Schwinn needed a popularly priced lightweight line of bicycles to compete with the Asian brands being sold on Schwinn Dealership sales floors. The Peugeot and Motobecane European brands were not the heavy hitters. Ben Lawee the U.S. Motobecane distributor recognized, this and developed his own Asian built brand under the Univega brand. The European brands were priced right, and light in weight but never came close to the fit and finish of the top Asian built bikes. The fact that the European bikes mostly came with French or Italian threading parts groups and unique parts sizing did not help their sales in the U.S. market.
Schwinn Bicycle Company was slow to react to the changing lightweight market. What they needed was a light in weight, Varsity/Continental "priced models". It needed to be built in the U.S.A. to help with production lead times to fill dealer orders. It was cost effective to air freight small parts like derailers, hubs, chains, etc. It took several years of research, factory build up, and employee training for bicycles to start flowing out the door. Greenville, MS. was the choice for the new Schwinn factory. I never visited that Schwinn factory in person, but my coworker and later a business partner, Dave Staub (SSW GM) did visit the factory on several occasions. Mississippi was a "right to work" state and that was a big reason in Schwinn's choice of location after suffering the UAW Chicago strike. The factory was isolated, and difficult to efficiently ship goods in and out of due to location. It had a limited work force, which would later become an Achillies heel.
The Greenville factory was tasked with building only two different product styles. Yes, they built many different model names, but they all fell into one of two production groups. They built steel framed "investment cast" lug models or welded "aluminum models". The aluminum models (the three-digit number models) were built from 7000 series aluminum tubing. The focus of this series was to give dealers something they could sell "head-to-head" with Trek and Cannondale models. Schwinn's engineering made the choice to use the 7000 series tubing because they determined that the frames needed to be stress relived (heat treated) after they were welded together. The quality of the stress relieving was not consistent, and it caused the top and down tubes on some bikes to distort/bow/warp. It was a cosmetic problem, not a structural problem, but a serious issue.
Investment casting that previously had only been used in "pro level" priced frames was developed to bring the price down into the high production lower priced frames. It was a large improvement in lowering the price point of this lugged frame technology. IMO, the Greenville factory would never have been built without this new at the time investment casting technology. The bottom bracket shell, the seat tube cluster, and a "uni-head" were all cast parts. The two head lugs and the head tube are only "cast one steel part" not three parts. They were so smooth they did not require any hand touch up. The frame tubes had small indentions under the lug joint that held a small low melting temperature pellet of brazing material. The frames were set up in a fixture and heated to melt the pellet. The advantage was almost no employee hand work in brazing the frames were required. This new frame building method proved very efficient at producing new lugged frames at a lower labor cost.
Even with the latest automated production wheel building equipment, you still need to have skilled employees that understand the process, and how to adjust the machinery. IMO, Schwinn never figured out how to build lightweight quality wheels in Greenville, MS. Nobody from the Chicago factory wanted to move to Greenville. Dealers had to pull the wheels and tires off of a new uncrated bikes, and bench true each wheel to make sure it was properly tensioned, true, and hub centered. Every time I talked to any Schwinn employee that had just came back, they always mentioned the same thing, about the brown muddy shower water at the local hotel. Rudy Schwinn spent a lot of his time getting the new factories in Budapest (Cespel) and Greenville, MS. up and running, but he needed more help and support.
Let's talk about the Schwinn Paramount line at another time. Paramount's have been raced all over the world for the past 80 to 90 years. Please do not confuse multi million dollar sponsorships and paid professional riders with the quality of a product. Not many riders race on steel frames anymore so it's understandable why you do not see Paramount's being widely raced today at the pro levels.
Thank you for your interest in Schwinn's lightweight models
John
