Erzulis Boat 

What is so special about vintage Italian bikes?

The fact that they could get away with murder. My newest Eroica bike is a 1979 SOMEC, and in in lockstep fashion, the fine finishing and painting are atrocious. Head scratchingly (word?) bad. Rides great, but how much of that perception is mystique driven, and not objective? I will never know, and hope that remains so.

TXsailor

I really have no idea who this lady is but as a small town Texas redneck all I can say is I am in love....

PeterLYoung 

I think that is Sophia Loren, in the 1950's.

Road Fan

So you have two complaints: Nobody listened to Frank Berto at the outset, and Campy was slow to adopt slant parallellogram?

I don't know when Frank started evaluating derailleurs and other gear for Bicycling! but Campy was out there in the pro racing world since about 1963 (my best guess). It held a place on most racing bicycles for (again my best guess) about 10 years. Did Frank say how bad it was at the outset of his reviews and comments?

There are a lot of reasons why a company might not release new products with the best technology as early as another company. For Campy I don't know what they are but I could imagine a complex set of problems adopting a new set of designs.

I don't think "why didn't Campy innovate?" is your real problem, since your rant sounds peeved about something. I don't see how Campy, good or bad, affects you in the least. I still don't see what point you are trying to make. If your message is "Campy stinks," that has been stated many times in many publications and forums. The only practical answer is "a lot of people like it and find it works well, and if you don't like it you shouldn't buy it. You'll end up sad."

But a lot of people including consumers have been satisfied riding their Campy-equipped bicycles.

Drillium Dude 

I have to say this: I have never, ever had the kind of problems people here complain about with SR or NR rear derailleurs. Never. I maintain/adjust them periodically for optimal performance, and that's what I get. They are limited in absolute precision by design, but they work as advertised: quick and accurate shifting over a range of racing gears, that is to say, maximum of 1 or 2 tooth jumps.

DD

jimmuller 

FWIW, I have NR derailleurs with long cage adaptations on two bikes. Both have wide range FWs, certainly not just racing types. They work just fine, or at least well enough that I can shift when I need to without resorting to cursing with Italian words I do not know. They look good, though not as good as Ms. Loren.

As for the bikes themselves, they work just fine and look good.

SurferRosa

Just built up another bike from '87, this time with early '80s super record (rear derailleur), triomphe (crankset, shifters, front derailleur) and sunrace (13-28t 7-speed freewheel). Silky smooth. I'm in love.

eugew23

It's definitely both, both OP is probably seeing higher end Italian bikes as opposed to lower end Japanese bikes. I think they're all pretty good lol

kunsunoke 

No. My complaint is paying extra for a rear mech that won't drop onto the 13T about half of the time I shift into it.

It was a little longer than ten years. Frank wasn't right about everything. He promoted Huret Duopar, which had a problem staying aligned in real-world conditions.

It wasn't for lack of trying. Once their hand was forced, Campagnolo tried several non-slant designs, with some degree of success. They even borrowed dual sprung pivots from Simplex. None of them shifted as good as Dura-Ace or Superbe Pro on a bad day.

Is it that "a lot of people like it and it find it works well" or that a lot of people just believed Campagnolo was better because others told them it was? I can understand the hype from a reliability standpoint. I have an NR derailleur on my desktop right now as I type this. It's strong enough to hammer nails, so there is that bit of versatility.

NR works okay (not great) with corn-cob freewheels and 14T minimums. It looks good, it looks old, it has monster reliability and it's Italian. For some that's enough to drop extra coin, and they will do so happily. I just find the extra money expenditure to be somewhat irritating given the marginal shift quality.

Prowler 

Road Fan

@kunsunoke:
Paying extra: actually I've been surprised at how much it will cost me to cobble together a working Shimano 10s setup for my tandem! Even as a Campy fan I would never buy NOS. If the bearings and pivots are good and it is not twisted or cracked, and it has all the screws, it's as good as new for my purposes. I don't own show bikes, I own riders.

Shifting down to 13: My bike with NR and a Regina 13-21 6sp will shift down, but it has been tricky to set up. We can help you sort that out, if you like.

Duopar: I have had a few of them working, and now hwve had one on my Trek for about 15 years. Several important points: 1. If I've moved the bike around the basement a lot, I could have knocked the shift levers and have to check the alignment (feathering) before doing much more. 2. I need to pay attention to rear dropout alignment on that bike. It's been a few years. 3. It is necessary to keep the right friction lever friction screw adjusted on the tight side. There is a happy medium between tight/sticky and loose/smooth/slippy. To maintain requires periodic readjustment. Back in the day this was just something we did. It's good to carry a stubby screwdriver if your levers do not have hand-adjustable clamp screws.

