Realizing he needed to grow the company, Ignaz Schwinn purchased several smaller bicycle firms, building a modern factory on Chicago’s west side to mass-produce bicycles at lower cost. He finalized a purchase of Excelsior Company in 1912, and in 1917 added the Henderson Company to form Excelsior-Henderson. In an atmosphere of general decline elsewhere in the industry, Schwinn’s new motorcycle division thrived, and by 1928 was in third place behind Indian schwinn bicycles and Harley-Davidson. In 1978 production of the fillet-brazed Superior stopped, which marked the end of production for a fine Schwinn frameset whose basic design had been in service since 1938. Today fillet brazing is a fabrication method best suited for custom and specialty bicycles, yet from 1938 to 1978 you could walk into any Schwinn shop and buy this kind of bike off the rack. Unless we invent a fillet-brazing machine, it may never happen again.
We love and ride all kinds of bikes, so you’ll find articles and guides related to road, mountain, hybrid, gravel, electric, and other types of bicycles. Both Trek and Schwinn make good bicycles, but they’re suitable for different types of riders. If you are a serious fitness rider or you aspire to race, get a Trek model. If you are a casual rider who just enjoys cycling, Schwinn will do the job at a low price.
If these tubes are less than 1 1/8 inch in diameter, it is not a fillet-brazed model. If you find a welding seam inside the seat tube it is not a fillet-brazed model. Alloy mongoose bmx bike rims, double-butted spokes, leather Brooks saddles, and lighter weight also differentiate the fillet-brazed models from the higher volume, flash-welded Schwinns.
According to Pashak, the bicycle maker has seen online sales shoot to 10 times higher than normal for this time of year, as in-person sales were not accessible during the initial months mongoose bmx bike of lockdown. But they’re all cranking back to life in the town that taught America how to build things. Schwinn was among those that began to shift to foreign parts and imported bikes.
Whole books have been published on Schwinn bikes, written by proper bicycle people. There is a thriving market out there for vintage Schwinn bikes, which is part of the reason a shop like Barnard’s (est. 1911) can still be in business today. Some buyers just like the look and feel of the old classics, while others are trying to tap into something more personal and sentimental. Schwinns occupy plenty of pages in the flip-book of Baby Boomer nostalgia, after all, coasting through idyllic suburban summer days with the sound of baseball cards buzzing between the spokes. 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.