Hello Raoul,
SunTour's group was known as JEX (Japan Exporters?), and IIRC included SunTour, Sugino, Yoshigai (Dia-Compe), Mikashima (MKS), and Kusuki. There's stuff in the archives on this. Shimano's group was called JBM (Japan Bicycle Mfrs?), and included Sakae Ringyo (SR) and Kyokuto (KKT), maybe others.
Shimano in general offered more parts under their own brand earlier than SunTour, so SunTour was playing up JEX group members for many years after Shimano stopped talking about JBM. JEX was a looser alliance, and there were sometimes inter-group feuds. I remember Dia-Compe offering Schwinn a brake lever for less $ than the Yoshigai-made SunTour-branded lever, and several SunTour folks went ballistic.
As far as Fuji goes, I think Fuji Japan used much more Shimano spec over the years than Fuji America. Fuji America had a large degree of control over US spec, and both at the top and as an organization had a much closer relationship with SunTour than Shimano. For most of the '80s Fuji spec was dominated by SunTour, Sugino, Dia-Compe, MKS and Ukai. I don't know much about the genesis of the '70s Ace, but throughout the '80s Shimano was used little and reluctantly, until (OT) indexing caught on with consumers and forced Fuji America product managers to spec more and more models with Shimano.
Cheers,
Paul Brodek Hillsdale, NJ
On Sun, 16 Mar 2003 11:15:26 -0600, "Raoul Delmare"
<R.Delmare@Charter.net> wrote:
> Help me out on this .
>
> There was some sort of , coalition , consortium , agreed cooperation , between Sugino , SunTour , and a couple of other companies . Did that group of companies use any particular name for their co-op ? Who else was in that little network ?
>
> I am remembering the bicycle , The Ace , from Fuji . It was the first time Fuji had moved away from SunTour & friends , and gone to Shimano for components . It was a big change for Fuji .
>
> Raoul Delmare
> Marysville Kansas
Paul C. Brodek
Hillsdale, N.J. U.S.A.
E-mail: pcb@skyweb.net