THE AVANTI PROJECT

Let me tell about the PROJECT.....
About a month ago Chris from Avanti contacted me with a proposition,
Would I be interested in restoring a few classic/vintage Avanti bikes for them to display at their Auckland offices in a Museum type presentation.

Well of course I accepted the offer, and after the numbers were worked out, I headed up to Auckland to meet the guys involved, talk bikes, and see what they had.
We decided to do about 10 bikes, starting from their first BMX from about 1983 to the first of their Alloy PRO series road bike circa 1992/3, maybe a couple of ex race bikes with good international race histories if we can find them, and a couple of interesting mountain bikes to round the whole display out.

Now before I carry on, I must confess that prior to this, I didn't have to much interest in Avanti bikes, you could say that these just aren't my bag, being more of a 50's lightweight guy.
However since going up to Auckland, and meeting Ian Wills, who is overseeing the project, picking up all their old catalogs, and really studying them, I started to get really excited about this whole thing.
I could see, reading through these old catalogs a real development of ideas, a single minded purpose, and some interesting innovations along the way as well.
This was turning out to be more than a bit of fun for me, I had now put Avanti into their historical context in my mind. Restoring these bike's is important to New Zealand's overall bike/cycling history.
Imagine if Jones Cycles, Leader, Comet, Mitchell, Bosomworth, Morrison or any one of our other manufacturers had keep a collection of their bikes, those bikes would now be taking their rightful place at any Museum in the country as part of our collective history right now.

So now the real question is what model's and from what years do we do?
We had talked about this in a loose kind of, this or that would be cool kind of way, but now it was time to get down to specifics.

This is my list
Now if anyone who reads this thinks I have got it wrong or left out an important model
TELL ME.


The Road Bikes
#1
10 Speed SLX
The Earliest road bike we had, is the one featured in the photos below, this one dates from before the 1985 catalog, and is from the period of Avanti's first entry into the 10 speed market.
We all agreed this would be where we would start the Avanti road bike story.

Yes I am going to restore this beauty back to all of it's reflector wearing glory.

Once we have retraced the art work for reproducing the frame decals, they will be made available for you to download and take to your local signwriter,so you to can restore your own Avanti, hey hey!