Inspired, he designed a mass-production bike for the youth market known as Project J-38. The result, a wheelie bike, was introduced to the public as the Schwinn Sting-Ray in June 1963. Corvette in 1954, after their catalog, for that year, had been in use. Therefore, with the release of a single photograph, the Corvette was introduced. The picture showed company executives standing behind their new product, that would remain in production for 10 years.
A growing number of teens and young adults were purchasing imported European sport racing or sport touring bicycles, many fitted with multiple derailleur-shifted gears. Schwinn decided to meet the challenge by developing two lines of sport or road ‘racer’ bicycles. One was already in the catalog — the limited production Paramount series. The Paramount schwinn bicycles series had limited production numbers, making vintage examples quite rare today. The 1960 Varsity was introduced as an 8-speed bike, but in mid-1961 was upgraded to 10 speeds. Other road bikes were introduced by Schwinn in the early and mid 1960s, such as the Superior, Sierra, and Super Continental, but these were only produced for a few years.
In a time when selling 10,000 of a particular bike was considered a success, the Sting-Ray sold 45,000 units in the first six months after its release. In 1972, Schwinn was making 6,000 bicycles a day with 2,000 workers in their Chicago plant and in 1974 an impressive 1.55 million Schwinns left the factory. Schwinn thrived through this hard time building a modern factory and buying other smaller bike firms; this allowed the company to engage in mass production of bikes that could be sold at lower prices. Schwinn fielded a mountain bike racing team in the United States where their team rider Ned Overend won two consecutive NORBA Mountain Biking National Championships for the team in 1986 and 1987. By the mid 1970’s Schwinn’s Super Sport and Sports Tourer/Superior weighed a few pounds more than comparably priced bicycles at a time when light weight was increasingly important to customers of quality bicycles. Fillet-brazed frames are also more costly to produce than lugged frames because they are made by hand and require hand finishing.
Its chrome-plated fork was changed to painted, hubs went to the cheaper “Atom” version , and its rear dropouts went from forged Hurét with an integral derailleur hanger to stamped steel without a hanger. Customers probably saw this Super Sport as a slightly upscale Continental, differentiated primarily by CrMo frame tubing, alloy rims, and a leather saddle. Few realized the Super Sport’s frame, unlike the Continental, was actually fillet-brazed.
Chrome springer forks cantilevered frame spring seat balloon whitewall tires and Book rack. Everyone had a Schwinn designed for their needs, and a colorful marketing campaign to go with it. W. Schwinn did not seem hampered by a lack of ambition, nor was he content to sit back and let the world famous family business rest on its laurels. With the semi-retired Ignaz Schwinn still keeping a close watch on things, Frank made some bold decisions that helped launch a second golden age not only for the Schwinn company, but the bike industry as a whole.
As was the bicycle French cyclist Bernard Thévenet rode to victory in the 1975 and 1977 Tours de France. British industrial engineer Benjamin Bowden designed a futuristic bicycle for the “Britain Can Make It” expedition in 1946. Bowden’s bike was aerodynamic, used an extended fender system to cover all its moving parts, made of fibreglass, and used a unique shaft-drive system. In 1903, Henri Desgrange and his colleague Géo Lefèvre organized a long-distance race through France to boost sales for Desgrange’s sports magazine, L’Auto; the 19-day race would be the first ever Tour de France. In an effort to make bicycling accessible to more would-be riders, John Kemp Starley—the same man behind the Ariel penny farthing—created the Rover in 1885 in Coventry, England.
The coronavirus-related craze has boosted demand for city/commuter bikes. “Schwinn has been No. 1 in all the brand surveys I’ve seen going back 40 years,” said Ray Keener, an industry veteran and editor at Bicycle Retailer. “While their bikes are lower in quality and price than when they were selling through bike shops , Schwinn’s mass-retail models have slowly gotten better over the years. So if consumers want bikes for under $300 or so, the demand is there.” Ignaz Schwinn, with his partner Adolph Arnold, incorporated “Arnold, Schwinn & Company” on October 22, 1895. Within only a few short years, the company became an acknowledged technical and quality leader of the bicycle industry. In fact, after just a year in business, Schwinn bikes had more race victories than any other bike company at the time.
With their aging product line, Schwinn failed to dominate the huge sport bike boom of 1971–1975, which saw millions of 10-speed bicycles sold to new cyclists. Schwinn did allow some dealers to sell imported road racing bikes, and by 1973 was using the Schwinn name on the Le Tour, a Japanese-made low-cost sport/touring 10-speed bicycle. Schwinn developed strong trading relationships with two Japanese bicycle manufacturers in particular, Bridgestone and National/Panasonic. Schwinn soon had a range of low, mid- and upper-level bicycles all imported from Japan. Schwinn’s standard road bike model from Panasonic was the World Traveler, which had a high-quality lugged steel frame and Shimano components.
Three companies are based out of the small factory – Waterford Precision Bicycles, Gunnar Cycles USA and Fitmaster. Insult upon injury, Schwinn had gradually become a stale brand in the eyes of the youth market during the same period. While the Hollywood bike was ostensibly a budget-priced kid’s option, it was still built to be a workhorse—as was the Chicago way. Our museum artifact stayed on the road for a solid 50 years, in fact, serving most recently as the trusty steed of a young Japanese immigrant in the 2010s.
Although the market was becoming hostile to investors, Schwinn was flourishing thanks to its motorcycle division. In fact, the company was doing so great that in 1928 it was placed third after Harley-Davidson and Indian. Unfortunately, the market got saturated and as a result, the short-lived bicycle boom came to an abrupt end. Thousands of bikes were coming from Chicago’s thirty factories on a daily basis and it was not long before it became the capital of the nation’s bike industry. At the beginning of the 20th century, the U.S. bike output blew to over a million units annually. Remember that even after you know what type of bike is best suited for you, you need to make sure it fits properly.