Originally Posted by
bent-not-broken
I think these are under appreciated bikes.
I'd definitely agree with that. Everyone knows about the Schwinn Voyager, but the Passage model seems to fly under the radar.
I think the frame is the same as the Voyager except for the fork, the Voyager had a cromoly fork with lowrider mounts. The Voyager also had some component upgrades as well, but the Passage is a very nicely equipped stock touring bike. The Columbus Tenax frame is hard to beat for the price. There was a thread in the marketplace recently where someone said they preferred the Voyager from this period with the tenax frame over a similar vintage Miyata 1000.
I think the 86-88 years were really the best for vintage touring bikes, and the Voyager (and the Passage) models are right up there near the top of the bunch.
My Passage is currently set up as a townie bike. I'm either going to get porteur bars for it or change it back to drops. It's wearing a Deore II groupset:
