The Radavist

Hey Aussies! Get ready, the 2015 Speedvagen Australia Fit Tour is heading your way!

“Sacha White and The Vanilla Workshop are preparing to take off on the second leg of the Speedvagen Fit Tour. This trip takes Speedvagen to Australia, specifically Sydney and Melbourne. In addition to fitting new Speedvagen customers, there will be rides in each city as well as evening events open to the public. Fresh off the success of the California Fit Tour, extending the program is a natural progression, reaching customers that would normally not make it to Portland for a personal fitting with Sacha.

There are limited spots available, as each fit takes 2-3 hours. Spending this much time working with each customer allows Sacha to understand each rider’s unique strengths, needs, and limitations. The end result is your dream bike, completely tuned to your riding style. Learn more about the Australia Fit Tour or schedule a fit session with Sacha here.”

Sydney Dates: August 24th – 30th at the Rapha Cycle Club
Melbourne Dates: Sept 1st – 6th at Shifter Bikes

While the public may know about the Vanilla Workshop and Speedvagen, they might not know the inner-workings or exactly how the two brands operate under one roof. There’s a misconception that Sacha White runs the whole show with maybe one or two other people. When in reality, it takes a whole team to keep things moving.

Recently, the Vanilla Workshop and Speedvagen shared a little insight to help people better understand what really makes them move. Read on below!

I love seeing projects like this form. Especially when it’s got Chris McNally involved. That man is so talented. Here’s the scoop from Vanilla:

“Born out of a friendship and shared love of impractical vehicles and the clean aesthetic of 60’s and 70’s road racing, this project represents the culmination of seeds planted a few years ago. When Sacha started in on a design for the new Vanilla kit, he was reminded of how garish modern team gear has become. Thinking about what the design could be, he wanted to evoke the beauty and simplicity of past designs, while keeping the forward-looking feel the Workshop believes in…”

Check out more below!

One thing’s for sure, custom steel doesn’t go out of style. While most mass-produced frames lose a considerable amount of value in three years, a Speedvagen maintains… This semi-custom, 54cm, Super Record 11-speed Road Machine is for sale. Everything is 80%-90% new and as the photos on the Speedbloggen show, it’s ready to rip. Contact Speedvagen for details – price is $7,500, which is a damn good deal.

Yikes! The crew at Speedvagen have been working on something extra special with their new 2014 Overt Road Machine. Head over to the Vanilla Flickr for more incredible details like that seat mast medallion!

Speedvagen is so Portland and I don’t mean that in the Portlandia, ironic, hip sense. When I think of Portland brands – those of which who have made it to international credibility anyway – I think of people who obsess over the details. The Vanilla / Speedvagen family is one such brand.

Friday afternoon, I received a package from the great V. Inside was this meticulously-wrapped package, with coasters on the back and a little brown box with a twine bow. Inside, a hand-painted Speedvagen racer was tied to a padded backing.

This very special Vanilla randonneur was featured on the cover of the book, Custom Bicycles A Passionate Pursuit. It’s owner, Brett Horton, curates the Horton Collection, his own private museum of all things relevant to the golden age of cycling. I would post more photos on the site of this incredibly elegant bike, but you should just go to the Vanilla Flickr and see them for yourself!

As the story goes, Vanilla is left with this 49cm road frameset to sell. Now, I know a Vanilla is out of most people’s price range, but I can’t get over how nicely detailed they all are. The best part about bicycle photography is that there’s no charge to look!

Head over to Vanilla to see more details.

Sometimes frame builders end up with a frame to sell to the public and it just so happens that Vanilla’s got something to offer to the tall people out there:

“Available today, maybe just in time to sneak under the tree, is this 2013 Vanilla road frame. It’s roughly a 60cm, see specs here, and features brushed stainless steel head tube lugs, “V” dropouts and drive side chain stay. This frame also includes internal rear brake cable routing, hand carved and thinned lugs, two pair of bottle bosses and meticulous paint work by Coat Paint Shop.”

Check out more details here.

Oh man. If you love details on hand made steel bicycles, this one’s for you! The newest Vanilla Bicycles road frameset looks spectacular in this bright double panel paint scheme. Complete with stainless dropouts and that script! Check out more photos of the 2013 Vanilla Road Racer here!

Last week, I posted ENVE‘s video featuring Independent Fabrication. Now, here are two more, featuring Calfee and Vanilla. These videos were both playing in the ENVE booth at Interbike.

I should have warned you, posting something this bright first thing on a Monday morning. Can you blame me? See more of this fluorescent Covert Speedvagen Road Machine at the Vanilla Flickr!

The Speedvagen offerings are those of dreams and that’s coming from someone who has two dialed road bikes. Feast your eyes upon the 2013 White Hot Speedvagen road. See more at their Flickr.

Straight from the Speedbloggen:

“Army green has been one of Speedvagen’s core colors for, well, since the very first prototype I made back in 2006. I love the the icon of militarism and the toughness that the color represents juxtaposed by the goofiness of racing your brains out and crashing cross bikes in the mud with your friends. I’ve wanted to do an army green kit for a long time but as I started to dig into the design I was conflicted: On the one hand, you have all of this space that you can fill with words and logos; get all bilboarded up, right? But I kept coming back to the idea of a uniform. A uniform is clean, crisp, balanced, minimal. This kit doesn’t need a lot of shit on it to get noticed in the peloton and for that matter, the more I put on it, the less it really says.

We wanted to offer  something special to our Speedvagen family and friends. Offering the team kit up for you all seemed like just the way to do that. We’ll be taking orders for two weeks only and we won’t be keeping any back stock. This means that only a handful of you will have the kit, well, you and our 6 team members. We’re planning to offer a fall/winter kit too, something a little warmer for cross and getting in base miles.

The jacket and vest, originally designed by Jeremy Dunn (of Embrocation fame) are an abstract design in our signature blue, army green, and red with an explosion of Speedvagen text and sheilds. The answer to the abstract outer layers is the strictly business base kit in army green with color bands as punctuation on the sleeves, legs, and collar with Speedvagen shields enblazoned on the chest, back, and legs. We also have a new Team cap that you can add to your order.

Castelli makes some of the best apparel available and has for over 100 years. Plus they’re right down the road from us, so it only makes sense that we work with them for our racing gear. All of the clothing is made here in the Northwest and the items we’ve selected for you are the top of the line of what Castelli has to offer. Wear them well. To place an order please visit the order page.

If you have any questions drop us a line: customerservice@vanillabicycles.com”

Check out more photos of the kit at the Speedbloggen.

… well, you know. This is the kind of attention to detail that you’d normally see in a NAHBS showpiece but no, this is standard issue over at Coat. See the rest of this rad Speedvagen Cross build over at the SV Flickr.