By the late 1970s the Skitter had become a weird anachronism - a strange repository of SunTour’s past. That red colour, the cast metal name plate, the adjustment screws with springs to stop them loosening, the plastic protector nut, the riveted-on trap on the pulley cage for the spring, all these were as 1960s as Mary Quant and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The one concession to modernity is the Allen key bolt at the sprung pivot.

This fifth generation design retains the two trademark features of SunTour’s in-house Skitter designs - it is low-normal (what Shimano now call ‘rapid-rise’) and it had only one spring, which, through devious design, provides both chain tension and operates the parallelogram.

This example also has a Japanese-style backwards hanger - don’t worry, all you supercilious fixed wheel snobs (you know who you are - Oh yes you do!), when you get a trifle older, and the beer catches up with you, you can always quietly slip one of these into your track dropouts - the rest of us will pretend not to notice.

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• Derailleur brands: SunTour
• Categories: SunTour - the Skitter story
• Themes: A riot of colour
• Country: Japan
• Date of introduction: 1978?
• Date of this example: 1978 (two letter date code is UD)
• Model no.: 1000
• Weight: 319g including hanger plate and the extravagant ‘protector’ nut
• Maximum cog: 30 teeth
• Total capacity: 28 teeth
• Pulley centre to centre: 45mm
• Index compatibility: friction
• Chain width: 3/32”
• Logic: low normal
• B pivot: unsprung
• P pivot: sprung
• Materials: steel