Shimano had been slightly unenthusiastic about its pull-chain derailleurs in the 1950’s, and continued to be sceptical about parallelogram derailleurs in the 1960’s. But other Japanese manufacturers were piling into the market (Sanko and SunTour in 1963) and so Shimano felt compelled to get involved, introducing its first parallelogram derailleur in 1965.

Frank Berto describes this first Shimano design as an ‘inexpensive copy of the Campagnolo Gran Sport’. But I think that you will agree that it was derived from the 1961 Campagnolo Sportman. Indeed, the very earliest adverts for Shimano's new baby show a derailleur clearly branded 'Sportsman' - although I believe that it was never sold under that name.

Were these great, ground-breaking, derailleurs like the, contemporary, SunTour Gran-Prix? No, their performance was rather average, the white metal parts tended to crack and, most tellingly, very little of this first design lived on into the 1967 Shimano Sky Lark. But there is only one first Shimano parallelogram design and this is it.

Shimano manufactured the same basic design for 4 years, but during that, rather brief, period it produced a formidable range of different models. I have, a mere, 20 different examples, and that probably only scratches the surface.