Originally Posted by
Metieval
I was 10 years old and My birthday gift was a used Raleigh Grand Prix.
I wasn't spoiled rotten by any means, but I can tell you in my opinion why Schwinn went belly up. They sold crap. Well I thought it was crap compared to my Grand Prix.
Schwinn was on par with western flyers. lol close enough anyways.
didn't matter anyways all the other kids wanted GT or mongoose BMX bikes.
If I was spoiled rotten I would have had a BMX bike. I was refused, and I asked for a BMX bike a lot
Ironic, consindering how terrible Raleigh's reputation for quality was during the late 60s thru the 70s.
I chuckle when I read comments from posters on the C&V forum who worked in shops back then. The short rants they go on about how terrible the QC was is funny- misaligned dropouts, different fork rake, seatstays not brazed to seat tube, brake bridge terrible out of alignment, etc.
The frame builder I worked with last winter used to build for a shop that sold Raleigh and he has a love for old Raliegh bikes and described a period of time where he viewed them as a partially finished product due to needing to do so much correction work during the build up process.
Then Raleigh outsourced to Japan and built in Kent WA and thats a whole other period of time(with less frame issues).
Rough to claim that spoiled rotten = having a BMX bike. Really rough.