Yeah, I was looking through Bob Hufford's now relocated Schwinn catalogs yesterday, as we had an offlist discussion about when the Sport Tourer switched from TA to Nervar cranks. The first Sports Tourer in 1971 has the Gran Trashmo, which Schwinn also used on the touring Paramount at the time. The first Sports Tourer also had TA cranks. In the 1973 catalog photos, both the Paramount and the Sports Tourer are still shown with the Gran Tourismo, although the Sports Tourer has switched to to Nervar cranks. The 1974 catalog shows both Paramount and Sports Tourer with a Schwinn badged Shimano Crane GS, and the Sports Tourer with Nervar cranks.
But we all know that reality varied from the catalogs, especially during the Bike Boom. My 1973 Sports Tourer in fact has TA cranks and the Crane GS, so it has the cranks from the previous year and the RD fron the following year, if you believe the catalogs. Rather fortunate for me as the TA is at least more flexible than the Nervar in term of range and parts availability. And the Crane GS is infinitely better than the Gran Trashmo, not that that's difficult.
So I suspect that Schwinn probably switched to the Crane GS on both the Sports Tourer and touring Paramount sometime during the 1973 model year. Maybe even the whole year, as catalogs were often prepared in advance for distribution at the beginning of a year, and therefore often showed the models from the prior year. In fact we know the Schwinn-badged Crane GS was available in 1973, as that was the year Schwinn first began importing Japanese bikes, with the World Traveler, the Le Tour, and the now-famous World Voyageur, all made by Panasonic. The World Voyageur, in its one and only year, definitely had a Crane GS, and the World Traveler and Le Tour may have had it as well, or perhaps the similar but less expensive Titlist GS.
As an interesting aside, one wonders whether the Crane GS, rather than the corresponding SunTour, probably the VGT, was mostly the choice of Schwinn or that of the manufacturer Panasonic. Had these first Japanese Schwinns sported SunTour derailleurs, one assumes Schwinn would have gone that way with Paramount and Sports Tourer as well, and all the Japanese and US made touring models in the late 70's and early 80's. That might have been enough to allow SunTour to survive.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Big Spring, Texas, USA
> From: Tim Fricker <tymncycle@gmail.com>
\r?\n> Subject: Re: [CR] Gran Trashmo as exemplar: was Re Spence Wolfe bikes...
\r?\n> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
\r?\n> Date: Monday, December 7, 2009, 11:56 PM
\r?\n> Well, a Gran Trashmo graces the wall
\r?\n> above my workbench at bikes@vienna,
\r?\n> just because I like the "Klingon Batliff" look it
\r?\n> has. It came from an old
\r?\n> Schwinn Sports Tourer a buddy of mine had in Portland.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Tim
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Harvey Sachs <hmsachs@verizon.net
\r?\n> <lt%3Bhmsachs@verizon.net>>
\r?\n> wrote:
\r?\n>
\r?\n> >>I also have a Gran Trashmo in my stash of "you
\r?\n> wouldn't believe that
\r?\n> Campagnolo was that dumb" and similar conversation
\r?\n> starters. Who else
\r?\n> keeps a few bits of inverse eye candy around just to show
\r?\n> some clay feet
\r?\n> on our idols? I keep a NOS Campy Sport (one-pulley)
\r?\n> too, a triumph of
\r?\n> great workmanship over thought and common sense. Hmmm,
\r?\n> maybe the NOS are
\r?\n> more common than the used ones. :-)
\r?\n>
\r?\n> harvey sachs
\r?\n> mcLean va
\r?\n>
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Charles Colerich raises an interesting point:
\r?\n> I have an all original 1971 Hetchins Italia that was
\r?\n> purchased directly
\r?\n> from Hetchins in the UK and brought back to the US. It has
\r?\n> an all steel
\r?\n> Suntour GT long arm derailleur. Supposedly Alf Hetchins
\r?\n> disliked the
\r?\n> Campy Gran Turismo derailleurs so much that he chose to use
\r?\n> the cheap
\r?\n> Suntour GT instead.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> The Suntour certainly shifts much better than the 15 oz.
\r?\n> "grim reaper's
\r?\n> scythe" Campy Gran Turismo! (I have one that I keep on my
\r?\n> desk as a
\r?\n> decoration) <<