First look: Schwinn Paramount 70th Anniversary

By James Huang, Technical Editor | Wednesday, Dec 10, 2008 3.00pm

Schwinn is celebrating the 70th anniversary of its prestigious Paramount nameplate the best way it knows how: with a beautiful limited-edition frame crafted of Reynolds 953 stainless steel tubing and a matching Reynolds UL carbon fork. 

The classically proportioned full 953 tubeset is brazed by Waterford into a custom set of stainless steel lugs that artfully integrate the classic Schwinn four-pointed star right into the lug points.  The head tube lugs and stays are then fully polished and the rest of the frame is coated in a deep metallic candy apple red. 

Beauty isn’t just skin deep here, though.  Our average-sized sample weighs just 7.50kg (16.66lb) complete with Mavic R-SYS wheels and a new Shimano Dura-Ace 7900 group, putting it neck and neck with many aluminium – or even carbon – bikes, and we’re hoping the full-steel construction delivers the exceptionally lively ride quality in testing that only comes with a ferrous backbone.

Appropriately, Schwinn will only offer seventy copies of the Paramount 70th Anniversary and none of them will come cheap.  You’d better sit down for this one: each frameset carries with it an asking price of US$7000. 

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