SunTour

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SunTour or SR Suntour is a Japanese manufacturer of bicycle components. They make products ranging from suspension forks to derailleurs. Begun in 1912 as Maeda Iron Works Company manufacturing freewheels and sprockets, the company began producing their version of the French pull-chain, rod-guided, touring derailleurs in the 1950s.

In the 1960s SunTour invented the slant-parallelogram rear derailleur. In the early 1970s, demand created by the bike boom in the United States far exceeded the capacity of European manufacturers. SunTour and Shimano filled the void. While both companies provided products for all price ranges of the market, SunTour focused on refining existing systems and designs for higher end products, whereas Shimano paid more attention to rethinking the basic systems and bringing out innovations such as index shifting and front freewheel systems.

SunTour suffered from the devaluation of the Yen in 1985. They remained in the market until the mid-1990s, but withdrew from the American market because they could not compete with Shimano. The SR Suntour brand has recently returned to the market (as of 2004) under new ownership.

SunTour's new products are classified in a different way from Shimano's and SRAM's. Instead of using definite names to define the quality of the parts, they use a lettering system.