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With the dawn of the new decade the pull-chain derailleur was dead and the parallelogram design was the only game in town. The very last new pull-chain designs that I am aware of are a 1960 Sanko H-2 and, naturally, the 1960 Simplex Juy Record 60.


In simple terms this was a decade in which:


  1. •The Italians perfected the art of making bicycle jewellery, Campagnolo’s Nuovo Record set new standards for combining unjustifiable expense, beautiful finish and extreme desirability. This was not machinery, it was a proper luxury good, to rank alongside a Maserati motorcar, a Gucci handbag and a pied à terre in Monte Carlo.

  2. •The French perfected the art of obtaining money for old rope. The Huret Allvit and the Simplex Prestige are two of my all-time least favourite designs. They were vaguely acceptable in the first few years of the decade - but a disgrace by its end. Nevertheless Simplex and Huret manufactured them in their millions and continued to do so well into the 1970s. Unlike the Allvit and Prestige, I have a soft spot for the sheer simplicity of the Huret Svelto, but you couldn’t consider it to be an eloquent expression of the design engineer’s craft.

  3. •The Americans perfected the art of selling derailleur bikes to the general public. Spearheaded by Schwinn, the ten speed became a consumer product, an essential wall-hanging in every suburban garage.

  4. •The British - well - the British perfected the art of being vacuously cool, turning on, tuning in and dropping out. It was the swinging sixties, with Twiggy climbing in and out of a (small wheeled, full-suspension) Austin Mini and Alex Moulton swanning around on his iconic (small wheeled, full-suspension) Moulton bicycle. At least Eric Clapton was fancying buying a racing bike - and I believe Mick Jagger enjoyed a spot of cycling too.

  5. •And finally, and without anyone in the West noticing much, the Japanese were perfecting the art of designing and manufacturing a decent derailleur. Sanko were the first to manufacture an aluminium parallelogram derailleur, SunTour invented the slant parallelogram and introduced the SunTour V series and Shimano cleaned up Simplex’s design, rebranded it as a ‘Servo-Pantagraph’ and manufactured it with commendable competence and in steel (as the Shimano Skylark), defining the low-end derailleur for the next four decades.


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1960s