Vintage Components - Huret rear derailleurs

On this page: Huret Jubilee 1st generation | Huret Duopar | Huret Allvit drawings by Daniel Rebour

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The Huret bicycle component firm was started by ex-racer André Huret in 1920 in Puteaux, near Paris. Huret was an ex-pro racer who had won the 1911 Paris-Turin and started both the 1919 and 1920 Tours de France. He was twelfth in the 1919 Paris-Roubaix.

Huret started out by making wing nuts for bicycle wheels. They were a hit. By 1930 he was able to move to a larger factory in Nanterre. It was at that location he began making derailleurs. His pre-war derailleur production never sold well. After the war, André's two sons Roger and Jacques joined the firm and then, with new designs, derailleur sales took off. Racing great Louison Bobet won the Tour de France three times using Huret derailleurs.

Huret leaped ahead of its competition in 1958 when it introduced its Allvit derailleur. It was the first parallelogram derailleur for consumer bikes. Huret made them by the ton. It seemed that every bike boom bike (notably Schwinn) came with an Allvit derailleur set. Astonishingly, Huret was able to sell Allvit derailleurs for a quarter century.

By 1965 Huret had 300 employees and was producing more than 100,000 derailleurs a year.

In the 1980s the German firm Fichtel & Sachs acquired Huret, resulting in the Sachs-Huret company. Sachs-Huret was in turn purchased by SRAM.

Here is the whole Huret Jubilee control group. The drawings are not signed, but to our untrained eyes, they certainly look like the work of the great cycling artist Daniel Rebour.

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Huret Jubilee rear derailleur, 1st generation. Lightly used, $250.00

1970 was Huret's 50th anniversery, its Jubilee. To celebrate, Huret created the lightest derailleur in the world. Every part of the derailleur was reduced to its bare minimum, even the adjustment screws are tiny. Weight was a mere 140 grams.

Then Huret gave it a beautiful polished finish. The result was an elegant, beautiful, simple piece of machinery that remains one of the high points of bicycle design. Over the years Huret made subtle changes to the Jubilee. The one listed for sale here is of the original design.

And, Jubilee derailleurs shift very nicely.

Here's the drawing famed artist Daniel Rebour made of the Jubilee:

Here's ours, showing very light use.

Nothing extra here. Everything has been pared down to the minimum.

A last view of this iconic derailleur.

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Huret Duopar Eco rear derailleur and parts. Used. Jump to product listing

This extraordinary derailleur was introduced in 1975.

The bikeretrogrouch.blogspot.com website does a superb job of describing this remarkable derailleur: "In the interest of creating the best wide-range touring derailleur available, Huret came out with a completely new derailleur design in 1975 that used two independent parallelograms to move the pulley cage. The main parallelogram would move the cage laterally in and out, while a second unit would move the cage up and down to more closely track the steep profile of a wide-range freewheel. It was dubbed the Duopar -- as in 'dual parallelogram'."

Those first Duopars had a titanium body. In 1981 a version with steel body parts was produced, called the "Eco", and that is what he have here. Shifting Guru Sheldon Brown wrote in both Bike World and Bicycling magazines that in its time, the Duopar was the finest shifting wide-range derailleur made, even better than the SunTour VGT. He did note that vertical dropouts distance the derailleur too far from the freewheel and substantially degrade the derailleur's performance as it shifts the smaller cogs.

The realization that the Duopar was the world's finest wide-range rear derailleur sent Shimano and SunTour to their drawing boards to come up with designs that could match the Duopar's performance. It was that good.

A Duopar will handle a 34-tooth cog.

Here's a factory drawing of a Duopar.

The American distributor of Huret placed this ad in cycling magazines for the first generation Duopars

We have two Huret Duopar rear derailleurs, both used: #1 | #2
Plus we have a broken Duopar that can be used for repair parts.

Both have been overhauled and re-lubed.

Huret Duopar rear derailleur #1. Used, $150.00

They do fold up into a small space.

And from the back

And another view.

Huret Duopar rear derailleur #2. Used, $150.00

Complicated and out-of-the-ordinary, but it works really well.

From the back

Another view

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Broken Duopar rear derailleur that's good for repair parts. Used, $45.00

Lots of repair hardware here

From the back

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Huret Allvit rear derailleur drawings by the great Daniel Rebour:

Here is the Allvit assembled and exploded.

Here's the first version of the Allvit derailleur

Here's the version that ended up on everyone's bikes.

Here's another exploded view of the Allvit

From behind.

And here are the shift levers used with the Allvit rear derailleur