I think Schwinn had kind of a stodgy reputation back in the 70's and 80's. I know I thought poorly of them, having seen nothing but their gas pipe steel models like the Sting Ray, Varsity, and Continental. I very much associated Schwinn with their low end stuff back then, and thought those were the only kind of bikes they made.

So I can easily see someone disguising a Schwinn, even a Paramount, to look like one of those fancy English brands like Raleigh. I saw a couple very nice, very lightweight Raleigh road bikes back then, and assumed they made only high end stuff, and Schwinn only made the low end stuff.

Which is absurd, knowing what I know now (my Paramount PDG is my favorite bike of all time) but I think a lot of people thought like I did back then. Sadly, this kind of thinking probably had a lot to do with Schwinn going bankrupt back in the early 90's, their brand image was not nearly as hip or trendy as the English, Italian, French and Japanese imports. I think it was similar to what happened with the brand image of American cars during that era.