Thanks for the compliment. I'd say sharp like perhaps a plastic knife....
I don't normally get into this stuff on the forum openly as I don't look for more controversy than what I put up with in my employment daily. That said, I will comment here that I have read pretty much everything I can get my hands on regarding Schwinn. Information is available from many sources, and I have seen a LOT of them that are clearly inaccurate - meaning that in the same piece of information they generated, they have indicated two different things that are 180 degrees from each other... on the same item.
My first point:
I have an excerpt here from one of the books that I read, and read it after I was able to pull an article initially from the internet with production figures from 1932 through 1965 (as reported to the US Government). I don't understand how Schwinn as a major player in the US bicycle market, would have sat out the remainder of 1945 without producing anything. That just doesn't make sense. The production figures in this excerpt indicate just that - they didn't sit and twiddle. They started ramping back up after the conclusion of the war, and the production shows 98,185 for the remainder of '45, then back to "full-tilt boogey" in '46 with 302,071. The 1943 and 1944 production figures fit with the war effort in the 16 plus and 18 plus thousand in units produced numbers, and '42 production shows 112K and change as the units produced.
If they (Schwinn) published the 1945 production numbers as 98 thousand plus bikes, where and why does the "no production in 1945" come from?
Second point:
I have a collection of serial numbers in a excel spreadsheet I have been keeping for a considerable period of time (at least the last ten or eleven years) in which quite a few were date verified by pulling parts and part dates from, and some of those ALSO fit into that "non-existant" production year. A few of these examples came from the folks who either bought the bikes originally, or were the family member presented with the bike at a given point. This all started over my curiosity with the numbers shown on a couple of bikes or frames I bought that were "pre 8-18-48" and I wanted to look at when they may have been produced - and I am QUITE sure I am not the only person with that same "want to know."
The reality is that those were my initial foray into the Cycle-Truck world. I started keeping the spreadsheet and collecting any and all data I could get to enlarge this database - most of which is serial number, year (where verifiable), and who owned the serial numbered piece at that point in time. Have I collected every one out there? Not a chance. I have a job that keeps me out five days a week, leaving at 6 in the morning and getting home between 6 and 7 in the evening, and have been there for the last 20 years. As the spreadsheet began to take a life of its own, I started getting other information on other pre-fire bikes of different models - a lot of those questions and information coming from people I had either requested further information from, or those who requested information from me. (I AM NOT AN EXPERT and prefaced most every response I have ever written with that phrase!) This is my hobby, just as it is all of yours. I find the research end to be interesting, however, I have recently come to the realization that it is taking too much time away from my "me time" in the shop. I have a little collection of Schwinn products here (as well as a few oddball other bikes) mostly from prior to the middle of 1970 backward, and enjoy being out there with them whether it is building another one from parts (lots of those!), cleaning one, riding one or just sitting in front of the fan looking at one of the groups.
All that said - I am NOT an expert on any of this, but I also don't accept the idea that a large, "for profit" company with the management that was present in that specific period of time, would sit around for at least a third of a year and do nothing.
OK, it's there.
REC
