Dale,
Just to clarify, I only bought one example brand new, a '72, and that one came stock with standard Mavic rims. What I meant is that I have strong reason to believe that all four examples I have now have the original rims and they are all basically the same model Mavic. I'm wondering if anyone has an original Paramount in this vintage that has other rims, what they are and how they are branded.
My guess is that Schwinn used what they could get and that some of them were labeled Schwinn Approved, but if the rims had manufacturer's decals on them, Schwinn did not pull them off and replace them. It's also possible that they could get Super Champion to private label their rims, but had to substitute others as they ran out. Since Schwinn had a habit of overstocking certain parts, it's also possible that they had a stash of Mavic rims that they used whenever the supply of S-A labeled rims ran out. All that's just conjecture, of course. It does appear that Schwinn did not use Italian rims during this period, though a lot of people replaced damaged rims with Fiamme red labels, at least in my neck of the woods.
--Steve Barner, Bolton, Vermont
----- Original Message ----- > Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 23:28:33 EDT
> From: OROBOYZ@aol.com
> To: steve@sburl.com, classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> Subject: [CR]Paramount rims
>
>
> Interesting because I sold Paramounts in the period from late 1972 until
1974
> and I was pretty sure I remembered only Super Champions with Weinmann as
an
> option.. . I think there was even a Schwinn Approved -made by Super
Champion
> decal. We thought they were Arc en Ciels.. Even the weights exactly
correlated
> with the SC models...But if you bought those bikes new yourself as
complete
> bikes I guess I must be wrong.
>
> Dale Brown
> Greensboro, NC