Originally Posted by cdmurphy

I'm afraid you aren't going to find many hard facts or concrete sources. Which manufacturers a company contracted with was generally closely held information at the time, and now 30-40 years later, most of the insiders that had that information have moved on to other jobs, or even passed away. What we have are a number of clues. Many of the Japanese contractors had unique serial number formats, which [MENTION=20650]T-Mar[/MENTION] has done us all a great service in compiling in a database, and decoding the format of some of them. Complicating matters is the fact that in some cases, more than one format might fit depending on the specific letters and numbers, and many manufacturers changed formats over the years. Information has been gleaned many sources. There have been occasional tidbits from industry professionals that worked with these contractors, and some of the smaller importers / resellers have sold identical or very similar models to the big names, but with stickers identifying the actual manufacturer in japan. Also, some manufacturers have distinctive locations for the serial numbers, or unique seatstay or dropout treatments.

Generally, the smaller importers simply bought what the Japanese contractors were ready and willing to make -- these are the ones that show a lot of the unique features that can be traced back to different factories. Some of the bigger names -- Centurion, Univega, Schwinn, Nishiki had the sales volume to request changes, or even design the bikes from the ground up. When you are ordering 10,000 of something, manufacturers can be very accommodating.

Further complicating the issue is that some models were only produced by one factory, while others were sourced through several manufacturers, either concurrently, or over different model years.