Originally Posted by bikemig

If this is going to be a C&V thread, we should be nominating individual parts rather than groups. The beauty of parts--before Shimano screwed everything up--was that you could mix and match the best parts. I know this thread is about the most "beautiful" parts but for me the most beautiful are the ones that work the best.

So best and most beautiful headset, stronglight A9.
Best derailleurs, suntour.
Best brakes, take your pick, Mafac racers (cheap but great) or campy sidepulls.
Best crank is tough but I'd vote stronglight cranks. The rings were very good on the rockwell hardness test. The cranks were light. And they chainring sizes (or bcd), unlike campy, came in useful sizes. Even the racing crank, the stronglight 93, could go down to 37 teeth. Then stronglight screwed up by copying the campy bcd.
Best hubs, I love campy but the later suntour cartridge bearing ones were great as well.
Best pedals, campys are great but so are the later suntour cartridge bearing pedals (I think they were made by MKS).

If I have to vote for a group worth owning as a group, I like the suntour xc pro stuff/superbe stuff. That was suntour's swan song before it went broke and that stuff is excellent. I have a full xc pro group salted away for a 650b build I plan on doing.

Oh, and shimano gets zero votes which is exactly what it deserves. Don't get me wrong, I love shimano click shifting and the shimano 600/dura ace stuff is pretty hot but shimano made a lot of crappy stuff before it finally figured out how to kill off the competition.

There is not a lot of campy stuff on my post but then campy stuff was beautiful, pricey, and overrated. Was there a crappier uber expensive rear derailleur ever made then the first or second gen campy rally? Or a crappier less well thought out triple then the campy triple? Plus campy headsets are overrated. They were a lot easier to "index" than a well made headset like the stronglight A9. The older stronglight headsets are great too.