A custom painted Trek

Joe Lintl, is a Trek designer based in Holland. One of the other designers at Trek forwarded me a pdf file of images of Joe’s personal bike. He custom painted his Madone on his balcony after cutting all the masks out by hand. Pretty impressive, especially for those of us who went though the I.D. curriculum and know how much work goes into a job like this. Anyway, I want to reiterate that this is not a production bike, just a custom paint job on a designer’s bike. I was impressed with the craftsmanship though, so I wanted to pass along a few images of the bike.

On the subject of Trek, take a look at the company’s recent profile on Apple’s website. It is not directly design related, but there are some cool shots of the designers and the factory.

While I am posting, I want to point out the latest Core 77 one-hour design challenge: cycling shoe design. You have until Sunday, August 3rd at 6 pm PST to submit your entry. Read more about it here.

Finally, I will mention that the sale of my track bike last week didn’t go through. The high bidder was in Japan and said he tried to cancel his bid but was not able to. Kind of a bummer, but I guess it means the bike is still for sale. I might have to re-list it, but in the mean time, any of you who are interested should contact me with an offer.

Posted

July 28, 2008

James

Tags:

design competition, my bikes, track bike, trek

Comments

8 responses to “A custom painted Trek”

Fritz

July 28, 2008

Bummer about your bike auction. I watched the price go up and up!

I’ve been led to believe that nice carbon fiber road bikes are purely an American phenomenon. 🙂 I can’t imagine a Madone in Holland.

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surf-the-arts

July 28, 2008

USA, to an international country,postal rates were great 4 years ago for a bike , but now US post rates have gone through the roof to international destinations – mainly because of 911 (customs involvement). Japan post is great and is one of the best to deal with; by Japan EMS I can receive anything from Japan within 3 days to a week at a reasonable rate. Hong Kong is still good now. Now I’m back in Canada (a foreign country eh!), even ordering from the US is now way too costly. It’s really hard for eBay sellers and buyers to do business anymore. Nice bike – it will sell!

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James

July 29, 2008

Fritz, I have been to Holland twice, and it has been a long time, so I am certainly not an expert. Even in the early to mid nineties though, I saw a few nice American road bikes over there. I went into one bike shop that sold Cannondale road and mountain bikes and had a big American flag behind them. The guy behind the counter confirmed that the bikes were very popular and that people were willing to pay more for them (compared to the European road bikes that he also carried). I guess it was just about having something exotic (kind of like the Italian bikes that interested me in the US). Of course the majority of the bikes you see are typical Dutch city bikes for basic transportation… and we had a great time riding those all over the place while we were there. Still, I would imagine that serious road bike riders and racers over there use carbon frames. And I bet that you would see bikes from Trek, Cannondale, and Specialized every so often. Maybe someone from Holland can confirm whether or not that is the case.

Surf, The second bidder on my Pinarello was in Vancouver. I checked shipping rates and was surprised at much it cost to ship there (not much less than overseas). I would rather just stick with a US address and not deal with customs form and everything.

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Fritz

July 29, 2008

I know, James, I was just being a little snarky.

My parents live in Japan and I ship stuff there semi-regularly. I’ve never had problems, but then something done routinely does become routine.

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Michael Cody

July 29, 2008

You could always just make a “second chance offer” to the second highest bidder…

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Blue Boy

August 14, 2008

James, American bicycle brands are increasing quite a bit in popularity in Europe and Asia. In fact Trek has a handful of concept stores in Europe and China and a bunch in Japan. Probably the most noticeable for me though is the number of European visitors who visit bikes shops here in NYC. They usually call about 3 weeks in advance of their trip looking for size, model, and pricing information. Because of the exchange rates a lot of high end bikes meant for the US market are heading overseas.

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Yokota Fritz

August 14, 2008

Fascinating, Blue Boy. I don’t think I would have expected that, but I guess it makes sense.

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James

August 14, 2008

blue boy, interesting about all the European customers that you are seeing at NYC bike shops. Makes sense though; why would they not want to take advantage of the favorable exchange rate.

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