Before EX, It Was CLB

In 1978, Shimano introduced its Dura Ace "EX" gruppo.  It was hailed (at least by Shimano's marketing department) as revolutionary.  Indeed, the gruppo included "innovations" that cyclists who didn't know much about the history of cycling (which would have included me) would have seen as world-changing.

As with most "innovations", they had been done before.  Features that distinguished this new gruppo, aside from its light weight and distinctive appearance, included "dropped" pedals with axles that were shorter but of larger diameter than others.  That was supposed to make the pedal/crank interface stiffer, and putting the pedal platform below the line of the axle was supposed to be both more ergonomic and aerodynamic than traditional setups.  I never tried it myself, for the same reasons most cyclists I know didn't:  Those pedals and cranks were not interchangeable with any others.  

Speaking of the cranks:  They were very nice, and included a one-key release, eliminating the need for a crank remover tool.  That is one "innovation" that has endured.  Another is one that many of us are riding today:  a "freehub" with a cassette carrier integrated into the hub body.  Until that time, almost every derailleur-equipped bike, as well as those with single-speed freewheels, used freewheels that screwed onto the hub body.  

Of course, the "Uniglide" hub, as Shimano would call it, was not a new idea.  SunTour made a hub with an integrated cassette carrier--the "UnitHub--a decade earlier; half a decade before that, Cinelli offered its "Bivalent" hub, which is often seen as the predecessor of modern cassette hubs.  But, in part through aggressive marketing campaigns, Shimano's cassette system is the one that displaced screw-on freewheels as the standard for bikes of any and all kinds.

One more "innovation" that wasn't was the brakes, which I liked.  The extension that held the cable adjuster and quick release was shortened, and a stiffener was added between it and the main part of the brake arm.  And the quick release was one most cyclists hadn't seen before:  It rotated and had fewer moving parts than the ones found on Campagnolo and other brakes.

CLB Professional

Surprise, surprise:  Three years earlier, CLB introduced their "Professional", a brake with a similar profile--and the same kind of quick release.  If I were a collector or simply wanted to build a bike strictly based on the "cool" factor of the parts, I would probably choose the CLB Pro.  It and the titanium-bolted Galli Professional, which came out that same year (as did the SunTour Cyclone derailleurs), were the lightest brakes of their time.

CLB Competition, c. 1950

Now, the few Americans who bought and used CLB (Charles Lozier Bourgoin, the founder of the company) Pros probably thought the quick release was novel.  Actually, CLB had been using it--though in less-refined iterations--as far back as the 1940's, when they first started making brakes.  Interestingly, the company's center-pulls--introduced  in the early '50's and based heavily on the Mafac's product--used cable hangers that included a very similar quick release mechanism.

What got me to thinking about all of this?  Well, I was looking for some parts on eBay when I came across this:

It appears to be a later or lower-priced version of the Professional.  What really struck me, though, was the "funky" (as the listing's copy aptly puts it) green and white finish. As far as I knew, CLB, being the very traditional and very French company that it was, never offered their components in color besides silver.  Actually, with the exception of the Professional, most of their brakes were, well, not finished at all, from all appearances:  They had a dull grey aluminum color.  Mafacs, by comparison, seemed like jewelry.

Although that green and white brakeset is probably 30 or more years old, it would fit right in with the graphics on many new bikes!

Apparently, CLB ceased to exist a few years after they were acquired by Sachs in 1984. Three years earlier, Sachs also bought Huret, Maillard and Sedis--three of the mainstays of the French bicycle industry.  While components were manufactured in France and marketed under the Sachs/Huret, Sachs/Maillard and Sachs/Sedis names for  a few years before becoming simply Sachs, the CLB name seems to have died not long after its acquisition.  

But CLB's designs live on, in other forms:  There are brakes with similar quick releases.  And the aerodynamic shapes of today's brakes owe something to the design of the Professional.

My First Piece Of Jewelry: The Huret Jubilee Derailleur

When you get to be my age, you realize that had you saved the stuff you wore in your youth, you could sell it today as "vintage."  It seems that some people are trying to do the same thing with bike parts.  I find myself shouting things they don't teach you in French 101 whenever a Craigslist or eBay listing refers to a Simplex Prestige derailleur as "rare" or "vintage."

Whenever I see that testament to French plastic technology--or the Campagnolo Gran Turismo with its scimitar-like cage or the Huret Luxe Super Touring, which looked like a disjointed crane's neck made from steel plates--I think, "They don't make them like that anymore--Thank God!"  If those things are "vintage", I'm all for the present and the future

But there are a few no-longer-made components that can be called "vintage" without making me wince.  Such parts are, of course, sought out by collectors or even still used on everyday riders.  Such parts were not only "good for their time" but still are valid today because they have some feature or another that today's stuff lacks.

