Nishiki and 'Open Road' bikes
 

Anyone know anything about these 2 bikes:

Nishiki Custom Sport, Mixte frame says 'Toshiba Hi-tensile tubing'. Has Shimano 600 10-speed. Nishiki cranks, Shimano hubs.

Open Road (Distributed by Montgomery Ward) model '3200 Ltd' says 'Made in Taiwan'. Shimano Tourney 12 speed. The frame on this looks a lot nicer than the Huffy, Ross and Murray bikes I've seen.


Today I spotted a bunch of used bikes outside a bike store. One interesting one was a 'Royal Scot' marked 'Made in England'. It had a 3-speed hub, old style handlebars and mudguards. They wanted $90 for it which I thought was crazy. I only paid $25 for the Nishiki, but that was at a thrift store.

In 1971, the $80-something Custom Sport was American Eagle's bottom-end 10-speed. At the time, the only other member of the lineup was the $150 SemiPro. By 1973, Kawamura had changed the marque designation to Nishiki and had added two intermediate models, the Olympic and the Kokusai ("International"). The mixte frame came a bit later, perhaps 1975.