Originally posted by mike
Surprise, guys, but as far as I know, Schwinn has been manufacturing overseas (Japan, then Taiwan, then China) since the late 1970's and almost exclusively so since the early 1980's.
Any tears you cry will have to be retro tears.
So they sell their bikes in Wal-Mart. Big deal. That's marketing, not manufacturing.
Quite true, but when you let Mark and Ting dictate the jobs of the engineers, you end up in a situation like Huffay or Murray -- cheap bikes, cheaply built, that are designed to last for months instead of years; and marketed as if they were the same quality as a Cannondale or a Bianchi.
The ultimate issue is really quality more than anything else; Schwinn has been, up until now, been making some very high-quality pieces of two-wheeled machinery, with prices going into the thousands for their high-end bikes. To drop the price cap to $500 is going to mean a corresponding drop in the quality of both the materials used and the manufacturing process; there is a reason that expensive bikes cost what they do, other than to line Cannondale's pockets.
It really is sad to see; I'm just glad my two favorites (Cannondale and Specialized) are doing reasonably well (financially speaking).