rekmeyata

LOL, I guess you're not much into convertibles are you? Of course you could get a Galaxie 500 and then listen to Galaxie 500 in the car with the wind blowing in your hair.

gomango

Plus one.

Incredible live act.

fender1

+1

KonAaron Snake 

I'm not into cars. If I had unlimited money, a place to store it safely and a repair guy with infinite parts, I'd probably have a Mercedes 560sl from the late 70s...but since none of that is the case, I drive a POS Ford Focus. When it gets dinged on street, I don't get upset.

Rcrxjlb

Serena Williams makes Huffys cool...

rekmeyata

Yes, and I'm sure that if she rides bikes shes always on a Huffy.

eom 

"How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree?)"


​eom

Roypercy

When I was a kid growing up in Tennessee, (in the 60s) Schwinns were thought of locally as the Cadillac of bikes: more expensive than the few alternatives, but with the same assumption of quality as RCA televisions (which were the most expensive at the time). My parents didn't have much money, so instead of the Schwinn Stingray I lusted after I got a Western Auto somethingorother that was clunky, prone to throw the chain at the worst possible moment, and had no cachet at all among my grade school buddies. Flash-forward to the late 70s, I'm in college, and Schwinn feels to me like a relic of my Dad's generation, as much as the boatlike '72 Chevy Impala he was driving at the time. When I went to buy my first 'real' roadbike with my own money (this must have been '79?) I did test-drive a Super LeTour; it was nice, but somewhat more expensive than the Motobecane Grand Sprint I ultimately bought, and nearly five pounds heavier. Schwinn just didn't make sense. By the time they started coming out with lighter, nicer road bikes a few years later, they were off my radar entirely.

I also don't know how it was in other places, but in Knoxville the Schwinn dealership sold Schwinns exclusively; it was like going to buy a car, from a guy wearing a tie and a pocket protector who did most of his business selling Stingrays and Varsities. It felt much cooler going into the two or three small independent bike shops in town, where the guy selling the bike was also a rider, and a mechanic.

D1andonlyDman

That may be a bike she got as a 13 year-old growing up in Compton that she kept for nostalgia's sake

MKahrl

In a town that had other LBS's the Schwinn dealership would have looked a little slick in comparison but in the 1960's the Schwinn dealership was a huge improvement on what proceeded it.

When the Schwinn grandmother bought me arrived at Doc Fixits (small engine repair) they told her it would be three days to assemble and ready to go by Saturday morning. I showed up on Saturday morning and waited until 6:00 pm for them to assemble the bike. When I got home that night and told my grandmother about the wait she simply said "You should have called me." I didn't think too much of her remark, what could she do?

It wasn't until years later after I had a better understanding of my grandmother that there was a great deal she could have done.

JReade

Tampa is a bit of a stretch, but if you go further south to the real retirement areas (Fort myers, Naples, etc.) The chain restaurants are pretty popular. Lots of snowbirds just want to eat the same meal they had in Ohio.

noglider 

This is the best and most direct answer to the question of the original post.

KonAaron Snake 

Maybe it's changed, but it was almost all chains when I lived there.

Phil_gretz

I was a teen in the early 1970s, and Schwinn was already uncool...

due ruote 

Quite an interesting thread. I did not have time to read the entire thing so apologies if this point has already been made.

It's my sense that Schwinn had an enviable brand identity based on post-WWII production, when things that were American-made and had heft were deemed to be of high quality. Through several decades, that is what people came to think of when they heard Schwinn. I think the 70s, when European lightweights became more ubiquitous, was probably the crucial time for them to have remodeled the brand, but by the time they got the ship turned in the 80s and actually had some very nice bikes at multiple price points, as Roypercy said, they were already off the radar of many consumers.

RoadGuy

Like American Car Makers, in the early 70s when Imported cars were a joke, Schwinn failed to see the coming storm, and to learn from the foreign upstarts who were moving into the US. We don't care about that part of the market, and the Import Manufacturers are a joke. Well the Import Manufacturers learned from their early mistakes, and look at what happened to the domestic car makers (and eventually Schwinn).

If you sit on your A$$ and count your money, neglect your customers and business, and quit learning and innovating, pretty soon someone else is eating your lunch (and dinner).

rekmeyata

That's odd because I was around the early 70's as well and most kids that's all they wanted was a Schwinn and if mom and dad bought a different brand they were upset. At that time there still wasn't anything on the market for teens other than Schwinn, sure there were Sears and Montgomery Wards and junk like that but that's why all the teens wanted a Schwinn so as not to have the other uncool brands. The Stingray, or what was called the muscle bike was huge and it had a huge cool factor to it, there were a lot of imitators of the Stingray but it wasn't cool to have one of those, it had to be the Schwinn Stingray. Schwinn Varsity sold like water, it was the best selling bike of any brand and any model of the 70's because everyone thought it was cool and it was cheap, but I thought they were junk, but I was weird I guess.

Phil_gretz

Stingray was cool, Lemon Krate, Orange Peeler, etc., were all in the late 60s. By the 70s it was the Europeans...Motobecane, O eugeot, Jeunet, Falcon (Merckx), Raleigh, Mercier..all ridden by my circle of friends.

Phil_gretz

And, of course, there was the Bianchi Specializma hanging in the front window of the Peddlar's Shop in Haddonfield, NJ. Still my graiil bike...after 40+ years.

rekmeyata

Not anywhere I lived and that was the midwest and California along the coast during the 70's, and CA, especially along the coast, was all about being "cool". It must have been just your neck of the woods. Again the Varsity outsold every other bike in the United States throughout most of the 70's, so the proof is in the number of sales not in any one particular area.

Phil_gretz

There were plenty of Varsities. None were cool. I never saw a Paramount outside of a bike shop, though. That would've gotten respect.

rekmeyata

you and I thought they weren't cool, but that's not what the vast majority of people thought, and in this case we have to go by what the vast majority thought, and Varsity's were cool to them which is why most everyone thought they should buy one. And yes, you and I would have thought the Paramount was cooler, but to others the price made it uncool, most of those other people who bought the Varsity would have looked at the Paramount and thought nothing of it, its still the same today, my closest friends think I'm nuts for buying a $3,000 bike when a $300 bike in their minds would have done the same thing, and that's the way it was back then too. My best friend, who is one of my friends with that $300 mentality, doesn't think nothing of the fact that he has over $6,000 in video games, movies, computers and gaming computers, I think that's nuts so whenever he brings up his bike thing I bring up all that stuff, he shuts up then! LOL.

Rcrxjlb

Rusty chain but still cool Schwinn prologue


Simple but still cool Schwinn World Sport

rossiny

yeah but are not they made in Japan ? by another manufacturer??

Rcrxjlb

Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too (unless you're rich)