Well here’s the balance of the SM’s. Just went to paint today. The last SV’s in the shop (6 in all) are the ones we built for the Gentle Lovers a team that I started with my friends 12ish years ago. They have grown into one of the fastest and strategically dialed cat 1-2 teams in Oregon all while wearing pink spandex with hearts and unicorns… But that’s another story.

Surprise me is a funny thing for me. I love that people have to commit to taking a chance. It says adventure and spontaneity (even if it’s being spontaneous about a decision that you’ll wait months to see the outcome of). It tells me that people trust me with a big decision which both feels good and adds pressure. It is not a responsibility that I take lightly and just like with Vanilla, the more a customer put’s themselves in my hands, the more I give. It’s reciprocal and somehow that feels very right…

Surprise me is often conflicting for me and this round is no exception. I believe that in general my design sense leans toward the understated and if not understated, then at least balanced. One of my favorite if not My very favorite Speedvagen is the original prototype. It has very little going on with paint, or graphic fanciness, which leave the overall form of the bicycle without distractions and that makes an impact. So I’ve done understated for the last two runs, especially this last cross run. I think that there is an expectation out there though that Surprise Me will be…well… surprising, right? Should it be loud, something never seen before, a revolution built into a paint scheme? One thing that I do know if that it should blow doors off. It should be fckuing  awesome whether it is awesomely understated or over the top blingy (think rainbow sparkle paint with holographic decals like a Nagasawa Keirin bike).

So here’s the question, what do you want in a surprise me scheme? Do you want to be floored? Do you expect something complex and over the top? Would you be happy with something like matte black with graphics laid out on the frame in a dark grey, so that overall, it looked blank, until you looked close and then all of the detail came out? What if you got something like the prototype linked above?

Any answers won’t influence the surprise me scheme for this run of bikes, but I do like thinking through my bagage and I wonder how much of it is in my head and how much of it is shared by others.

Anyhoo, here is the balance of the SM’s that went to Coat today.

xoxo,

Sacha

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Surprise me’s are done and down at paint! Roughly Eighty percent of this batch’s owners went with Surprise me. Here’s a taste.

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is never easy.

For each run of Speedvagen we do 3 known colors and a “Surprise me” option. We try to do distinctly different flavors for the different personalities of the SV owners-to-be i.e. classy and subtle. euro and racy. And kind of an industrial garage hotrod thing.

This year we’re doing a bright tomato red for the racy option with a very light milky panel running along the center line of the frame’s main tubes and down one blade of the fork. The panel is accented with stripes and text in Army Green and Vanilla’s sky blue. See the road page here for the finished product. And a little process here.

Only five 2010 road speedvagen will be done in red.

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One of the things that makes Speedvagen special is it’s collaborative nature. We bring other builders who have reached the pinnacle of their craft into our shop to help with fabrication and whatever other aspects of design that their strengths speak to.

This May, Dario Pegoretti will be joining us at The Vanilla Workshop to party, ride, eat, drink, take in a music show or two and of course to weld the first ever run of Track  machines. It goes beyond fabrication, though. Since last year, Dario and I have been working on refining the tubes (note the Pego inspired chainstays), looking at geometry and once the frames are welded, we will design the “Surprise Me” paint scheme together.

Dario is one of the builders that I admire most. He is a rocker and an artist and has built upwards of 30,000 race bikes including TDF and Giro winners. His experience and reputation in the racing world runs deep. So deep that he can simultaneously push limits with tubing materials, shapes and sizes, and express his artistic side through abstract, un-conventional paint work. He has earned the right to do what he wants to do without being questioned, or pigeonholed as making “art bikes” or whatever.

I don’t know what will come from our collaboration in terms of paint. My style is very crisp and graphically oriented while Dario’s is often abstract and based on patterns. I imagine that we will start by agreeing on a base color, and then explore variations on the existing shield logo and blocky SV type. It is important to me that the finished product is 100% Speedvagen, but Dario is such a visionary when it comes to finishes, his influence here is one of the most exciting aspects of the project.

We have been working on prototypes for our Speedvagen Track Machine for a couple of years now. This includes developing new dropouts, working with Edge on a new SV specific track fork and SV carbon post head, having our own tubes built by Columbus including the TT with extra thickness built into the bar smash area, etc. etc. etc.

We’re taking orders starting now and will be fabricating in May. Cost, color options and a link to the application can be found on the Order page of our site: www.speedvagen.com

I’m super pumped about how this bike has shaped up through development and this last weekend at NAHBS we showed the final iteration.

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