corwin1968

I've got an 80's Takara Highlander MTB that I picked up on Craigslist and I would love to find out what year model it is. Takara was an Oklahoma City based company that contracted with one or more Japanese bike companies to build bikes that were then labeled Takara. I have seen several references to Kuwahara making some of Takara's bike but I have no idea if that's true.

I'm guessing (and hoping) that maybe whatever company built my Takara used the same serial number format as on other models. The Serial number is on the bottom of the BB shell and starts with "JS" Then a series of numbers that starts with "3" and ends with "87".

I assume the "J" in "JS" stands for Japan but I have no idea what the "S" might stand for. From what I've read about other serial numbers, the "3" may well represent the year of manufacture (1983) or it might just be a number. Also, the last two digits "87" might represent the year it was manufactured but I'm thinking this is unlikely because this bike is very much in the style of a 1983-84 model. I know that by 1987, some (maybe most or all?) bike companies had tightened up the angles on their MTB's while mine has extremely slack angles.

Does anyone have an 80's MTB, for which they know the model year, that has this serial number format?

corwin1968

I did some digging and Bianchi's had the same serial number format and by that format, 83 would be the manufacture date for my frame.

Pretty cool to find out this thing was one of the first mass produced MTB's on the market.