This is the last MAVIC catalogue to feature the classic 800 and 850 series derailleurs - beautiful, modernist, rationalist, Gallic, variants on the theme of Campagnolo's Nuovo Record.

It is also the first and, possibly, only MAVIC catalogue to feature the MAVIC 803 and MAVIC 853, the long cage versions of these derailleurs. They were manufactured with unparalleled precision from the finest materials, were styled with flair and elegance, but were trapped in the jail of an early 1960s racing geometry. As Joseph Stalin is supposed to have said of Leon Trotsky, these touring derailleurs were 'beautifully useless'. In an exact parallel of Trotsky, despite their obvious limitations, they have a surprising number of admirers even to this day. If any derailleur could win a place in Frida Kahlo's tempestuous heart it would be the flamboyant MAVIC 853, and it is not hard to imagine Jeremy Corbyn getting out his Allen keys and quietly bolting a, more modest, MAVIC 803 onto his, conspicuously red, Raleigh.

• Publisher: MAVIC
• Country: France
• Date: 1988?
• Derailleur brands: MAVIC
• Derailleurs: MAVIC 801, MAVIC 803, MAVIC 851, MAVIC 853