raverson

No question for me, Schwinn Continental in Sunset Orange. In 1973 I was riding my Dad's Free Spirit 3-speed to middle school, eight miles a day. I would have much rather been on a Schwinn 10-speed. And most certainly in Sunset Orange.

nlerner

In 1973 I was 13 and in junior high and don't remember having any interest in bicycles though I likely was tooling around on the green Vista Flyer my parents bought me a couple of years earlier (and it was much more likely that they would have bought that bike at Grant's Dept Store rather than at a bike shop; bike shops were much too expensive and esoteric). That year, however, my 17-year-old brother bought a brand new Schwinn Varsity, which was the first "English racer" anyone in my neighborhood had ever seen.

oddjob2

Unobtanium for a golf caddy! If you don't mind sharing, what did that cost you back then?

jon c. 

In my world at 15 years old, the Grand Prix for sure. Raleigh was known for quality bikes. Whether in a sports car or a bicycle, the Brits were known for making good stuff. Schwinns were a family sedan, Raleighs were more like a TR-4. French stuff was an unknown commodity and Japanese products were still thought (in our set) to be inherently cheap. (The latter image was already being overcome in some parts of the culture, but that revelation wouldn't reach us for another few years.)

I owned a Raleigh Record then. Among my friends, it was thought to be the 'best' bike in our crew. (None of us were especially wealthy, so we were all riding bikes toward the bottom of the market.) I thought it was a pretty fine machine myself. Sort of glad I didn't know then that it was gas pipe clunker. I was very happy with it and proud to own it.

Chrome Molly

I won't tell you my vote, but it would make a great fixie...

Just kidding....

jolly_ross

What were the weights I wonder. The brochure appears to say 37-38lbs for the Schwinn and 28 for the Peugeot. Surely the difference could not have been so great?

kc0yef 

Well 1973 was the year of my first 10 speed and I would have rather bought a used paramount

bikamper

I was 17 and a senior in high school. I'd opt for the Schwinn if I didn't already have a Robin Hood Lenton Sports. Having a few years with the Robin Hood under my belt(43 and counting)I'd go for the Grand Prix.


Waitaminute, I had a 1967 AMC Ambassador two door hard top in 1973 that held five girls and me. I didn't give a crap about bikes back then.

oddjob2

At least that much in weight delta between the two. Where I lived, once you got out of the subdivision, it immediately became hilly, unless you were headed due north. That's why I never went too far on my Collegiate.

jyl

In 1973 I was still riding my Peugeot G50 in junior high in Canada - or maybe I had just stopped riding it, memory dims. (My son is riding it now, in junior high school.) In 1974 I was in high school in Los Angeles and got my Raleigh Gran Sport. (I just received an identical Gran Sport which I will fix up for him.) So it would have been one or the other - the UO8 or the Gran Prix. I suspect the Fuji of the identical year had steel cranks so that it wouldn't have been a big winner in specs. As a Euro-phile and living where I did, there wasn't any pressure to buy American.

rhm

I voted Raleigh because that was what i wanted a little later, when i graduated to a ten speed, though in 20-20 hindsight the Fuji was probably the better choice.

What I was offered, and I accepted, in 1973, was a Schwinn Speedster, single speed coaster brake.

cb400bill

I come damn close to the age in your example. I turned 14 in 1973 and was a high school freshman. My mom was a housewife and my dad worked third shift as a boiler operator at a paper mill.

In the small farming community I grew up in we had no LBS. None of the OP's bikes were available to me. There were two hardware stores that sold bikes. One had Huffy and the other Kent. We did have a hunting/fishing store that briefly got into bike sales. They sold Sekine bikes. They were so much lighter and exotic than those hardware store bikes. A couple of my friends had Sekine 10 speeds, I had a Kent 3 speed. Later, we purchased one of my friend's used Sekine 10 speeds.

