What color is my '67 Continental?

[Schwinn Sales West]

Well I'm glad to have picked up this one-of-a-kind piece. I love a good mystery bike. My theory is that it was purchased by the seller's family at a later date than manufacture, as the seller had thought, and that it was perhaps factory or dealer reconditioned and repainted for reasons yet unknown. @Schwinn Sales West would you know if there were reconditioned bikes available at dealerships? Either way, I like the color and will retain any equipment that might get swapped out during my rebuild. It looks like this bike is in good shape and will clean up well and should make a fun rider. Thanks to everyone who has replied. Stay tuned for updates. I love the CABE.

Here's my take on this.

The Schwinn factory, and the Schwinn dealers operating at the time, were selling approximately ONE MILLION bicycles every year. There was simply no time available to waste refurbishing damage new bicycles, never mind the possible lability questions. If a frame got damaged during the railroad shipment it would have been simply replaced with a new warranty replacement frame by the selling dealer (before it was sold). We would have issued him his $8.00 warranty credit for the changeover labor.

Frames did not usually get damaged in original shipment; it was the front forks that took the hit. Not so much on the forged fork models but on the tubular fork models like Suburban's, Continental's, Super Sport, ETC. The "Chicago built" bikes were shipped with both wheels installed, and when you opened the railroad box car you would find the boxes standing in two directions. Depending on the number of bikes in the dealer order, and the size of the box car available, they needed to take up space to prevent the boxes from shifting around every time they CRASHED one box car into another car during the train car stacking. If you have ever been in a train yard during this process, you would understand that lots of shipping damage was the result of careless railroad transportation. On each end of the box car the bikes stood upright on the front wheel, so the models with rear fenders and reflectors were not damaged. But in the middle of the box car the bikes were standing in their normal position. These are the bikes that had the most shipping damage because of the train cars crashing into each other during the shipping.

It was just a "cost of business". The railroad shipments were the only way Schwinn dealers on the West Coast could even come close to the small $3.00 difference in Zone Pricing. If you placed a 300 unit (full box car) bike order, the cost to ship a new Schwinn bicycle from Chicago to Phoenix, Az. in 1970 was right at $3.00/unit.

As dealers we liked selling the "then new" imported Schwinn models because they were packed better, shipped in a "short box" (front wheel off) and easier to handle and store at the dealership. Never mind the cost of freight was less to the dealer.

It was a changing time during the 1970's in many industries.

John

 

[3-speeder]

Thank you John. Great information. That makes sense to me. I guess I won't know who painted this bike or when and why but it seems that they did a decent job and cared enough to put on a primer coat and replace the decals. I'll update this thread when I work on the rehab. Likely this spring.