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.