Sometimes that factor is aesthetic.  Let's face it:  Most bikes and parts from the past look better than almost anything made by anyone besides a custom builder or small-scale manufacturer today.  I admit that there are some things I own and ride for that reason alone.  But some of those same bikes and parts--and others--are designed in ways that are more practical or versatile, or simply "made better", than what you can buy today.

And, believe it or not, some old parts are actually lighter. A case in point is the Huret Jubilee rear derailleur.

I actually owned and rode two--a short-cage and a long-cage version-- for a number of years.  I raced, toured and even did some "rough stuff" on them.  And I even took a tumble or two on them.

My short-cage Jubilee adorned my Cannondale racing bike for a few months.  Then it graced my Colnago Arabesque--on which I raced and trained and did a number of long rides--for another half-dozen years.  I rode the long-cage version for a couple of years on a Bianchi that I turned into a light tourer, then on my Miyata 912.

On all of those bikes I shifted the Jubilee with what is, to my mind, the best non-indexed lever ever made: the Simplex retrofriction.  And I had the "teardrop" version--to my eye, the prettiest shift lever in history--on the Cannondale and Colnago. 

With those levers, the Jubilee shifted quite well, especially given the standards of the time.  It wasn't quite as easy or accurate as the SunTour Cyclone (or, for that matter, anything in SunTour's "V" series).  But I actually preferred the Jubilee to any other manufacturer's (besides SunTour's) top-of-the-line derailleur.  For one thing, it shifted as well--or, at least, not noticeably worse than--the Campagnolo Record series, Simplex LJ or Shimano Crane.  To be more precise, the Jubilee shifted about as quickly and perhaps a bit more accurately, and definitely more smoothly, than any of those mechanisms.

I bought my first (short-cage) Jubilee from Frank Chrinko, the proprietor of Highland Park Cyclery, where I worked for a time.  He thought well of them (and used the Success, Huret's other high-end derailleur) and said he hadn't noticed any problems among the (admittedly few) customers who used them.  On the other hand, I heard horror stories about how if you looked at it the wrong way, it would explode into a million little pieces.  Such fears, I found, were greatly exaggerated: Both of my Jubilees survived falls and continued to work as well as they had been working.

I think that Jubilees lasted longer than many people expected precisely because they were so minimalist:  There weren't as many ways it could be struck or snagged.  That is the reason why, interestingly, a few early mountain bikers and some cyclo-cross riders used it.

The Jubilee also holds the distinction of being one of the few rear derailleurs that was completely disassemblable for cleaning and maintenance.  Huret actually offered spare parts, though they weren't easy to find (at least in the US).  I'll admit that, once disassembled, it wasn't the easiest thing to put back together, especially if you didn't have a diagram (which was even harder to find than the spare parts).  

So how did the Jubilee get its name?  Huret was founded in 1920 and in 1970 decided to celebrate by creating the lightest derailleur ever made.  They succeeded--the short-cage version weighed only 140 grams (the long-cage version weighed 157).  Ironically, the later "drillium" version was five grams heavier!

The Jubilee was first introduced in 1972 (the same year as the Simplex Super LJ and SunTour VGT) and found its way to the US a couple of years later.  The Motobecane Grand Jubile came equipped with it and other high-quality French components; so did the Raleigh Competition.  In 1974-5, Raleigh's two-steps-up-from-entry-level Super Course, with a frame that had straight-gauge Reynolds 531 in its main tubes, came with a version of the Jubilee that fitted to the non-forged dropout with a "claw" hanger.  From what I heard in bike shops at the time, Raleigh was trying to offer the lightest bicycle available at its price point (about $175 at the time), and the Jubilee shaved those few grams that gave the bike its edge over whatever the next-lightest bike was in its price category.

Sachs took over Huret in the early 1980s and continued to produce the Jubilee until the end of the decade.  Later versions bore the Sachs-Huret logo, and later simply "Sachs", in the black-and-gold badge that sported the Huret name in the familiar cursive lettering for so long.

Late in the 1980s, Sachs (which had also taken over French component makers Maillard and Sedis) became part of SRAM.  It seems that around that time, the Jubilee was discontinued as all of the SRAM-Sachs derailleurs were modeled after the Shimano models with slant paralellogram bodies and two sprung pivots.