Shimano Dura Ace Crane

Shimano Dura Ace Crane and that demonstration of power was the 1971 Shimano. Shimano had aimed high. Like the Campagnolo Nuovo Record (and unlike the SunTour V) the Crane was all aluminium including the parallelogram and pulley cage plates. Like the Nuovo Record (and again unlike the SunTour V) the Crane was lustrously finished. But like the SunTour V (and unlike the Nuovo Record) the Crane was a modern drop parallelogram design. Shimano could not use SunTour’s patented slant-parallelogram, but they could use their ‘Servo-Pantagraph’ design with two sprung pivots (compared to the single sprung pivot on the Campagnolo). Finally Shimano had taken another leaf out of SunTour’s book and launched a long cage, touring, version; the Crane GS – Campagnolo had nothing with a long cage that was remotely as sophisticated. The Campagnolo Gran Turismo was an ineffective neanderthal steel monster. Shimano were not bashful when pricing the Crane, they made it clearly more expensive than any SunTour, although it was, inevitably, cheaper than the Campagnolo Nuovo Record.