Dura and Superbe: I never owned them, but wisdom from this and other sites is that the lower levels of Shimano and Suntour shift often indistinguishably from the higher levels. YMMV. I find 10 sp and lower Campy setups shift uniformly well, all the way down to 1997 8-speed Mirage triples. You do have to be careful to use the components within their ratings, in terms of say over sizing sprockets or chainrings.

For NR users, I think some of us have maintained our skills at setting up the system with compatible components, and on those bikes have performance expectations that are well-satisfied. They should work with 13's, and on my Masi I have always used it with 13. I have a Record (pre-NR) that is marked "13-33" on the back. I don't believe it is capable of a 33 tooth rear sprocket, but, well, maybe I'm misinterpreting. In any case we can talk about this more, as I said above.

So I think a lot of people who need NR or SR for compatibility (physical compatibility, not style points or Eroica points) find it works well for those bikes. As Berto said with good reasons and tests to prove his conclusions, it is not suitable for indexing systems for the same reasons it needs to be over-shifted. For me if somebody disses NR/SR for not working well in indexing, they are just barking up the wrong tree. If I have to choose between an NR or a Shimano 600 6207 (pre-slant parallelogram), I would always vote for the NR, since I have discarded non-functioning 6207s from several bikes with in range freewheels and old square teeth. I can't understand why people like that model. And they're not even cheap on Ebay! I have one on a UO-8, it's better than an Alvit.

I grew into road bikes when Campy NR migrated into the high-end consumer market. My experience is that Campy was good on racing bikes of the day and on similar bikes today, except perhaps for Simplex setups on PX-10s. When Sun-Tour brought out their first slanted ones, they were cheap, massive and very functional at all cage lengths. No argument with people choosing them.

crank_addict

Bring on the Crapagnolo - I salute the lowly Velox. That thing is shining steel bulletproof and well.... it simply works without issue. Comically entertaining riding late season with the fellows on their carbon wonders and I'm feeling strong while on a gaspipe Bottechia loaded with steel components, 5 speed cog, single ring. My day is complete 🏁

Choke 

Obviously this isn't a great pic and one of these days I'll remedy that. But FWIW, in this pic the bike has a Victory crank with 36/48 rings and a 7sp 13-28 FW. The rear derailleur is a stock Nuovo Record and it shifts through all the gears just fine.....though I will admit that the chain is almost too tight for comfort in the big/big combo.

Classtime 

RiceAWay

No, they aren't "that much better" but they are better.

tkamd73 

SlowJoeCrow

It would be interesting to do a blind test of bikes of the same size and geometry but different tubing and components. Although it would take some doing today, early Trek bikes offered a menu of Ishiwata, Reynolds or Columbus tubing and Suntour, Shimano and Campagnolo components. Since they used the same geometry, lugs and dropouts you could put together bikes with the same components and different tubing to see where the "magic" was. I vaguely recall an actual test in the early 80s of the same design in different tubing to try and find the difference.
Getting back to the original question, some of that price difference has to do with the original price and availability. A Raleigh Record is always cheaper than a Raleigh Team Pro, Also some Italian bikes were cheap basic machines and not works of art., I recall mid 70s Atalas being inferior to a contemporary Fujis or Panasonics.

GailT

Jan Heine compared 4 identical frames with 3 different tube sets - described in his article that claims stiffer frames are not faster. Also, I think Bill Davidson built identical bikes with Tange Prestige and Columbus steel, did a blind test, and both riders preferred the Columbus steel

SlowJoeCrow

Thanks for finding that.

obrentharris 

Bruce Gordon I believe:
Tubing Article ? Nothing is better than a bike that fits

Brent

GailT

Yes, that's it - thanks. Interesting that they find (contrary to Jan) that more flex in the thinner diameter Tange did not help with climbing, but I suppose a lot of this subjective or specific to a particular bike.

RobbieTunes

Nope. Just different.

RobbieTunes

No Italian equivalent, either.

Wileyone 

There was Sophia's arch rival Gina Lollobrigida.

flyingPiggy

They just feel different. I don't really know which bike is 'better'. I know it's OT but I do prefer Campy over Shimano. Campy has... more mechanical feel to it. It's more engaging, while Shimano is easier to use and just... works. Frame-wise I think the Italian offers more planted feel while Japanese feels softer. I think it's just matter of preference imho.