Originally Posted by krispistoferson
Sheldon's article about Japanese bikes covers the outsourced Schwinns. I don't know where it got started that Schwinn had any Giant-made bikes in the 70's and 80's, and I've never heard it from an authoritative source. That said, their Japanese bikes(Le Tour) were mid level quality, Schwinn made crappy(Varsity) to high(Paramount) right here in the states.Their downhill slide in the nineties might be when they started getting Taiwan bikes, but I've never heard of them getting outsourced labor from anyone besides Osaka, Japan(Panasoni) before then. Japanese bikes are underappreciated gems, in my book. I enjoy refurbishing them.
I have a Schwinn Sports Tourer from 1980. The serial number on the right-rear dropout starts with a G (it has one extra digit from the decipherable Schwinn serial numbers), which according to
www.oldschwinn.com (R.I.P.) meant that it was made in Taiwan by Giant. The headbadge does indeed say Chicago, but that is because the bikes were assembled there. The headbadge is also stamped with the dddy code idicating assembly date.
Again this was all gleaned from oldschwinn.com, which seemed like reputable source.
It did have a JIS stem, which is not suprising as most of Taiwan's bike business at the time was for Japanese companies.