About Those Muscle Bikes!

 Krates  Fastbacks  Classics

Muscle bikes mimick the souped up Mustang's, Camaro's and many other street rods that were hot in the late 1950's and early 1960's. These 2 wheeled wonders were an overwhelming success right from the start. First to hit the pavement was the Classic Sting-Ray soon followed by the Lemon Peeler, Apple Krate, Fastback and numerous other Schwinn muscle bikes.  

The original Sting-ray was so successful millions sold the first year. Would anyone gamble with perfection? Could anyone have possibly improved on the Classic Sting-Ray? But that's just what Schwinn did. It's 1969 and the Krate series moves in for the challenge. The Schwinn Krates are irresistible and like the icing on the cake, come out shinning. 

The wide 20 inch slick tires, banana seat, high rise handle bars, stick-shift and the super strong light weight frame make them so cool and easy to maneuver. It's almost as much fun thinking about it as it was experiencing it.

Schwinn Sting-Ray Story

Revisit The Magic

From the mid 1960's and well into the 70's, just about every suburban child had a banana-seat bike. There was the extremely popular original Schwinn Sting-Ray followed by many knock-offs like the Sears Screamer, the Murry Muscle Bike and the Montgomery Ward Hawthorne Bike. 

Schwinn pioneered these bikes thanks to the foresight of Schwinn's designer, Al Fritz, who in 1963 heard that kids in L.A. were rebuilding their bikes to look like motorcycles, customizing them with high-rise, ape hanger handlebars and low-rider banana seats so the rider was lower to the ground. 

Inspired, he designed his own lowrider prototype for the youth market called Project J-38 and rode it around the Schwinn warehouse. At first, his colleagues laughed at him, but soon his co-workers were taking it for a spin only to find that this odd contraption was actually fun to ride. The era of the muscle bike had begun. 

Sales were initially slow, as many parents desiring a bicycle for their children did not find the Sting-Ray appealing in the least. However, after a few appeared on America's streets and in their neighborhoods, many young riders would accept nothing less than a genuine Sting-Ray. Sales took off and within a year, 70 percent of all bikes being sold in the U.S. were Sting-Rays. Schwinn began shooting all promotional material on location in Disneyland. Young Al was onto something big!

Schwinn Sting-Rays were on the market from 1963 to 1979 at the height of the muscle-car craze. There were essentially four models: The basic Sting-Ray; Sting-Ray Deluxe (that added chrome fenders and white wall tires); Sting-Ray Super-Deluxe (that added a springer fork); and the Krate series (that added a five-speed "Stik Shift," shock struts on the rear seat and the 16" front tire and 20" rear tire).

How many colors made Up The Schwinn Krate Series?

The popular Schwinn Krate bikes were produced from 1968 until 1972. Originally, the Krate bikes were offered in 6 colors. The first three colors were introduced in 1968. They were the Orange Krate, the Apple Krate (Red), and the Lemon Peeler (Yellow). These three continued to be available for all five model years. The Pea Picker (Green) was introduced in 1969 and continued for all remaining model years. The Cotton Picker (White) had a 2 year run in 1970 and 1971. The rarest of them all was the Grey Ghost which was produced only in 1971. Only 6 colors made up the Original Krate collection.

In 1999 Schwinn introduced their reproduction Krates which ran through 2006. These Krates were pretty much true to original specs except the popular stick-shift was excluded and the five speed Shimano shifter was a more efficient updated version. Anyway, back to the color issue. In addition to reproducing the original 6 model Krates, they added another model which Schwinn never formerly produced, the Grape Krate (purple). So all in all there are 7 colors that make up the complete existing collection of Schwinn Krate Bikes.

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