Vintage French randonneuer's and porteurs.

[Guinessisgoodforyou]

Plus.

 

[Guinessisgoodforyou]

Fin.

 

[Guinessisgoodforyou]

That Rene Andre is sublime. I've been looking at a lot of French components recently (for a build) and never ceases to amaze the level of ingenuity and QC that goes into their products. Where did it all go wrong for the French!?

I guess that lower end Simplex and Huret just got cheaper and nastier and the Japs took advantage. Or did they?

Check out this Cyclo marvel of derailleur design.

That is a question @Woz and I have debated at length. I think our resident derailleur expert @ferrus could shed some light on this. From my point of view I love the Japanese parts. I think they improved, refined and gave the customer what they wanted at a reasonable price point. I obviously love the French parts and I lament the demise. I think for a long time (decades) they were a long way in front as regards Audax, Randonneuring and touring. I find the subject fascinating and the more I uncover the more unanswered questions I have.

 

[Canuk]

I'm always surprised that the Japanese became so dominant so quickly. Look at the competition they had: TA, Stronglight, the Simplex SLJ range, Huret Duopar for wide range cassettes, Maillard hubs, Corima... The list goes on! Early Shimano and Suntour were a bit rubbish I thought, I grew up with this stuff. It was rugged though - I've still got Suntour Powershift running on a bike from 40 years ago!

The Huret Duopar Titanium looked ugly but it totally smashed the Suntour VGX for wide range performance.

How did they lose the war to the east?

 

[Guinessisgoodforyou]

I'm always surprised that the Japanese became so dominant so quickly. Look at the competition they had: TA, Stronglight, the Simplex SLJ range, Huret Duopar for wide range cassettes, Maillard hubs, Corima... The list goes on! Early Shimano and Suntour were a bit rubbish I thought, I grew up with this stuff. It was rugged though - I've still got Suntour Powershift running on a bike from 40 years ago!

How did they lose the war to the east?

I think the earlier stuff promoted the "japcrap" rumour and by the time the early to mid 70s came along they were turning out top notch stuff like Crane then Dura Ace. The french parts had their own standards which did them no favours and price wise they become uncompetitive. Edit, I've been running Japanese parts for nearly 50 years, so I've seen some of the less desirable stuff.

 

[Woz]

Where did it all go wrong for the French!?

Damn fine question. I've poked into this and it's not easy to find a good account - especially in English.

Broadly, with some facts gleamed - and some are my own observations:

The immediate post war period saw some incredible advances, ingenuity, better production and the bicycle a great means for new recreation and sport. The driving force of the industry I would actually put down to the more "competitive" side, Audax / Brevets, better exposure of the TdF internationally etc. The quest to make lightweight probably spearheaded a lot of advances in aluminuim and in general quality materials have been used.

The collapse is generally considered around the 1980 / 1985 mark.

I think leading up to this, the industry itself may have rested on it's laurels a bit too much. Innovation seems to have slowed down and some material choices were a bad move:
- Mafac essentially banged out the same designs over a 30 year-ish period but made them cheaper.
- The plastic fantastic Delrin mistakes taken up by Simplex and others. Simplex is even odder banging out something new and funky in very short times which equally could have been frustrating for bike builders.
- The very very late concept of a gruppo that just worked together. Spidel and Mavic are miles behind Campagnolo.

There is also the fashion change and general infrastructure improvements.
- Randonneur for the occasional cyclist is now replaced with a small cheap car.
- Roads are better, no point in balloon tyres when there's such availability of lightweight mass produced 10 speeds aka TdF like on TV.
- The mass produced 10 speed racer, brands like Weinmann, SR and Sugino being sourced to keep up with demand already got their foot in French market and export models across Europe / USA - their own industry is being undermined.

The death nail is indeed globalisation and cheaper (and better?) imports from Asia. The Motobecane story itself is fascinating, with Yamaha coming to the rescue. The 10 speed boom also developed known difficulties in QC and reputation is on the decline. At a high level, it's moved to Italy, at a low / mid level manufacture is consolidated quickly, hastily and often with poor management and trade union agreements.

I did read one article which pretty much said at this point the decline was unstoppable. I'm of the view that if it wasn't for Bernard Tapie much much more of the French bike industry and value in the world would have gone.

The Rene Andre is indeed sublime, but I can't help but feel a lot (most) is very grounded some 30 years prior. Not far around the corner are things like BMX and MTB which the likes of MBK and Peugeot could just respond too. The number of small independent builders is almost close to extinction too - that may be related to people loosing interest in steel or buying foreign exotica with Reynolds / Columbus from bigger brands like Colnago and what not.

 

[Woz]

That is a question @Woz and I have debated at length. I think our resident derailleur expert @ferrus could shed some light on this. From my point of view I love the Japanese parts. I think they improved, refined and gave the customer what they wanted at a reasonable price point. I obviously love the French parts and I lament the demise. I think for a long time (decades) they were a long way in front as regards Audax, Randonneuring and touring. I find the subject fascinating and the more I uncover the more unanswered questions I have.

Absolutely fascinating - the story and collapse of Atom, Normandy eventually Maillard for example is also a sad one, but again the hub design didn't change for decades and instead the quality just got worse. All ending up in bigger group:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZF_Sachs

Effectively the damage was already done though. I'm still amazed at just how long the cotter-pin lasted even on mid-range produced bikes.

 

[Canuk]

I'm surprised at how Simplex lost out - they must have had extremely poor marketing or really shit R&D. Their SLJ range with titanium parts and gold anodizing was very popular across Europe, same with Mavic and their SSC group, which to my mind wiped the floor with anything Italian or Japanese. Plus they pretty much invented electronic shifting with their Zap! system. Okay, Zap was plagued with reliability issues, but they could've been ironed out. It was groundbreaking. Corima were producing top end, world championship winning frames/chainsets/wheels/seat posts and then it all went sideways.

I'm not sure how long, it the timeline for this decline (I was only a lad at the time!) but it seemed to fall away very quickly at the end of the 80's. I can't help but wonder what the world of cycling would look like if the likes of Simplex and Mavic/Corima hadn't dropped the ball.

Look survived and is indeed flourishing, why didn't the others?

 

[Woz]

Yes, indeed @Guinessisgoodforyou - the almost ridiculous and bizarre path - essentially British frame standards (but not wheels) with French wheel standards (but not frames or parts) is were we got to. Even in the early days for Japanese industry to enter this must have been a nightmare and they themselves must have had to take some gambles and steered some type of standardisation.

 

[Canuk]

Yes, indeed @Guinessisgoodforyou - the almost ridiculous and bizarre path - essentially British frame standards (but not wheels) with French wheel standards (but not frames or parts) is were we got to. Even in the early days for Japanese industry to enter this must have been a nightmare and they themselves must have had to take some gambles and steered some type of standardisation.

Fair point, but by the end of the 80's Mavic, Simplex and Corima had pretty much ditched French standards and were selling very well internationally. The Mavic sealed bottom bracket pretty much put paid to any compatibility problems