It should be emphasized that the Leica R3-R6 were designed with some Minolta technology (the XD series), but were manufactured by Leitz in Portugal or Germany. Leica borrowed the electronics and some of the chassis technology from the Minolta XD and XE cameras to produce the Leica R3 and R4 cameras ( more info here). To solve this, Leica teamed up with the Japanese company Minolta to design a new series of single-lens reflex cameras to replace the Leicaflex series. Using the text or images on this website without permission on an ebay auction or any other site is a violation of federal law.
While Leica was superb at designing lenses, their previous camera bodies were largely mechanical and they could not compete with the auto-exposure features in the electronic marvels from their Asian rivals. But by the 1970s, it was clear that SLRs represented the future of camera design.
As detailed in my Leicaflex page, Leica was slow to respond to the growing threat of Japanese single-lens reflex cameras.
