Get Nostalgic Over the Limited Edition Schwinn Sting-Ray
 

"Fifty years ago, then Schwinn Vice President for Engineering, Research and Development, Al Fritz created the bike every kid eventually wanted: the Schwinn Sting-Ray. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the bike, Schwinn has created a limited edition of the legendary Schwinn Sting-Ray, the all-chrome Fritz Fifty."

Read the full article:
http://momentummag.com/gear/kids/get....Hhcpc9Om.dpbs

Not me. Mine was stolen. I left it unlocked in the playground. My dad was pi$$ed. True nostalgia would be still having that one, leopard print seat an all.

Pfft. Who cares? There doesn't even appear to be anything particularly neat in the way of tech updates or anything. Who needs a reissue when there are millions of those things available on Craigslist every day (at least in Detroit metro)?

A chrome Krate Stingray was what I lusted after back then, but I'm sure I was better off with the Western Auto version of the English 3 speed I had back then. But still........

Have you never been to the barrio? Half the lowrider Stingrays are chromed out, and 70% of the tricked-out ones are chromed out! I'm sorry, but this just makes whomever owns Schwinn look like totally desperate, money-grubbing jerk wads.

Seriously, those arse wipes at Schwinn couldn't even come up with cool handlebar??

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_gxXv5NY1Qdc/TK...gray5speed.jpg

They aren't even really Schwinn. They're just whatever equity firm currently owns the trademark.

I know, which is why I'm particularly contemptuous.

I was still in grade school when those were new, and most of my friends thought they were cool too. They bring back some memories to me, and that's what's helping them sell the new ones.

Those were terrible bikes!

M.

I've never seen a bike like this in person - it looks darned uncomfortable. What was/is the main attraction? Also, what is the lever type thing on the top tube?

Kind of like driving a lowrider/ferrari/fill in the blank. Not practical but looks cool. The lever is the shifter, supposed to emulate the "4 on the floor" that was popular at the time that bike was originally introduced.

FWIW doesn't do a think for me either, but it is a piece of cycling history.


Aaron :)

I was born in 1960, so these things were popular when I was a kid, and I always thought they looked stupid. Turns out, I was right.
Good thing about them, they pretty much re-popularized cycling for kids, though.
It's funny to me that when you build a bike to copy a fast car, you get a slow bike, and vice versa.

In the late 70's early 80's when I was the right age for a kiddie bike, the tribal knowledge said that banana seat = girl bike, and what everyone really wanted was BMX. I guess that's probably what killed these off.

Born in 1965 here. Stingrays were way cool. They were also the only style you could buy until BMX bikes came along, so there wasn't really any choice. This style was also known as a "wheelie bike" because the banana seat over the rear axle made it very easy to pop the front wheel into the air and ride around on the back wheel alone. I could ride a wheelie on my "Mr. America" bike for two blocks as a kid, and these were long suburb blocks.

I've been tempted to buy one just for the joy of riding a wheelie around the neighborhood, but I fear I would crash and break a hip.

You want to see originals? Go to Bicycle Heaven, the bicycle museum in Pittsburgh. They've got a ton of originals , lined up like in a parking lot, on their first floor display area. bicycleheaven.org

Some would argue that the Stingray inspired the BMX thing.

I agree. We raced what we had until the bmx style bikes were born (after my time) and many of us had Stingrays and Huffy(s) with banana seats.

This particular bike doesn't do much for me for many of the reasons already noted, but I don't understand all the hate being thrown at the Stingray (Did you have one?).
I never had a Krate or a springer fork with the small front wheel, but I did have two three speed Stingray's and they were great bikes. Yes, the shifter wasn't practical, but it was cool and it did work great and yes, memebag- you could ride a wheelie for days.

The concept might have been cool had Schwinn intro'd an updated version that incorporated modern tech and components, like maybe a 29"/20" wheel, outboard bearing crank, aheadset/stem, etc. Carbon fiber ape hangers? C'mon, now, that'd have been trick!

I suspect Darth Lefty is a little younger than us. The banana seat was cool in the sixties, but probably did become "girly-fied" by the late seventies. This is kinda like what happened with European roadsters. In the sixties they were driven in the US mostly by bohemian gear-heads, by the late seventies tehy were total "chick cars". Look at who mostly drives New Beetles, and Mini's today.

Yea, I kinda agree with that sentiment.
IF,,,,, Schwinn had gone crazy on the metalwork--lugged frames, a lot of not-otherwise-available parts like special CNC hubs, cranks ect--then it could be a hit collector's item even if it was expensive ($1500+). But it looks like the new bike is made using all the same parts as every other bike now, so who really cares? A chromed frame isn't anything notable now, and Schwinn frames aren't built the way they used to be. It's not going to hold a candle to the vintage ones. (Also they can't put that big shifter on them now, US safety rules don't allow it)

Ya know, I used to see those handlebars in the Wald catalog and wonder WTF did they ever get used on, and why were they curved like that? I never saw them IRL and they were always listed as "out of stock" on the Wald website for a long long time.... And now it seems Wald is out of the handlebar business entirely, their current website shows baskets only. :|
[edit added]
Okay, maybe they do still make handlebars. But only a few of the normal ones. All the really odd ones are gone, and the handlebar web pages don't seem to work....

I remember my friends and I thinking they were really when I was growing up in the late 60's/early 70's, and don't remember us ever worrying about anything being too impractical then.

When I was a kid in the 60's we were making trails in empty lots and the local woods with jumps, mud holes and other obstacles to ride our Stingray style bikes on to emulate the off road racers we watched on ABC's Wide World of Sports LONG before anybody ever thought of the term "bicycle moto-cross", aka BMX. BMX is as much rooted in "stingrays" as mountain bikes are rooted in old stripped down "tanker" bikes.

+1

I have been known to say (jokingly) that a few hundred Central Florida kids invented mountain biking in the mid 1960's, years before Marin County and Repack. We all did exactly what you did- took the slicks off of our Stingrays, mounted fat knobbies (front and rear) and rode and raced them all over the phosphate pits, orange groves, and dirt roads of Central Florida. We jumped over, and off of any, and everything. We broke seat posts, handlebars, banana seats, and smashed rear wheels honing our skills over every surface available (except mountains). Of course kids like us were doing the same thing all over the country.

At the same time, Stingrays used the same frame as earlier 20" Spitfires and Speedsters.

Never had a Stingray. I was a few years too old.

http://www.pointhappy.com/gcf/Gordons1stBikeSm.jpg

20" bikes were for kiddies. They weren't as fast as larger bikes.