Vintage Schwinn Bikes The Guide To Old Schwinns

A rising number of US teens and younger adults had been buying imported European sport racing or sport touring bicycles, many fitted with a number of derailleur-shifted gears. Schwinn determined to satisfy the challenge by developing two lines of sport or highway ‘racer’ bicycles. One was already in the catalog — the restricted production Paramount series. As always, the Paramount spared no expense; the bicycles got high-quality light-weight lugged steel frames using double-butted tubes of Reynolds 531 and fitted with high quality European elements together with Campagnolo derailleurs, hubs, and gears. The Paramount sequence had limited manufacturing numbers, making vintage examples fairly uncommon right now. The 1960 Varsity was introduced as an 8-speed bike, but in mid-1961 was upgraded to 10 speeds.

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The Sting-Ray gross sales increase of the Nineteen Sixties accelerated in 1970, with United States bicycle sales doubling over a interval of two years. The Schwinn Bicycle Company is an American company that develops, manufactures and markets bicycles beneath the eponymous model name. The company was originally based by Ignaz Schwinn (1860–1948) in Chicago in 1895.

They additionally make rugged 24-inch mountain bikes, like the Sidewinder and the High Timber. The firm’s next answer to requests for a Schwinn mountain bike was the King Sting and the Sidewinder, cheap BMX-derived bicycles fabricated from existing electro-forged frame designs, and using off-the-shelf BMX parts. The firm additionally joined with different United States bicycle manufacturers in a marketing schwinn exercise bike campaign to boost import tariffs across the board on all imported bicycles. In August 1955, the Eisenhower administration carried out a 22.5% tariff fee for three out of 4 categories of bicycles. However, the most popular adult category, lightweight or “racer” bicycles, had been solely raised to 11.25%.

Supplied by producers in Asia, the model new arrangement enabled Schwinn to reduce costs and stay aggressive with Asian bicycle corporations. In Taiwan, Schwinn was able to conclude a new production settlement with Giant Bicycles, transferring Schwinn’s body design and manufacturing expertise to Giant in the process. With this partnership, Schwinn elevated their bicycle gross sales to 500,000 per yr by 1985. Schwinn’s annual sales quickly neared the million mark, and the company turned a revenue within the late Nineteen Eighties.