Originally Posted by
jon c.
I cut lawns all summer to save up for a Raleigh. Even in the early 70s, Schwinn already had a rep for being heavier. The Record was probably not much lighter, or much more expensive, than the Varsity, but to me it was a British racing bike. Much cooler than the Schwinn.
My recollection was that for a lot of people, even into the early 1970s, that heaviness was considered a feature, not a bug. It indicated that the bike was solidly built. You had to have better knowledge than the average consumer did at the time to know that was nonsense--you could have quality and lightness was just not something people had experienced yet.