Shifting gears a bit here...
Just so my blog doesn't turn into a Schwinn/Sante shrine, here's a bike that I've been looking for off and on for a while.
As far as I can recall, the Ironman came in two models, "Expert" and "Master". The Expert, pictured here, featured Shimano 105 components, while the "Master" was a step above and had Shimano 600 goodies hung on it. I thought at one point the Expert frame was
Tange #2 and the Master frame was
Tange #1, but this advertisement shows that at least for the 1987 model year, everyone got the Tange #1 tubes. I'll have to look back through my Buyer's Guide issues again and see what's up.
(Update: My '87 Buyer's Guide only lists the Expert model, which indeed used Tange #1 tubing and my '88 Buyer's Guide lists both the Expert and Master, also with Tange #1 tubing for both.)One of my riding buddies back in the day had one of these, a Master in the aqua/white color scheme. From what I recall, it rode and handled similarly to my Allez, but I thought the Biopace felt a little funky at first. It was a sweet bike all around, however.
I don't see a whole lot of these on ripmeBay or CL, but they do show up every now and then. The Expert being far more common than the Master. And just because I'm such a purist I feel daggers in my heart when I see one of these for sale, converted to a fixie, with all the braze-ons filed off. Sigh.
And yes, the colors. Most people hate them, but I don't mind so much, although the hot pink examples are pushing it a bit even for this classic 80's lover.
Anyway, more thoughts and info on the Ironman later when I have more time to update this.
