About a decade later, still reeling from foreign competition, the business went bankrupt. Everyone had a Schwinn designed for their needs, and a colorful marketing campaign to go with it. Some parts of popular Schwinn bicycles may fetch you a decent price if you sell them as many people are looking to restore their old Schwinn models to their former glory.
Unlike its progenitors, the Klunker proved incapable of withstanding hard off-road use, and after an unsuccessful attempt to reintroduce the model as the Spitfire 5, it was dropped from production. 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.
For the middle-of-the-range price, the Schwinn Phocus 1400 and 1600 Drop Bar Road Bike is great value for money and offers high-quality alloys, framing, and gears that most brands would charge an arm and a leg for. They are entry-level products at inexpensive prices but they do possess higher quality materials than most generic cheap bikes. Today Schwinn bikes have an average life span of 5 years but they can go as far as a decade if taken care of.
By the late 1970s, a new bicycle sport begun by enthusiasts in Northern California had grown into a new type of all-terrain bicycle, the mountain bike. Mountain bikes were originally based on Schwinn balloon-tired cruiser bicycles fitted with derailleur gears and called “Klunkers”. A few participants began designing and building small numbers of mountain bikes with frames made out of modern butted chrome-molybdenum alloy steel. When the sport’s original inventors demonstrated their new frame design, Schwinn marketing personnel initially discounted the growing popularity of the mountain bike, concluding that it would become a short-lived fad. The company briefly (1978–1979) produced a bicycle styled after the California mountain bikes, the Klunker 5. Using the standard electro-forged cantilever frame, and fitted with five-speed derailleur gears and knobby tires, the Klunker 5 was never heavily marketed, and was not even listed in the Schwinn product catalog.
It can also be used on hiking trails and it will allow huffy mountain bike you to shift gears effortlessly to climb hills.
Schwinn was soon sponsoring a bicycle racing team headed by Emil Wastyn, who designed the team bikes, and the company competed in six-day racing across the United States with riders such as Jerry Rodman and Russell Allen. In 1938, Frank W. Schwinn officially introduced the Paramount series. Developed from experiences gained in racing, Schwinn established Paramount as their answer schwinn bicycles to high-end, professional competition bicycles. The Paramount used high-strength chrome-molybdenum steel alloy tubing and expensive brass lug-brazed construction. During the next twenty years, most of the Paramount bikes would be built in limited numbers at a small frame shop headed by Wastyn, in spite of Schwinn’s continued efforts to bring all frame production into the factory.
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 and Harley-Davidson. These bikes fit well in this category of high-quality affordable bikes for kids and adult that do its job, is comfortable and last reasonably long for a cheap bike. In the end, it is up to the consumer to decide which bike is best for their needs.
Don’t expect them to last for 10 years or have that old feeling of joy for its great performance. Today they have a reputation as being the few bike brands that still maintain their quality standards. Although they too import large chunk ( above 85% ) of bicycles from china; at least they are of high quality. Over the years, Schwinn’s brand has started to align itself more with affordability than with performance. Although the company’s early bikes were fairly popular among big name cyclists, you won’t find any Schwinn bikes on the Tour de France circuit.
The Sting-Ray sales boom of the 1960s accelerated in 1970, with United States bicycle sales doubling over a period of two years. In July 1964, Schwinn announced the arrival of the Super Deluxe Sting-Ray. This model included a front spring-fork, a new sleeker Sting-Ray banana seat, and a Person’s Hi-loop Sissy bar.
Questor/Schwinn later purchased GT Bicycles in 1998 for $8 a share in cash, roughly $80 million. The new company produced a series of well-regarded mountain bikes bearing the Schwinn name, called the Homegrown series. 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. Inspired, he designed a mass-production bike for the youth market known as Project J-38.