In the 1990's I ran a Peugeot mountainbike that was probably made in the 80s (I got it at a huge discount because it was too expensive for the local market, and had stood in the importer's showroom for years). It had the last of the French-made French components before that bunch of companies became SRAM.
I soon learn that creaks, wherever they seemed to come from, stopped when the crank bolts and pedal axles were tightened. If that didn't fix it, it was always worth taking the cranks off and tightening the bottom bracket because that always fixed the irritating noise. About three months later the creaking would start again.
One thing that was odd about the drivetrain was that the chainrings were oval, to enhance chain pickup I was told. Seemed logical to me, but didn't make derailleurs any more palatable in practice.
I didn't mourn when all those makers went the way of the dodo. I still don't buy SRAM components because of that legacy; probably unfair on the new owners, but there are a lot of perfectly good components in the world.
Andre Jute