Phil Randall wrote (and welcome aboard!):
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"I also have another bike. It is a Free Spirit. I guess it was sold by = Sears. It is silver. And has a made in Austria stamp on it. It has = Weinmann center pull brakes. Suntour front Derailer and Shimano rear. = It has a lugged frame but they are not fancy. It is really a pretty low = end bike. But I am curious about it. I thought It might have been made = by Austro Daimler after seeing pictures of those bikes at the classic = Rendezvous web site."
Before we hear snickering about Sears bikes, let's travel back to that far distant time of the early 60s, when in "Flyover Land" (mid-America, Houston in particular), one had few choices. Schwinns, up to the Continental (welded steel frame, Ashtabula cranks), Raleigh, mostly Record and Gran Prix steel-rimmed UGLIES. Mail-order Louison Bobets, for which we dreamed.
In the fall of 62, I picked up a used Sears Ted Williams sport Special (would buy another if I found one). Campy "steel" gran sport rear, camply "plunger" front, Weinmann alloy rims, and cp brakes. Not a bad bike, Austrian-made. I was led to believe that they were indeed Puch, but don't know the relationship to Austro-Daimler. Interestingly, the expert at the local schwinn shop told me that the QRs for the brakes were set up to modulate speed on long alpine downhills, and should be ridden normally open. We had no hills in Houston...
By the time "Free Spirit" had replaced "Ted Williams" I had moved on to better bikes of yore, but there were certainly bikes that weren't Murray imitations, too.
harvey (nostalgia, but a great ride on the '61 Paramount today) sachs mclean va