If you had anything to do with mid-to-high-end bicycles in the period 1970 to 1990 you will be more than familiar with Weinmann rims and brakes. Most particularly, Weinmann was the go-to brake brand during the various ten-speed booms. I would still be delighted to fit a set of Weinmann 999 centre-pulls on any road bike I owned.

Weinmann were based in Schaffhausen in Switzerland. Part of the charm of Weinmann brakes was their combination of Swiss quality and surprising affordability. This is not a combination that you will often see today.

Weinmann brakes even survived the (very welcome) invasion of world bicycle markets by Japanese components during the 1970s and 1980s. What they did not survive was the arrival of the mass-market mountain bike in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The mass-market mountain bike decimated European bicycle makers and thereby European bicycle component manufacturers. This decimation led many companies to behave in wild and unfathomable ways.

One of Weinmann's irrational responses was to experiment with offering groupsets. They did this by complimenting their brake sets with a panoply of other components from a random selection of struggling European brands. You will be mildly tired to learn that this included Simplex and Sachs-Huret/EDCO derailleurs. It was not an experiment that lasted long.

Weinmann stopped producing products in Euroipe in 1991, was acquired by the Belgian Alesa Group and then, in 1997, by the Dutch Rigida Group, which was, itself, subsequently renamed as Ryde B.V. (are you keeping up?). Today it exists as Weinmann Metal Products (Huizhou) Co., Ltd bassed in China but still owned by Ryde B.V..