Originally Posted by
T-Mar
I found the 1983 price - $495 US, so 1982 may be just a bit less.
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.
Very good points.
Shimano caught the entire bicycle industry of gaurd when they introduced indexed shifting in 1985. In a few short years they went from being a small player to absolute dominance. Peugeot, being very loyal to Simplex was slow to adapt to indexing. The shop I worked at sold Peugeots, Miyatas and Schwinns. It was a tough selling friction Peugeots over indexed Schwinns and Miyatas!! At one point Peugeot owned or had/has ownership of Sachs so I'm not so sure if they 'forced' to go with then versus trying to stay loyal.
Prior to around 1986 the bicyle division was heavily subsidized by the auto division. Without financial concerns the bicycle division didnt need to worry about being cost efficient. Peugeot withdrew from the U.S. market because they were losing money which can be attributed to lack of adapting (and subsidies from the auto division). A few years after that Peugeot sold of the cycling division.