Mayo,

Found this tidbit in CR archives:
"When I opened my own frameshop in San Marcos, CA 1983, I suddenly had
considerable increased overhead that the custom frames could not support
alone. John Howard had approached me to build a line of frames with his name
on it and so production of the John Howard frame began with the opening of
my new shop. I built the frames, John Howard did his own marketing and
distribution. This really was a nice frame with some special features like
chrome chainstay and dropouts and engraved seatstay caps and a paint finish
equal to my custom frames. In retrospect it was probably underpriced for the
amount of work that went into it. The John Howard frame was only produced
for a little over a year and in 1984 when my contract with John ended that's
when I started the Fuso line of frames to fill the void in my frameshop
production. With lessons learned from the John Howard frame the original
Fuso had less frills. The design and workmanship was the same, so the Fuso
would perform the same as anything else I built. But to cut cost and keep it
affordable there was no chrome or engraving and the decals were simple vinyl
stick on type. Later around 1986 with experience gained I was able to
improve the finish. I needed to give this model a new name to distinguish it
from the previous model, so I dubbed it the 'Fuso FRX.' FR stood for Fuso
Racing and the 'X' was for the Extra work that went into the paint finish.
Apart from that the frame was the same as it always was. Some people had
always lamented the demise of the John Howard frame and so about the same
time, 1986 I introduced the Fuso Lux (Short for luxury) with the chrome and
the engraved seat stay caps. The Lux also had the decals 'buried' under 8
clear coats, hand sanded as did the John Howard, a very labor intensive
process.
Dave Moulton."

so that's the connection.

Marty