Peter,
There was ZERO logic to anything Lucian Juy did to market his Simplex brand products!
"Simplex' inconsistent designations of model names and numbers have plagued bicycle historians and collectors to this day. In 1965, the Criterium was the lower priced model with a separate derailleur hanger. The Prestige P (for Professional) was a beefier, higher-priced model designed for mounting on a Simplex dropout. Both models were called 537. In 1966 the Prestige Criterium became the better model."
Frank Berto, "The Dancing Chain"
I've seen the word "Luxe" attached to various Simplex derailleurs (and other French parts) over the years, usually in bike catalogs, rather than Simplex literature.
I always assumed that "Luxe" was some kind of superfluous marketing or advertising term; something lost in translation between French and English meaning "better quality" rather than a specific model component.
Simplex used the 537 reference for a number of different models from that era including Prestige-Criterium, Prestige P and Criterium.
I suspect that 537 indicated derailleurs with external travel limit screws as opposed to the earlier models that had difficult to adjust wheels located within the parallelogram.
See the wheels in the patent drawing for the Simplex 532 RD, Fig. 3 Page one and Fig. 7 page 3:
For 1966 Simplex added steel plates to the sides of the parallelograms for increased rigidity.
By 1971 both the Criterium and the Prestige RDs used the designation 637. CR member Robert Broderick posted scans of the 1971 Simplex catalog.
http://www.velo-pages.com/
As mentioned above, Simplex changed the names of their derailleur models several times in the 60s. The French were notoriously frugal. Creating a new plastic mold with something other than "PRESTIGE-SIMPLEX" would have been an unnecessary expenditure.
After all, who but a collector 45 years down the road would bother to look at the back side of a derailleur that was designed to last maybe 5 years? ;-)
Chas. Colerich Oakland, CA USA
Peter Rogers wrote:
> Hi Guys,
> I am not an expert on Simplex, but where does the 537 Luxe derailleur
> fit into this picture.? I have seen this referred to as being fitted to
> late 60's PX-10s. Is this the model number for the Criterium?
> I always thought that the Criterium derailleur had the silver background.
> I am getting very confused. I wish they had put the model on the
> derailleur body, but they are all marked "PRESTIGE-SIMPLEX"
> All the best,
> Peter Rogers
> Barrie, Ontario, Canada