History of the carbon Sweetspot as told by former Schwinn employee Rich Adams:
Yeah, the carbon sweetspot was a bit of a reaction to the Y bike from Trek. We had also started working with an industrial design group out of the UK on the 1995 anniversary bike (a one off that was shown at Interbike that year - called "Tribe") and as a follow up project we started conceptual studies on replacing the alloy front triangle with a new carbon design. We picked a concept that we liked the best, and then I set off trying to mimic those shapes and curves in Pro/E and to create the 4 frames sizes and the forged shock mount (which is a pretty cool 3d forging)... funny story is that the first bike that we showed at Interbike was actually CNC'ed from foam since the molds for the carbon bikes were not complete. The parts were being machined, and were almost done when a big thunderstorm rolled through Boulder and knocked out the power. The machine shop had set the 0,0,0 location for the CNC path right in the middle of the part, so when the power came back on, the CNC machine went right back to the home position and crushed the frame breaking it into several pieces. We had to rally fast and get another one going to make it to the show, and that part was painted, decaled, and hand carried onto the plane. It was assembled into a complete bike on the show floor the night before opening.
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