Rare Retrobikes...

[Crantinope]

I have a White Lightnin' owned from new, ;-)

Clearly they are not rare at all and need removing from this thread
When you say from new, I don't suppose you know/knew what colour the original bars and stem were do you as I will be restoring mine to it's originsl psint scheme.

Cheers...Nick

 

[legrandefromage]

Its great that 5 years on, so many bikes have been found and restored!

Never seen these other than on RetroBike:

 

[spike3]

Have we mentioned Reflex as a brand, never seen a Reflex Alx 99 form 1988 other than the one I own.

Great Candy pink and blue paint.

 

[cloudbase martin]

When you say from new, I don't suppose you know/knew what colour the original bars and stem were do you as I will be restoring mine to it's originsl psint scheme.

I worked for a Raleigh dealership in the late 80's/early 90's when I bought it, so a long time ago...

From memory the bars and stem were black but I have seen a few where the bars were black and the stem anodised grey - not a good match. Either my memory fails or the factory sent them out with different spec. on mine the stem and bars are black but I think I replaced the original black bars with black straight 3ttt.

 

[racer x]

Noticed this 1992-93 Legacy 2 wheel drive, this must be rare as

 

[stumpjumper1990]

Nice!

Frame reminds me of Boulder!

 

[Maxipedia]

Well, if you ask me, I'd like to see more nineties' full suspension rigs, a la Mountain Cycle San Andreas or Intense M1, as well as mainland Euro stuff, like Sunn or Schauff or Storck or Rotwild. Sunn had a damn racing dynasty that killed 'em all. Where are they now?

One of my years of grace was 1997. I don't know why, but stuff kinda seemed to be looking more and more unpleasant from then on: bigger logos, aggressive branding, too much "pragmatism" and so on. Hereby, I'd love to see a 1997 Rocky Mountain Thin Air in close to original spec or pretty much any CrMo Marin. Why does the hype need to stop at 1996 (at least that's what I understand)? 1997 and 1998 Marins looked awesome, composed and balanced, but beginning with 1999 and 2000 they jumped the multicolor ultrabranding bandwagon.

Anyhow, that's it for now.

Cheers,
Mx

 

[Osella]

Sunn unfortunately went under in about 2001, and are now racing (essentially) re-born as Lapierre - hence the Nico Vouilloz involvement..
My ideal bike BITD was a 1998 Sunn Radical+

I have a question regarding 'rare' though.. How do we know..?

I would LOVE to be able to find some of the sales figures for these bikes (accurate ones!!) :roll: and see what there really is/was out there.

We know that S-Bike, Lynskey etc weren't built in huge quantities in comparison with (say) a 1995 Stumpjumper; however is it not also possible that peope like us & sites like this actually perhaps miss some 'rarer' bikes through perception?

I suspect that, as a proportion of the number produced that there are WAY more S-Bikes currently being owned and ridden than a 1996 Saracen Tufftrax or GT LTS.
Many of the more common bikes would simply have been scrapped when they got old or people tired of them, and I would say this applies even more so to a lot of full-sus which quickly became obsolete year by year in the mid 90's.

Is it therefore possible that perhaps a good, near-original LTS, or 96 Marin Rift Zone is actually rarer than a Yo Eddy - simply because it never had the cache of cool when it was new..?

Think about how many well-preserved Jag E-types you could find, compared to a Ford Granada MkII, and you see my point.. Which is actually 'rarer'?

 

[Maxipedia]

I totally dig what you are saying!

But! Sunn wasn't reborn as Lapierre and as important as Nico may be, he is not the only reason for a bike brand to exist. Lapierre was very present when Nico switched from Sunn and raced under his own VProcesz label in 2000, 2001 and 2002. In fact, according to their website, they exist since the mid forties and noticed in time the phenomenon that was to be mountainbiking. As far as I know, Lapierre is now the biggest bike company from France.

Sunn was brought to fame by Max Commencal who also quit the brand in 1999 and went on to form Commencal. Sunn deceased and was reborn at some point, but recently they've had financial and quality issues and they were bought out by Look, their future being uncertain. I am sure they will relaunch in the near future. When I say "quality issues" I mean things went as far as the Sunn Montgenevre official factory team was racing Transition 450 TR frames a season long and not hiding it!

Anyhow, back to our stuff, I once again support your idea of rare stuff being actually less rare than what was anywhere at some point!

Cheers,
Mx

 

[racer x]

this is another, wonder if this is still out there