It’s the collector’s dream: you enquire about a single bike, end up discovering a whole collection of bikes – and the person that owns them wants rid. That’s what happened to Oliver when he got talking to a seller on eBay. I took a moment with him at the Malverns Classic to find out more about the bikes he’d brought to the Retro Bike MTB Show and Shine.
How many bikes have you got here Oliver?
Five today. There’s a bit of a back story that goes with all the collection. I wanted to buy a single speed and I found one on eBay. I got chatting to the guy on eBay and it was wrong description. And he said, ‘I don’t know anything about bikes and I don’t know anything about eBay. I’m selling my granddad’s collection.’
Oh, ow! Things hurt, bits of my body hurt now! Okay.
At which point I said ‘Right, where do you live? I’m coming to find you!’ And a couple of weeks later I went up with a friend in a van and I bought 20 bikes off him.
20?! Oh, that beats even my husband’s buying record! Okay, 20 and we’ve got five of them here.
So, the original owner raced fixie, then he had a very good career in the police. And with his pension, he started buying these bikes, mainly probably from the US, importing them. And he PDI’d them, but he never rode them. I ride them, but he didn’t.
I think it was in the hope that his grandson would like riding bikes. But his grandson is into music and is in a band and wanted to clear the garage after his granddad passed away so that he could make his garage into a music studio. So, I went and took all the bikes off him in one go!
Today we have a Turner XC from 96, a Brave Warrior, which is super rare from like ’92-ish. I think there was a limited window where they were imported into the UK, apparently by a guy called Steve Joy, who’s here.
Oh, I need to track him down!
Yes, I probably should too!
A Bonty Racelite, again, 1991-ish.
A Stumpjumper, like, not a replica of the Jason McRoy one from the Dirt video, but pretty close. That’s the 1994 one, which is the one when he signed to Specialized. Most of the ones you see have got white decals and are the year after.
And then a super, incredibly, lovely, light Kona Hei-Hei with Ti Onza bar ends and Ti fork and Ti hubs and Ti seat post and Paul’s mechs.
So, are these as they were when you got them out of this garage or have you tinkered with them?
Mostly as they were. I didn’t want to sort of disrespect the chap that lovingly built them by changing too many bits. But, yeah, the Bontrager was a frame in the garage and I got a lot of bits with this purchase as well.
So, with the McMahon forks, which are super, super rare. So, that kind of came together as a build. The Brave was also a frame and the forks.
So, that came together as another build. The Turner was built, the Specialized was built and the Hei Hei was built. And I just tweaked a few bits and bobs because I do ride them and I just needed to change a few bits.
What else is there that’s in the garage that hasn’t made it here today?
So, there’s another Bontrager race light with Manitou forks and a different paint job with some White Industries hubs on a lovely wheel set. There’s a Mk 1 Santa Cruz Heckler, a Kona Explosif from 2000. It’s a bit newer.
The guy raced Fixie, he was into single speeds. So, there’s a Surly single speed, a Kona Unit single speed, Kona Kaboom. This is probably the prime pickings from the collection.
And so, where do you ride these? I don’t want to get into the whole gravel argument, but where in the UK is this sort of bike still a great ride?
I’m a mountain biker, born and bred. I was a kid, drooling over this kind of stuff in magazines. I live in Bristol, so there’s Ashton Court and Leigh Woods on my doorstep and they just happen to be quite good gravelly trails to ride. I don’t want to beat these things up too much. They do get ridden on my local trails, mostly when it’s dry because I just can’t bring myself to get them too muddy.
No. Okay, let’s do some deep dive nerdery then. Pick me out your favourite components on the Turner to start with.
It’s got to be the Paul’s Mechs front and rear, matching red Paul’s Mechs. So many people have offered me crazy money for these things and I just can’t bring myself to sell it because it’s something I’ve always dreamt of having. I think I’ll keep them forever and then pass them on to my son.
Or somebody he will be having the same sort of conversation with on eBay! You need to make a list about how important they are!
