The irony of it all, is that the Schwinn name actually ended up in the hands of a next door neighbor. Last year, Pacific Cycle was bought by Dorel Industries, a Canadian corporation. Pacific Cycle has leased the brand name to another Canadian company. Schwinns are now designed in Canada, but manufactured in Vietnam and China.

Canada has a suprisingly robust bicycle industry. While many of the Canadian brands contract the manufacturing offshore, there is still a suprising amount of frame manufacture done in the country. Raleigh still has a facility there and even the entry level $80 US models have the frames built in the Great White North. The high end is nicely covered by companies like Argon 18, Marinoni and Cervelo, who provide the frames for CSC, the team classification winners in last year's Tour de France.

As John E. implies, now might be a good time to start hoarding the Chicago Schwinns you find. There might be a good market for them in the near future.

While the current Schwinn models are primarily entry level oriented, I have to say that whomever is building them is doing a good job. I'd even say that they are a quality bicycle, going by the the industry definition: quality = conformance to requirements.