They feature contoured joints, thin seatstays with bullet-point tips, and those slightly oversize seat- and downtubes. Their frame geometry includes long chainstays and fork rake, a low bottom bracket shell, a 73 degree seat-tube angle, and a 72 degree head-tube angle, all of which provide a smooth and stable, “sweet handling” ride. With these models Schwinn achieved a nice balance of frame rigidity and smooth handling. Arnold, Schwinn & Company was incorporated in Chicago in 1895, during the boom in bicycle sales of the 1890’s. At that time bicycles were a fashionable but expensive mode of transportation for adults.
Thus by the 1990s,Schwinnhad declared bankruptcy andGiantwent on to make generate $380 million in annual sales, making it the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer. At this time, very schwinn bicycles few of the bicycles being produced byGiantbore their own brand name. In a bid to rectify this Tony Lo – one of King Liu’s business partners – began a campaign for brand recognition.
Even the paint colors were the same (remember that the fillet-brazed frames were hung on the general Schwinn painting line). Only the round Schwinn badge, downtube diameter and pointed seatstay tops are visibly different. During the bicycle boom of the 1970’s customers learned to equate lugged frame construction with higher quality. Richard’s Bicycle Book of 1972, a popular title of the day, states emphatically that, “In better bikes the frame is lugged and brazed…” and does not mention any other quality framebuilding method. Customers preferred lugged construction and equated lugless frames with Varsitys and Continentals or, worse, low-quality department-store bicycles. Until the recent rise of quality TIG-welded and composite bicycle frames, most high quality lightweight bicycles used lugs to join their frame tubing.
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.
Although they were fabricated in the same shop as the Paramounts, from there Schwinn’s fillet-brazed frames took a different production path. Paramounts continued through their own paint and assembly processes, while the fillet-brazed models were added to the assembly line with high-volume Schwinn flash-welded frames for serial-number stamping, electrostatic painting, and final assembly. Hence Paramount serial numbers are unique to Paramounts and serve as a tally of Paramount production, while serial numbers on the fillet-brazed models were mixed in with other Schwinn models. This is also why the fillet-brazed models came in the same colors as lower-priced Schwinns, which contributed to their obscurity. [Footnote 2/6] Accordingly, Schwinn unilaterally instituted a policy of ensuring that only franchised retailers would be supplied with its products.