Derailleurs of the World: Huret

In the history of derailleurs, Huret is an often-overlooked. The French company cannot lay claim to big innovations like Campagnolo (first parallelogram racing derailleur), Simplex (first spring-loaded upper pivot to compensate for front shifts) or SunTour (slant parallelogram). And yet Huret’s derailleurs were innovative in their own ways.

Hideki Sasaki has added a new books on Huret to his “Derailleurs of the World” series. These books are the most complete catalogues of classic derailleurs. Every derailleur is shown in photos, with dates and a few specs.
On 107 pages, the book describes every derailleur Huret made from 1930 until the company, by then owned by the German component maker Sachs, was taken over by SRAM in 1997, and derailleur manufacture in Europe ceased.

Huret’s first racing derailleurs were unremarkable ‘plunger-type’ items, but when the company branched out into cyclotouring derailleurs, it showed that it was capable of lateral thinking (above): The ultra-light Route Touriste Leger was made from aluminum and used spring wire for the derailleur mounts and cages. How light was it? 173 g – lighter than any long-cage derailleur available today.

The innovation continued with the 1958 Allvit, which was the first drop-out mounted derailleur that featured a constant chain gap – achieved by suspending the parallelogram from the bottom of a steel arm that mounted to the dropout. A few years later, the Allvit directly inspired SunTour’s slant parallelogram derailleurs.
During this time, Huret’s derailleurs were considered the best-shifting and most durable derailleurs for the wide gear ranges. Both René Herse and Alex Singer equipped most of their bikes with the Allvit, Luxe and superlight Jubilee derailleurs that remained in the program for 35 years.
All of Huret’s later derailleurs were very light – even unassuming models like the Challenger weighed a scant 170 g. And then there were the titanium versions…
My favorite is the Duopar – a tour de force with a secondary parallelogram that moved automatically, pulled by the chain tension, to keep the jockey pulley at the perfect distance from the freewheel cog, no matter what size freewheel you used. It was pure genius, and the story goes that Shimano formed an entire team of engineers whose job it was to equal the Duopar. Little did they know that the idea had been pioneered by Schulz’s Funiculo in the 1930s, and Huret’s patent probably could have been challenged. Unfortunately, the Japanese text in Sasaki’s book covers only the details of the derailleurs, not the story behind them, so even Japanese speakers never learn whether Huret’s engineers were aware of the Funiculo, or whether they independently came up with the same idea.
As with all of Sasaki’s books, Huret is very detailed: Every iteration of each derailleur is listed. What struck me was that compared to Sasaki’s books on Campagnolo, Simplex and SunTour, there were relatively few iterations for each Huret model. It appears that Huret only introduced derailleurs after thorough testing, and avoiding the need for immediate changes to improve their function and/or reliability.

The book includes front derailleurs and shift levers, including the fascinating ‘Louison Bobet’ models with a secondary lever for adjusting the chain tension.
These books are a labor of love. They are printed on heavy coated stock. The photos may not have the sparkle of the best professional studio images, but they are clear and informative. The descriptions are brief, and unfortunately for most of us, they are in Japanese. Yet the important details are easy to figure out: model number, weight, production dates, and price in Yen.

These books are printed in very small quantities and are difficult to find outside Japan. We are placing a one-time order with Hideo Sasaki. In addition to the new Huret book, he has a few of the earlier volumes.
If you would like a copy, pre-order it by April 29. We won’t stock these books, so please order now if you would like one. The books will be shipped in late May/early June.
Click on the links to order:

• Huret, 108 pages, $ 68
• Campagnolo (above), 100 pages, $ 68
• Simplex, 117 pages, $ 68
• SunTour, 2 volumes, 208 pages, $ 95

Additional information:

• Bicycle Quarterly 16 features road tests of classic racing derailleurs, including Huret’s Jubilee.
• Bicycle Quarterly 14 reports on the real-road performance of classic cyclotouring derailleurs, including the Huret Randonneur and Duopar.