Brand

Used vintage Schwinn Paramount road bikes

Frank W. Schwinn launched the Paramount in 1938 as Schwinn's racing bike, built at first in Emil Wastyn's Chicago shop. In 1958 Schwinn rebuilt the program from scratch in the Cage, a fenced-off frame shop inside its Chicago factory, and from 1959 every Paramount got Reynolds 531, Nervex lugs and Campagnolo dropouts. The P10, P13, P14 and P15 models date from those years. Ed Schwinn shut production down in 1979, and Marc Muller restarted it, moving to a new factory in Waterford, Wisconsin, by 1981 under the Paramount Design Group name. Waterford-era bikes moved to Columbus tubing and then to the oversized OS. Schwinn employees bought the plant in 1993 as Waterford Precision Cycles, and the last Paramount was built in September 1994. Later Paramounts and the 1990s Series bikes came from other builders, mostly in Asia. Date a Chicago bike by the serial on the left rear dropout and a Waterford bike by the serial on the bottom bracket.

2 models we cover.