Schwinn and pricing is a long story that Richard Schwinn recounted in part for the Cirque banquet several years ago. Schwinn believed in "fair trade" or fixed pricing to ensure a stable market and dealer profits in a notoriously cyclical and low margin industry. They lost a big court battle on this and Richard believes it was one factor in the demise of the company. The fallout from the court battle was probably a reason the prices came and went in the catalogs.
The Paramounts got caught up in the rampant inflation and the Nixon price freeze of the early 1970s. Schwinn could not raise the price on the bikes and imported part prices (read Campagnolo) went through the roof because of the changing value of the dollar. There was a year and a half backorder for the Paramounts at one point as everyone tried to score their bargain (demand was also just plain high). Schwinn greatly ramped up Paramount production during this period also.
I can't say I was ever inspired to analyze the sexual overtones of Schwinn catalogs!
Joe Bender-Zanoni
Great Notch, NJ
> I really enjoyed those Schwinn catalogues posted yesterday at
\r?\n> http://www.geocities.com/
\r?\n> country during that same period, as you remember your own odyssey.
\r?\n> A
\r?\n> few notes. During the 70's the price of the Paramount really
\r?\n> started to
\r?\n> soar. In 1970, the track model was $224.95 and the road $300. By
\r?\n> 1979
\r?\n> the track model was $650 and the road had tripled to $900. I don't
\r?\n> recall a tripling of the cost of living, but it certainly rose
\r?\n> substantially along with Paramount prices. For some reason from
\r?\n> 1974 to
\r?\n> 1976 Schwinn stopped putting the prices at the bottom of each bike
\r?\n> page
\r?\n> following the descriptions, but resumed the price listing by 1977.
\r?\n> Were
\r?\n> prices fixed by corporate headquarters during the listed years?
\r?\n> Also in
\r?\n> 1975 the catalogues started a complete component listing similar
\r?\n> to the
\r?\n> way it's done today, and the advertising started to look more like
\r?\n> Schwinn was building modules for the Space Shuttle, while in the
\r?\n> 60's
\r?\n> they were simply selling the clean scrubbed, wholesome American
\r?\n> lifestyle. The word descriptions were un-appologeticly fanciful
\r?\n> with
\r?\n> "radiant paint" and the "dubutante model" bike, and ample photos
\r?\n> of
\r?\n> healthy, un-competitive, good natured folks enjoying each others'
\r?\n> laughter during the innocent years. A little fly in the ointment
\r?\n> was
\r?\n> that in the 1970 catalogue on page 5, it shows a woman on an
\r?\n> economy
\r?\n> model Schwinn Twinn tandem with a young man that seems to be more
\r?\n> than
\r?\n> a bit younger than she is. Page 4 shows the same woman with an
\r?\n> much
\r?\n> older fellow on a Paramount tandem. You can only imagine that she
\r?\n> left
\r?\n> the older man and moved in with the young stud, but was forced to
\r?\n> adapt
\r?\n> to a heavier , clunkier tandem in the bargain. There's a definite
\r?\n> trade
\r?\n> off, because I find the old heavy tandems to be a real handful,
\r?\n> but
\r?\n> maybe her new boyfriend was too.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Garth Libre in Miami Fl.