So, being that the Fuji is closest of the brands to my Sekine, that would be the direction I would go.

raverson

Schwinn Continental 10.71%

Wow, no love for the Continental?

Cougrrcj

In 1974 I did buy my first 10-speed. Dad had all of the reviews (mostly Consumer Reports), and the two of us set off to a handful of LBSs to do some in-person comparisons. A Pug was one, a Motobecane, a St Etienne, and a Fuji. The Schwinn and Raleigh were a tad more expensive and I was limited to $150.

I got the Fuji Special Tourer. Straig gauge hi-tensile steel, three-piece steel cottered crank, steel rims, etc. Orange with chrome fork ends. $134.95

That one got stolen three months later from the High School bike rack. Replaced with the identical make/model/color. Serials F9B18529 and F9B18546 respectively.


Fast forward two years, and I'm at Ohio State. Roommate J had a Viscount Pro (w death fork!) and his bike was a quantum leap above my 35-pound all steel Fuji and roommate T's Iverson (40-pound department store brand). We couldn't keep up. I went back to my LBS and bought my 25-pound butted-CrMo all-alloy S-10S. Didn't go 'higher up' because I didn't want tubular tires.

That 'Special Road Racer' is still my primary bike, 45,000+ miles later!

SuperLJ

In 1973 I was actually in junior high, and lusting after one of these funky looking new 10-speed racers. I got hold of a few issues of Bicycling magazine and saw an ad for Fuji bikes, and I remember spending a lot of time staring at the bike in the photo. I decided that was what I needed - no idea what my reasoning was. So from the choices above, I'd have to go with the Fuji Racer.

My dad had a shop that sold farm equipment and supplies, and we also sold car tires. Being in the Midwest, we sold lots of studded snow tires in the winter, and the studs had to be installed one at a time with a pneumatic gun. This was my first paying job - Dad gave me $1 per tire. I wore three right-handed cloth work gloves at the same time to help keep the blisters away.

By the time Spring rolled round, I had about $100 saved up for a new bike. I called around to the local shops, but there were no Fuji dealers in our area. Crud! I should probably add here that my dad was dead set against any bicycle with mutiple gears. "Nobody needs that - it's just something else to break." This was one of his stock lines that he used for anything that had features beyond what a basic model had. It became apparent that I was going to need him to chip in, and that it was going to be a hard sell.

One shop I spoke to had an interesting model that was pretty similar to the Fuji, and was a brand that I thought I might just be able to talk Dad into. So after much cajoling, I got him to take me in to check it out. He was still pretty dubious about the whole idea, but at this point I was pretty sure I had him...

The bike was a Browning (yes, that Browning), which I think was made by Panasonic. It was beautiful candy-apple red and equipped with Shimano Tourney components. Dad said that anything with the Browning name on it had to be good. He even tried to talk me into the pricier model, which was made in Belgium and had Simplex derailleurs, but I passed because it wasn't candy-apple red. I think we paid $140.

EDIT: I did a little research. The Browning I had was called a "Grade I". It was their entry-level bike. The Simplex-equipped bike was a Grade III, and they also made a SunTour-equipped Grade V:

RobbieTunes

My situation was very similar to cb400bill

I was in junior high, and no way I wanted a Schwinn:
-The Scwinn dealer was over an hour away in Madison.
-The "monied" kids that had Sting Rays killed the brand for us.
-Only a couple of those kids "aged up" to 10-speeds, and I doubt I'd seen more than one by then.
-The parts available at the local Ben Franklin and True Value didn't fit them.

At the time, I didn't even know the other brands existed, though I'm sure Madison had dealers.
I'd have probably wanted the Fuji, but my dad was like many others: no Japanese stuff.

I made do with my paper route bike until my junior year in high school.
No one else my age was still riding bikes by then, and a lot of the country roads were still gravel.

Free Spirit, it was, though, when I saved the dough: Bicentennial 10-sp in Jan '76.

