The beauty goes to SunTour. Current mfg's just don't polish their parts the way they used to. Even current Campy isn't as slick as the old NR or SR stuff.
Performance is subjective though. If the old SunTour was that good, they would still be in business today. So, SunTour is out of business and Shimano isn't, that kind of ends that argument.
Tim
Tim. I'd have to disagree with you on this. Suntour went out of business for a lot of reasons. Failed to Market with index shifting because their first attempt failed. That was mostly due to the lack of engineering resources on their part. By the time they fixed it Shimano had already taken market share. Last thing why Superbe Pro isn't around is when SR bought them out, all the Superbe Pro tooling was destroyed. There are other reasons too but let's get to the subject. Suntour Superbe Pro probably IMHO (early 80's to late 80's) was the sweetest group you could have. Shifting was flawless and the group as a whole was on par with Campy. The Suntour Superbe Hubs were some of the best made. So to try and compare this to Shimano 105 would be ridiculous. I've had several bikes outfitted with Superbe/Superbe Pro groups and wouldn't settle for anything else and I have Campy on my New Orbea.