I think that we need to give Zeus a good bit more credit: they made both BSC and metric (14mm) cranksets and pedals. French-threaded hubsets and seat posts in dimensions to suit metric sized 531 framesets were also made by Zeus.
I think that they were very aware of their niche in the upgrade market and chose to make their components that would work for all bikes including French ones. I'm pretty certain that the majority of their production wasn't groupsets going to manufacturers to meet "catalog" specifications of stock bikes.
Charlie Young
Honey Brook, PA
USA
<biankita@comcast.net>; <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org> Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 5:04 PM Subject: RE: [CR]Why Zeus cranks used French pedal thread?
> Semantics and geography aside I think the point is that while France may
> be
> closer to Spain than Italy is, many of the Zeus components are pretty much
> direct copies of Campagnolo which is obviously from Italy, not France. So
> why would Zeus chose to use French threads? Did their marketing determine
> that while it made more sense to copy Italian rather than French
> components,
> many of which we know are quite good and some would argue as good as
> Campy;
> that their target buyer audience would be French cyclists and/or cyclists
> mixing and matching French components with the Zeus parts/ Seems like
> strange logic to me...
>
> Edward Robert Brooks
> Managing Director
> Edward Roberts International
> Auctioneers of the Fine and Rare
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: classicrendezvous-bounces@bikelist.org
> [mailto:classicrendezvous-bounces@bikelist.org] On Behalf Of
> loudeeter@aol.com
> Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 3:36 PM
> To: CaptBike@sheldonbrown.com; biankita@comcast.net;
> classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> Subject: Re: [CR]Why Zeus cranks used French pedal thread?
>
> Ahh, I now understand where I missed your point. You meant that Spain is
> closer to France than Spain is to Italy, gotcha. Sorry for screwing this
> up.
> I missed the meaning of "it". Lou Deeter, Orlando FL
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: loudeeter@aol.com
> To: CaptBike@sheldonbrown.com; biankita@comcast.net;
> classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> Sent: Fri, 11 May 2007 4:34 PM
> Subject: Re: [CR]Why Zeus cranks used French pedal thread?
>
>
> Sheldon, have you looked at a map of Europe lately? I believe that Italy
> and Spain are precisely the same distance from France. I would agree that
> Eibar, Spain (where Zeus is located) is probably closer to some territory
> of
> France than Vicenza, Italy is from French territory, but I'm guessing that
> the distance from Paris to Vicenza is less than the distance from Paris to
> Eibar. Lou Deeter, Orlando FL
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: CaptBike@sheldonbrown.com
>
>
> Spain is a lot closer to France than it is to Italy...
>
> Sheldon "Over The Pyrenees" Brown
> -- Harris Cyclery, West Newton, Massachusetts
> Phone 617-244-9772 FAX 617-244-1041
> http://harriscyclery.com
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