Classic & Vintage - 70s Schwinn Hierarchy, Need Help

Does anyone know the hierarchy of early to late 70s Schwinn 10 speed road bike models? I know Paramount is at the top, but after that, continental, varsity, traveller? I have no idea. I did a search on BF but coould not find such a list. Thanks for any help.

Try this site. http://www.geocities.com/sldatabook/publications.html ,

Try this site. http://www.geocities.com/sldatabook/publications.html ,
That's GREAT!!! :D Many thanks T-Mar. Now I know what I'll be doing the rest of the evening.

Try this site. http://www.geocities.com/sldatabook/publications.html ,

I have lost many, many hours on that site. It also makes me wish I had kept all of my 60's and 70's Schwinn catalogs, particularly the 1966 Disneyland one.

I have lost many, many hours on that site.

Me too ... ;)

I have a new pile 'o stuff coming from a '70s era Schwinn dealer this week (a 20 pound box -- gratis). Hopefully it will have some new things to add to the site. There is still a huge pile of scanning to do. If anyone has any Schwinn literature they could offer up to fill in any of the gaps, please check out this page:

http://www.geocities.com/sldatabook/specbook.html

Nice photos of your '60 - '79 Schwinn Derailleur Lightweights are welcome as well (I'm way behind on the Gallery section as well though -- I probably have a couple thousand photos to deal with).

So much to do ...

Bob Hufford
Keeper of the Schwinn Lightweight Data Book
Springfield, MO

Bob, many thanks for your work making these catalogs available again!

There are many bikes there that I wanted and never got as a child. A sky blue DeLuxe Stingray with a Bendix 2 speed in the 1966 catalog being one of them. As I grew older, the attractive models on page 21 and 22 of the 1973 catalog got more of my interest than most of the bikes did! :D

After 1974 it was over. I got a drivers license.

Does anyone know the hierarchy of early to late 70s Schwinn 10 speed road bike models? I know Paramount is at the top, but after that, continental, varsity, traveller? I have no idea. I did a search on BF but coould not find such a list. Thanks for any help.

Making such a list is a bit tricky, if you are looking at the entire period from 1970 to 1980. The "best" Chicago models just below the Paramount changed from year to year. And, a bike of a given name might change greatly in quality. A "top" Chicago model might use a crank that looked like a Continental crank one year, and use a crank that looked like a Paramount the next year.

The next complication was imported models. Some of the very early Japanese bikes were not shown in the Schwinn catalog when they first went on sale. A couple of Japanese bikes may never have been in a catalog. And a couple of "top" import bikes were offered for only one or two years. And, the quality of a given import bike might vary year to year. The names "LeTour" and "Super LeTour" were used on a variety of bikes, some of which were average and some of which were well above average. Later, those names got used for some bikes made in the USA. So, one "LeTour" might be a very different bike than another "LeTour".

A last complicating "ranking" factor. In some catalogs, the bikes were "ranked" by retail price. The Continental would be shown as "outranking" a Japanese bike that was five pounds lighter, and had a lugged steel frame, simply because the Continental cost more. And, the Continental would have a crummy French gear changer, and the lower priced Japanese bike had a fine Sun Tour gear changer.

In the 1970's, the Schwinn catalogs did not publish detailed specs about each component. A part would be referred to as "Schwinn Approved", so you have to study the photos to figure out what it really was. It was not always clear which bikes had steel rims, and which bikes had aluminum alloy rims.

So, when it came to ranking which of Schwinn's bikes ranked second, third, or fourth in a given year, there is room for argument. And of course, sometimes "rank" depends on what the buyer was looking for in a bike. There were NO true mountain bikes on sale in 1975. Yet, boys being boys, bikes WERE getting ridden off-road, and being raced down the side of steep hills, fire roads, and gravel jeep paths. And the Schwinn Continental may have been better suited to 70's style mountain biking than any 22 or 24 pound import bike with ultra-light rims and tires. Ranking bikes by "toughness", the Continental was near the top of the list.