Hindsight would have you buying at least a shotgun or two, also.....

JohnDThompson 

In 1973 I was a Senior in High School, and I remember reading a Consumer Reports article on bikes in which the Fuji "Special Road Racer" got their "Best Buy" recommendation. I was in the market for a bike, but with no Fuji dealer nearby I settled on a similarly spec'ed Araya model.

In college the the next year, my room mate had a Fuji "Finest" that I credit with stoking my bicycle enthusiasm that continues to this day.

WNG

Fuji, simple choice. Better made bike, but a nod to the Peugeot for a better ride. Rode the U0-8, hated those Rigida steel rims.
The Schwinn seems like a tractor, and the Raleigh...no experience with one from that era. Other than reading about the spotty workmanship coming out of their factory.

Bruce Enns

Oh, the love was there, but the Continental was like ............. 10.00 more than the Varsity. That would have been a few more weeks work and I wasn't willing to wait.

qualla

Heck, I know the answer 'cause I already did it (though in 1972 I think). Raleigh Grand Prix 'cause if it's 1973 only the Raleigh and the Peugeot seem upmarket and my 3 speed "racer" was a Raleigh. Actually, apart from the cottered crank it was a pretty good bike and lasted me for years.

qcpmsame 

1973, I was a junior in high school in December, I bought a new Continental back in June, worst bike deal I made, not because it was a Conti, that was a heavy, bullerproof bike I kept until 1978. I traded in my 1 year old Bottecchia in order to buy the Conti because a girl wanted us to have identical blue Schwinns, she and the bike were not worth what I did, especially her. Not going to vote out of spite to myself for dating her and for trading off the Botty. I try not to do so many stupid things now and I have no idea where she is now, Ian I certainly don't want to know, either.

Jseis 

Fuji wins hands down. I spent $100 more and bought this at the Bike Stand in Olympia, Wa in '73 as an 18 year old frosh at The Evergreen State College. The only other two bikes I considered at the time were a Nishiki of equal quality (can't recall model) or a Moto B GR that was beyond my budget.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/61726328@N03/7769467304/ (who could pass up a French red head?).
Still have it and it's getting tuned for the STP this July.

unworthy1

funny that back around that year I had friends with 3 of those makes/models and remember having a raging debate about who's was "best". My best friend had the Raleigh GP, his GF had the UO-8 and the cool kid (guitarist) had the Continental. I was swayed by the cool-kid's argument that the smooth (we didn't know electro-forged ) joining of the tubes on his Schwinn was vastly superior to those gaudy painted things (lugs) on the European bikes.
I looked and believed!
Nobody knew anything about threading or even bothered to compare weight between them, but I was also fascinated by the "high-tech" novelty of the plastic derailleurs and shifters on the Pug, but not sure if plastic was cutting-edge or cheap cost-cutting in this case...I gave that a lot of thought, came down on the side of the cool kid who said his Continental's gear was all-metal and would last forever, while that plastic cr*p would break. He was guessing and bluffing, but turns out he got something right!

I didn't see any Fujis until checking out the tiny Fulton St. cycle shop opposite Golden Gate Park several years later: I thought they looked good but were kind of high-priced!

Scooper

In 1973 I was 31, living in San Francisco, and bought a Schwinn Super Sport. If I'd been in junior high school and had a choice between the four, it would have been the Continental (Dad worked for Schwinn for thirty years).

In retrospect, if had known then what I know now, I'd have picked the Fuji. Schwinn introduced the imported Panasonic made Le Tour in 1974, so if we were talking 1974 instead of 1973 and the LBS carried Schwinn, I'd probably have chosen an Opaque Blue Le Tour (same color as my '73 Super Sport). In '74, the Continental retailed for $134.95 and the Le Tour was $159.95, so I'd have had to sweet-talk my parents into spending the extra $25.

auchencrow

I just updated the Fuji pic with the one from the '73 catalog at classicfuji.com.