The short answer is, shimano destroyed the aesthetic of bicycles. some people like to think that shimano was just an evil company interested in cash profits and the lowest possible production prices. The reality is, shimano actually has made a lot of improvements in the past 20 years. when the technology is moving quickly the aesthetic can suffer.
campy made many lines of parts for almost 40 years. to do this they started off with a part that was innovative and beautiful and durable. at the end of its life the part was still durable and beautiful - but was terribly outdated. Take away one of these features (durable) and the parts would have been out of production in 1978 like many of the french parts. Take away two features (durable, beautiful) and they might have been out of production in 1968.
I subscribe to the frank berto assertion in his new edition of the dancing chain that shimano greatly improved the derailleur system. This innovation in the drivetrain has put shimano in the driver's seat. the innovation was a critical need for mountain biking to succeed. it spilled over to road bikes as an afterthought. as long as you are innovating in such an important component, you can dictate terms of surrender in the other aspects of your parts and the market will accept those terms.
We can have a renaissance in small-scale bike parts and frameset production, but we have to get a lot of people trained to program CNC machines in order to see that day.
As i looked at my two right-hand side campy crank spiders last night i became convinced that the reason why nobody makes a crank today with that profile is because it would be too easy for anyone to CNC a clone crankset in their garage. That was unthinkable 40 years ago.
- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA