Zeus dated back to well before WWII and may have been older than Campy. Certainly they were producing a range of products well before the Campy NR gruppo became "standard equipment" on high end racing bikes in the 70's. The 60's era Zeus Competition crank bears no resemblance to Campy, and Zeus obviously didn't copy their CP brakes from Campy, as Campy never made any. Nor do the 2001 SP brakes look anything like Campy. Come to think of it, few Zeus cranks with their 120mm circle were all that much like Campy, and the 2000 and later hourglass shaped hubs looked more like OMAS or Mavic than Campy. The "copying" seems to have been limited mostly to the Criterium and 2000 derailleurs. One must remember that copying successful designs was occuring long before the 70's. Perhaps Campy "copied" the Simplex or other successful parallelogram derailleur designs when Coppis Giro and Tour victories in the late 40's or early 50's using Simplex made it clear the older Campy lever shifters wouldn't cut it anymore.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Houston, TX
> It's pretty hard to think of a company that so blatently copied another
> company's designs as innovative, even is they did improve on that design.
> Has the relationship between Zeus and Campagnolo been discussed on this
list
> in the past? I have always wondered if Zeus and Campy had a licensing
> arrangement, or if it just that the Italian patent lawyers sent out from
> Vicenza all disappeared going through the Basque. (So now you're going to
> tell us that it's a shame Campy stole their designs from Zeus, right
Jerry?)
>
> Steve Barner, Bolton, Vermont
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> > Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 19:48:25 -0500
> > From: "jerrymoos" <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net>
> > To: "Eric Elman" <tr4play@cox.net>, <Classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
> > Subject: Re: [CR]Soliciting Zeus Comments
> >
> > Well, having always been a contrarian, I've never really had many
> all-Campy
> > bikes, since that was what "everyone" had in the 70's. Always preferred
> > French stuff or Zeus, just to be different. I've always considered Zeus
> as
> > good as Campy and a little more innovative in design,
> --Snip--
> > Regards,
> >
> > Jerry Moos
> > Houston, TX