I can remember winning a road race and the prize was a mavic "robocop" groupset. I put it on the colnago master, but it didnt somehow look right, so I put the record delta stuff back on and used the mavic on a 531 raleigh (one like the one LGF recently acquired). Thing was the raleigh/mavic bike rode much better and was much lighter than the colnago and became the race bike. Everyone thought I was mad till they picked it up and the raleigh weighed about 20lbs, the colnago nearer to 23lbs.
BTW my chainset was different to the one on the merckx - it was more like the campag mk1 look than the aero look. The mechs and retrofriction gear levers were far superior to the C record stuff.