Originally Posted by Sierra
I have a 1980 full chrome Voyageur 11.8 that I like very much. It has a very nice feel to it. I re-equipped it with a triple crank for wider gearing and otherwise a full group of Shimano 600 arabesque so it's probably somewhat better than it came from the factory, but I would imagine that the ride quality is not substantially different from stock(I'm sure my wheels are lighter and better though). Bottom line...Nice Bike!
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the bike was produced by Panasonic(National/Matsu****a) of Japan. "Dopey" on the Schwinn forums says Bridgestone(which he also calls National/Matsu****a) but every other source I have read says Panasonic. Perhaps there was a corporate relationship between the two. Stan, do you have any insight into this?
Eric,
The two Japanese suppliers Schwinn used were Panasonic (Matsu$hita's National Bicycle Company) and Bridgestone Cycle, a unit of the giant tiremaker. As far as I know, there was no corporate relationship between the two. They were competitors.