Hi, I have a little background with Schwinn products starting around 1958 when my family became Schwinn Dealers. In 1978, I went to work for the Schwinn family in bicycle distribution on the west coast, and continued until after 1992 when Scott Sports Group purchased the assets of the company. As you know it was a very turbulent period with many changes. The beginning of the end of the classic Schwinn period most of you are interested in was the UAW strike at the Chicago factory in the 80's. The strike was settled, but almost all of the production began to be sourced from different vendors and not solely produced at the Chicago factory. I toured the Chicago factory, and attended the Factory training school as a 12-year-old kid.
During the 1950-60-70's the factory paint line was a Ransburg system. It was a large, automated conveyor line which paints the parts hung from the conveyor as they went thru the paint line. It had a water fall on the wall to catch the overspray. The paint, and the parts were electrically charged to make the paint magnetically attract to the parts with all of the curved tubular surfaces, much like powder coating is done today. They did a "hand spray gun" with the color around the crank housing and kickstand area first to make sure it got good coverage in the automated system. The logistics of building all of the models, and painting all of the different parts, times all of the colors was amazing. Remember, they did not build the parts to put into a storage warehouse, they were built on a "just in time" system, and then were installed on the bicycles going down the assembly line. Keep in mind they were building frames, painting parts, chroming parts, building wheels, boxing the bicycles and putting them into railroad box cars at the rate of over half a million each year (some years more). They had women hand pin striping the painted fenders. As a kid working in the family dealership, I always wondered when assembling the bicycles why some Schwinn Bicycles had pin striping on the "inside of the fenders". I saw firsthand during my tour that they practiced getting the correct amount of paint on the pin striping brush by using the inside of the fenders instead of a old phone book like common with a sign painter/pin striper.
They had many different colors and shades of colors over my years. Just like the automotive manufacturers it was a way of keeping things new and different. For example, the Dark Radiant red/green/blues of the 50-60's became lighter Flamboyant red/blues/sky blue/lime green/campus green/burgandy/coppertone, etc. in the 60-70's models. They are not the same colors as the 50's colors, but the paint process was the same. It was an Aluminum Undercoat, then the Transparent Color was applied over the top. Much like the Candy Colors popular on hot rods. Chestnut was just another color shade that was shot over the Aluminum Undercoat. None of these colors were ever clear coated. They all went through a heated baked on process. I think the process has been proven by time that the Schwinn Chicago bikes had a very durable paint job looking at some of the original paint vintage bikes today. I do not know who the paint vendor was, I could only guess it to be Sherwin Williams or maybe Ditzler (PPG today). All of the original factory paint colors were available to Schwinn dealerships for resale touch up. They sold large and small spray cans, and also sold brush-on enamel in half pint cans. During the 1970's someone came up with the bright idea of making paint sticks (like crayons) in all of the factory colors of that time. The paint sticks dried out and became hard. They would be a great collector item today, but only if you had the original packaging.
After the UAW strike, Schwinn began to look at other vendors that could product for their dealerships. Cespal in Hungary built some cruiser models, Murry of Ohio built the popular juvenile models, and a very small bicycle company in Tiawan was given the task of producing a lugged frame lightweight ten speed at a low price point. This was an urgently needed product for the dealerships at the time. Schwinn felt so strongly about this they sent their head engineer (Frank Brillando) to live in Tiwan at this company to spearhead this new volume project. In the end, the company did a great job of getting the models to Schwinn dealerships, but they had one major problem. One of the first popular colors on The World model was a deep dark maroon red. The transparent color was applied over a white undercoat. Any time a dealer put one of these new World models in his front window display and sun hit it, the bikes faded to white on the side to the sun. The color went away FAST like in a month or two, it was not UV safe like Schwinn's normal paint. Frank Brillando completely rebuilt this company's bicycle paint system and brought it up to Schwinn standards. The company name is one we all still know today Giant Bicycle and was built by Schwinn's Engineering.
I believe that the Paramount bikes were "hand spray" painted. I have never seen a Terra Cotta Schwinn model that the paint job looked good, they look light covered. It was a very difficult color to run in a mass production line and was quickly discontinued. However, one of the most beautiful Paramounts I have ever seen was painted Terra Cotta and it looked great. I even saw a Paramount track tandem in Bakersfield at Vincent's in Terra Cotta, it was stunning.
John
