Detroit Bikes will manufacture a limited series of Collegiate motorcycles for Schwinn. After its arrival in 1954, the roadster motorcycle became one of the best-selling motorcycles in two decades in Schwinn’s catalog.
The original Collegiate was sold through Schwinn’s legal dealers, a network of independent motorcycle department stores formed in 1952 that governed motorcycle sales in the United States for the next 30 years, adding to the “motorcycle boom” of the early 1970s.
The new Collegiate, in the 1965 model, will be sold exclusively through Walmart. com.
Detroit Bikes founded in 2011 through a Canadian immigrant; a German immigrant founded Schwinn in 1895.
This year, Schwinn celebrates its 125th anniversary. The logo has been owned by Dorel Industries of Canada since 2004 and is a component of the organization’s Pacific Cycle department which sells to large retailers. Dorel also owns the Cannondale and GT motorcycle logos, which are sold primarily to specialty retailers, as well as independent motorcycle shops.
“Schwinn’s heritage is something we are very proud of,” said Nando Zucchi, president of Pacific Cycle.
“As other people turn to motorcycles to help them overcome the global fitness crisis, there has never been a more important time to introduce exciting new products. “
The latest Schwinn motorcycle made in the USA The U. S. Department of America rolled off the production line in 1982. The family circle business, mismanaged by the children and grandchildren of founder Ignaz Schwinn, was dismembered after bankruptcy in 1993 through “vulture” financier David Schulte and real estate mogul Sam Zell. and its Chicago-based Zell/Chilmark fund in collusion with small American bicycle company Scott U. S. A. of Sun Valley, Idaho.
Other currency problems, caused by a flat market and an expanding festival from Asia, adding Taiwan’s Giant Bicycle, which was originally Schwinn’s main supplier, led to the sale of the logo, along with the similarly troubled BMX GT Bicycle logo, at a 2001 bankruptcy auction on Pacific Cycle. .
Three years later, Pacific Cycle acquired through Dorel Industries of Canada. Schwinn’s large-box motorcycles have been manufactured in Asia since the 1980s.
The new steel-framed Collegiate will be manufactured in Detroit by, among others, Henry Ford II.
Mr. Ford, no relation to Detroit’s best known Henry Ford, is the master builder of Detroit Bikes, which has two welders and 23 other workers. The factory was founded by Canadian Zak Pashak, who moved to Detroit after becoming interested in making a transport. Product for cities.
“I’m a music festival [in Canada],” Pashak told me last year.
“Thanks to this, I became interested in politics and peoples and read many urban policy documents. I ran for Calgary City Council and became interested in transportation policy. It happened to me that there wasn’t much I could do as a councillor: there has to be a change in the way other people think about how we move around cities.
He realized the “secret weapon” was the bicycle, and founded Detroit Bikes as part of a budding trend toward relocation to the revitalized Michigan city.
Doing the Collegiate for Schwinn is an “absolute honor,” Pashak told me via email.
“When the opportunity arose to collaborate with Schwinn, I knew we had to take advantage of it,” he said, adding that a U. S. -made Schwinn was a new development in Schwinn. UU. se perfectly suited to the “increased demand for motorcycles” of today’s confined motorcycle boom.
The Collegiate will be available only through Walmart. com. Walmart has 4,000 retail outlets and sells more motorcycles than any other U. S. retailer. U. S.
One of Walmart’s trustees is Steuart Walton, grandson of billionaire Walmart founder Sam Walton. With his brother Tom, Walton runs RZC Investments, which owns British cycling apparel company Rapha and partly owns Allied Cycle Works, a maker of high-end bikes in Little Rock. Arkansas.
“For many rural communities, Walmart is the position to buy motorcycles locally,” said Pacific Cycle communications manager Ryan Birkicht.
“Bicycle accessibility is one of the key points driving the expansion of the motorcycle industry,” added Birkicht, who is based at Pacific Cycle’s headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin.
The Collegiate Special Edition, in turn-by-step and crossbar versions, will go on sale for $998 on July 1.