Appropriately, the Favorit Special is one of my special favourites in this collection. It has a very Bauhaus feel, totally modernist, but with a hint of the 1950’s about it, form-following-function, but with just a touch of whimsical artiness thrown in.

The knuckles are plastic, but seem pleasantly rigid. The front and back parallelogram plates are identical. The adjustment screws are cleverly placed in the rear knuckle. The hanger bolt is hollow. But the tour de force is the design of the pulley cage, with each plate styled as an open loop of aluminium.

And one result of all this effort is a very respectable weight at 191g.

I think this example is a less common, later, version with cutaway pulley wheels. The instructions in German on the box indicate that it was an export model, probably destined for the DDR.

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• Derailleur brands: Favorit
• Country: Czech Republic - Czechoslovakia at the time
• Date of introduction: 1987?
• Date of this example: unknown (the parallelogram plates are stamped 327200)
• Model no.: unknown
• Weight: 191g
• Maximum cog: 28 teeth?
• Total capacity: 24 teeth?
• Pulley centre to centre: 46mm
• Index compatibility: friction
• Chain width: 3/32”
• Logic: top normal
• B pivot: unsprung
• P pivot: sprung
• Materials: largely aluminium with plastic knuckles