Messing with a Good Thing
The new Schwinn Sting-Ray is an abomination.
This is what a Sting-Ray should be. Okay, technically, that’s a Sting-Ray Junior which was my ride back in the early 70’s. (The photo’s not of my own bike, but of one I found listed on eBay, pretty nearly the same model that I had, except mine had a white seat.) Sure, I took some flack for the slightly smaller chopper bars and lower profile of the Junior, but I was a small kid and it fit.
And, better yet, six or seven years later every kid in the neighborhood was eating their hearts out when I stripped my candy apple red Sting-Ray Junior down to its frame and rebuilt it as the coolest damn BMX bike in the Brighton Green subdivision. New wheels, new seat, new handlebars, new pedals, new front forks, and I even kept the rear coaster brakes.
Ahh, I wish I had a picture of that tricked out BMX Sting-Ray now. Classic!
I had a Chech bike with a frame like that, Velamozch or something like that it was called, but with flat handlebars and normal seat. We’d strip the mudguards off, put big tires on the rims for a poor boy’s BMX, when only people who had lived in the States and brought them with them owned such precious things….
Sorry, I’m willing to put my nostalgia aside for a moment. Just long enough to notice that that new Sting-Ray is one bad-ass set of wheels! I mean, look at that thing — it would inspire fear in the toughest neighborhood!
OK, the new StingRay is not the old StingRay, but maybe the new one will be the old favorite of today’s six year old. I mean, why impose our old faded values on today’s kid? If they like it, they like it. If not, it is tossed on the Kia heap, you know what I mean?
(It does seem a little over done to me, but what the heck, maybe that’s the thing these days, how would I know?)
Robert Wichert
It looks overloaded to me and heavy to pedal. I’d take a minimal approach to making a new version of a classic.