In our most recent poll I asked you to pick one of three component manufacturers and up until the last few hours, it was a 3-way tie, but in the last hours, Campagnolo pulled ahead to win by 2 votes, leaving Shimano and SRAM to share 2nd (3rd?).
Being the youngest of 4 boys most of my bicycles were hand-me-downs, and several of them were compilations of several bikes and parts that survived wrecks. These bikes came equipped with Shimano, SunTour, Sachs-Huret, Sturmey-Archer, Falcon, TA, Sugino and maybe a few others. I can’t remember owning a bike with Campagnolo until I bought one brand new this decade.
When a derailleur broke on one bike, we just grabbed the one off of the bike that wasn’t getting used as much and stuck it on. We didn’t buy new chains, we just pieced together ones from several bikes. Axles, freewheels, shifters, bottom brackets… they all worked together just fine. (I just remembered that in high school I had a Bianchi that had some Campy parts, but they never needed replacing. Ever.)
So what happened? Bikes used to come with different parts. There were options. If you were touring and you broke your X-Brand thingamajig, that was really no trouble. You just had to get in to town and the Y-Brand thingamajig would work just fine.
6 speed, 7 speed, 8, 9, 10 and now 11 speed chains, exist… and can’t be used with other combinations, and only for that brand! X-Branded index shifting doesn’t work with Y-Brand derailers. Even cables and housing matter now!
Talking about choices, sometimes there are just too many:
Square taper, ISIS, Ashtabula, OctaLink V1 and V2, Ultra Torque, Hollow Tech, Integrated, Power Spline (did I miss any?) are all different kinds of bottom brackets and none of them will work with the other (OctaLink V1 cranks might work on V2, but not the other way around). How is anybody supposed to keep up?
I give up. I’m getting a bus pass 
