Tag Oscar Wastyn

Schwinn: An American Giant and Its Hand-Built Lightweights

Circular Schwinn badge with a red field, a white cross lettered SCHWINN twice, and a tan outer ring reading QUALITY and CHICAGO, centered on a plain light ground

For most of the twentieth century Schwinn was simply the American bicycle, which is exactly why enthusiasts of classic lightweights tend to look past it. Behind the balloon-tire cruisers and the electro-forged Varsity sat a Chicago hand-build shop turning out Paramount racing frames, and a second line of fillet-brazed lightweights so badly marketed that almost nobody recognized what they were. This is the story of a company that built superb bicycles and could never quite bring itself to sell them.

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