DISRAELI GEARS
SunTour defined the best of the 1970s with their exquisite slant parallelogram designs - and, a little late to the party, Rino copied them enthusiastically. Then for the 1980s Shimano hit back with the idea that derailleurs should be radically 'aerodynamic'. SunTour's, rather sceptical, response was a little low-key smoothing of their existing basic design. In contrast, Campagnolo's response was to throw caution to the wind and go styling mad with ample, shimmering, curvaceous, flowing surfaces. Needless to say none of this had any detectable effect on anything as dull as a drag coefficient.
With their 1984 Elegant Rino decided to have their cake and to eat it. They followed SunTour in doing a bit of desultory smoothing on the knuckles and parallelogram, but allowed a touch of Campagnolo's extravagance in the design of the pulley cage. The result is rather impressive - a light, effective derailleur with a distinctively bonkers look.
There were two generations of Rino Elegant:
This is a nice, unused, example of a plain silver, second generation, Rino Elegant. Some of its features are:
Ref. 903
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La Bicicletta Guida '85/86 - I componenti da corsa scan 3 of 41
La Bicicletta Guida '85/86 - I componenti da corsa scan 3 of 41