Originally Posted by
Rocket-Sauce
We all have our tribes that we are loyal to.
I don't understand the love for the electroforged Schwinn boat anchors. Can't say I loathe them, but I will admit to having looked down on them as not "real" bikes.
I can dig the funky 60s and 70s psychedelic colors, but they were heavy! And you could get them at the department store! Or even at the hardware store!
As we all know, REAL bikes were only available at a real bike shop. Preferably, a shop staffed by a crusty old Italian (or French) guy with heavily callused hands wearing an apron.
A Campy apron.
I assume you weren't riding 10-speeds back in 1971-74.
The Chicago Schwinn's, especially the Varsity, are probably the most important bikes out there if you're talking in terms of American cycling. More important than UO-8's, PX-10's, Super Course's, etc.
Without them, the bike boom would have died quickly because all those wonderful lugged foreign bikes would have been beaten to death by people who hadn't ridden a bicycle since they turned 16. And their last bikes were those 50 pound 'middleweight' balloon tyred paper boy bikes. The kind you could jump curbs, slam into potholes, and in general just abuse the hell out of. Most of those customers didn't understand the relative fragility of a French, Italian or British built road bike. They'd have turned them into scrap metal within weeks (and I saw a couple of customers who did that, customers who were taught by the books on cycling that if it didn't have lugs, it was junk). And walked away convinced that 10-speeds were underbuilt trash. Having wasted their money on a piece of junk, the urge to ride a bicycle would have died then and there.
These are the people to whom we sold Varsities. They were the perfect 10-speed, able to put up with the (usually unintended) abuse of a first-time adult rider. And once they'd learned how to take care of a derailleur road bike, they were perfect customers for something lugged in 531 straight gauge with better components, alloy rims, etc. Yeah, the Varsity and Continental were heavy. So what? They taught a generation of Americans how to ride again.
And yeah, we 'purists who knew better' slagged people back then for buying them. Amazing how stupid you can be until you finally know the situation better.
Oh yeah, Schwinn's, back then, were only sold in bike shops. Who's dealers were more regulated, and were forced to have higher standards, than the little back alley shop that sold the exotic European bikes.