In the 70’s, Soutern California kids started following new trends , just like the kids created the Sting-Ray culture during the sixties. This time, however, Schwinn decided not to engage into the movement, maily because the company saw the sport as too dangerous and unsuitable with Schwinn’s quality image. The same happened with the mountain-bike culture of the 80’s pioneered by Northern California riders like Michael Sinyard , Tom Ritchey and Gary Fisher. What Schwinn didn’t recognize is that trends are often set by minority thinkers, and not by the Number One. To many economists, this is how things should work, with efficiencies making products cheaper and creating new opportunities at the high end — in building satellites, if not in bicycles.
By the late 1970s, a new bicycle sport begun by enthusiasts in Northern California had grown into a new type of all-terrain bicycle, the mountain bike. Mountain bikes were originally based on Schwinn balloon-tired cruiser bicycles fitted with derailleur gears and called “Klunkers”. A few participants began designing and building small numbers of mountain bikes with frames made out of modern butted chrome-molybdenum alloy steel. When the sport’s original inventors demonstrated their new frame design, Schwinn marketing personnel initially discounted the growing popularity of the mountain bike, concluding that it would become a short-lived fad. The company briefly (1978–1979) produced a bicycle styled after the California mountain bikes, the Klunker 5.
Zone-colored LED lights next to the flywheel display each member’s intensity, encouraging the class to Ride As One. All residential users that purchase any new, demo, and premium certified preowned class Cycle will receive our Exclusive Lifetime Warranty package FREE! StudioCycles is the only company in the world that offers a lifetime warranty for every residential client and has for nearly 30 years. Because a lifelong fitness journey requires lifelong support – and that’s the StudioCycles promise. The Sting-Ray sales boom of the 1960s accelerated in 1970, with United States bicycle sales doubling over a period of two years.
Several thousand more U.S. workers benefited from jobs at Schwinn dealerships, or in the steel and rubber factories that supplied parts. In the glass atrium that marks the entrance to the Pacific Cycle company, the old and the new of the bicycle business are displayed huffy mountain bike side by side. Each is called the Schwinn Sting Ray, and each in its time has been a bestseller. The AC Performance bike is Schwinn Triple Link™ pedal compatible. Triple Link Pedals accommodate Look, Delta and SPD style cleats to simulate an outdoor riding experience.
By 1975, bicycle customers interested in medium-priced road and touring bicycles had largely gravitated towards Japanese or European brands. Unlike Schwinn, many of these brands were perennial participants in professional bicycle racing, and their production road bicycles at least possessed the cachet and visual lineage of their racing heritage, if not always their componentry. One example was Peugeot, which won several Tour de France victories using race bikes with frames occasionally constructed by small race-oriented framebuilders such as Masi, suitably repainted in Team Peugeot colors.