industry was on the verge of collapse.
Very good point about the French economy. Peugeot had been particularly loyal to most of its suppliers until the mid-1980s. Maybe the bankruptcy of Simplex opened their eyes to the drawbacks of single sourcing and the perilous financial state of many of their French suppliers. After 1985, when they were forced to go to with Sachs-Huret, they started using lots of new and foreign suppliers. Undoubtedly, Peugeot themselves were hurting and started having to following industry trends rather relying solely on their reputation.
Up until that time Peugeot had also been very nationalistic, with the exception of Reynolds, a long time supplier. It's my view that increasing prices in the early 1980s led to larger price jumps between models and created a need for new models to fill the gaps. The lack of variety of Reynolds tubesets created a opportunity to bring Vitus on board and at the same increase the French content on some models.
I concur that Reynolds 501 did not result in the demise of SV980. Reynolds 501 had been used as early as 1984 on the PGN10 and PH501. And as stated, SV980 was retained on models though 1990. However, 501 did appear appear replace Vitus 181, at least for Peugeot.