Storino, self-described as the “world’s biggest Campagnolo fan”
and thus hardly objective, insists that “a well set-up Delta brake had
incredible stopping power.” But that modifier, “well set-up,” was a
big proviso. To adjust to wheels of a different rim width, Storino
says, “you had to use the right spacers in the brake holders to get it
right.” Mechanics complained that it was hard to cut the brake cable,
whose terminus was just shy of the tire. The brakes were large, and
often didn’t fit well on smaller frames. The cover mechanism could
be hard to pop off and on. And because it was Campy, you needed an
unusually sized Allen wrench.
Even seasoned mechanics could be stymied by the brakes’ complex-
ity; the exploded view of the Deltas might make your head explode.
When the BikeHugger’s Mark V (no last name given), a mechanic,
tried to recondition an old set of Deltas, he had to draw diagrams on
how to put them back together, in case he got lost. He called them
“diabolical mechanical monstrosities,” though not entirely unkindly.
If the brakes were a big ask of pro mechanics, imagine what the
everyday duffer faced. Absent today’s YouTube videos, where to go
for guidance? Storino advised the company to install a 1-800 line in
the U.S. to help answer various Campy queries. “It was ringing all
the time,” he says. In response to ongoing problems, Campagnolo
continued to tweak the design, moving from three to five pivots. They
got better, relatively speaking.
But all the iterations in the world wouldn’t have saved the Deltas,
because the brake world was upended in the late 1980s, yet again,
by the arrival of dual-pivot side-pulls, an old-new technology first
developed by the German company Altenburger in the ’70s. Dual-
pivots had the weight advantage of single-pivots but with better
centering, and the stopping power and modulation (ability to control
braking power) of center-pull brakes. If you’re riding rim brakes
today, chances are they are dual-pivots.
TO UNDERSTAND WHY CAMPAGNOLO’S Delta brakes can be
so fetishized, and yet so disparaged, it’s worth considering another
classic piece of Italian design, also rendered in polished aluminum:
the Juicy Salif, Phillippe Starck’s iconic, infamous lemon squeezer.
Inspired by a squid—as he squeezed lemons over calamari on a
Spanish holiday—the Salif brought sculptural, monumental f lair
to an everyday kitchen object. It was a huge hit. There are people
with Salif tattoos.
It looked simple and intuitive, and it evokes a world in which even
humdrum tasks are elevated into aesthetically endowed rituals. In
reality, it was unstable. Lemon juice got on the user’s hands. It didn’t
filter pulp and seeds. The company’s president, Alberto Alessi, was
nonplussed: “Function alone isn’t reason to design an object.” Starck
was equally unapologetic: “My juicer is not meant to squeeze lemons;
it is meant to start conversations.”
I am not suggesting that Campagnolo set out to create an intel-
lectual, design-world provocation with the Delta brakes—though you
will almost certainly start conversations if you rock up to the café
brandishing a set. But both the Deltas and the Salif play upon the
power of what the design guru Donald Norman calls “visceral design.”
This refers to the immediate look and feel of a product, which can tap
into the rapid-fire processing parts of our brain, bypassing layers of
rationality. The Deltas, like the Salif, hit pleasure centers with such
force that even if you know the performance might not be up to be
par, you still can’t help feeling a positive surge. For Norman, this is
less a problem than a simple fact of being human. We can’t help get-
ting emotional over things.This is one edge that Campagnolo has always had over other brands.
There are many people with Campagnolo tattoos, but hardly anyone
with Shimano or SR AM ink. When people brand themselves with
your brand, that’s emotion.
The Deltas seem to hit a particular sweet spot for a generation
of people who were young and in love with bikes but, alas, lacking
the means to fully indulge their pro-level passions. Now those kids
are older, with a bit more money, and they look to assemble the
dream bikes of yore, to be ridden at L’Eroica or, in some cases, not
to be ridden at all.
A few years ago, Mark Riedy put together a Rossin Ghibli bike with
a full C-Record gruppo, including the Deltas. “When I was a kid that
was the bike I wanted,” he says. “I just needed that bike. It wasn’t
the bike that worked the best; I wanted it because it looked good.”
On the California edition of L’Eroica, his Delta brakes, he says,
“literally stopped working.” A fellow rider, an engineer, told him he
needed to move the pads closer to the rim.
On the road, Deltas may give love, but they need love. Now, safely
back at home, when Riedy gazes upon the immobile bike with its
gleaming brakes, displayed like a museum piece, he doesn’t see failure.
He only sees beauty.ISSUE 5 • BICYCLING.COM 61