My son’s here racing his bike today while I’m stood here, so hopefully he won’t flog them all when I pass on!
There is hope for the future. On to this Brave, which I think might be one of the best in show in my eyes. It’s certainly eye-catching. What do you particularly like on this? (Ed’s note: indeed, it went on to win the best in show prize!)
Bullseye wheels, which are rather old and lovely. XT Thummies, I’ve always been a fan of Thumbshifters. Onza bar ends, Onza is just so cool. I had stickers as a teenager and I couldn’t really afford any of the actual Onza bits. So now I’ve got quite a few of the Onza bar ends, it’s quite nice. And this has got Top Line cranks, which are a bit before my time, I’m told they’re pretty rare, but they’re so lovely. So much of this stuff from back in the 90s was just CNC’d and shiny and lovely and it’s quite different to modern bikes.
Yeah, those cranks, I mean, they don’t look out of place now. They look like some of the nice high-end CNC’d stuff you get now. And then on to the Bontrager. The fork, obviously.
The fork, McMahon Racing. So another cool thing about the backstory is the guy that owned them was called Mr. C. So the grandson said to me, ‘Oh, I see you’ve fitted those forks to that Bontrager. I think they were specially made for my grandad or something because he was always known in the police as Mr. C.’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no, that’s McMahon Racing Cycles, that’s a brand all on its own.’ It just happens to be that the original owner was Mr. C. Which is quite cool.
And the Bullseye cranks, again a little bit before my time, they just fetch crazy money and people are always after them. And that came in the collection and I just had to fit it to this one. And a really odd and rare Mavic chain ring.
And then the Specialized?
Well, this, I guess, this is 1994 when Jason McRoy signed for Specialized. Which apparently you know because it’s got the yellow decals instead of the white decals on the Specialized. I’ve got the Future Shock forks to fit to this. I haven’t got around to doing it yet. So it will become a bit more of a replica of that. Growing up riding bikes, watching Dirt with my friends and then getting all excited about going riding and then going out riding was like a big, big part of my teenage years. And this, to me, gets about as close to that as you can.
And then the last one then, the Kona.
Yeah, I’m a really big Kona fan. I used to work in a Kona dealer and I’ve had many Konas over the years. The Hei Hei was something that just seemed like it was always out of reach and I would never get it. So to own one of these and have so many shiny titanium bits on it, yeah, this is probably one of my favourites of the whole collection. I used to use Gripshift X-Ray, bought with all the money that I earned doing paper rounds. But that was on a Raleigh M track, so that was a little bit different. This one’s just crazy light. I mean, I keep getting worried that it’s just going to get blown over in the wind.
I haven’t got scales here, so have you weighed it?
So it’s just had the TNT hub and rim put back together because the flange snapped. Because you’re not supposed to have them radial built, apparently. So that’s literally just got back together and I haven’t weighed it since. But prior to that, it was just under 20 pounds.
Well, it seems like all your dreams have come true and surely there is nothing else in this world left that you could lust after. But is there something on the wish list?
My son is desperate to win the Enduro today, so that would be good. That would be good, yeah. No, actually, I mean, it would be nice to win something. But really, it’s quite amazing being here with so many other enthusiasts and so many other amazing bikes. And everyone’s got a story and hopefully people ride them instead of just hanging them on the wall.
I’m afraid some of them definitely don’t ride them!
Yeah, you can tell some of them are just so clean! But it’s a great event and I’m pleased to be a part of it.
Well, may you have many happy rides on your vast collection. I’m quite envious. Thank you very much!
Just as I was taking photos of the Brave, the above mentioned Steve Joy appeared, and filled us in on some more of the back story of how such a rare bike came to be in the UK.
So I was just talking to Oliver about his bike collection and then he was like, ‘I’ve heard there’s this bloke here that brought some of these bikes into the country’, and then and here we found you, Steve! So can you tell us, this Brave that I’ve just been taking photographs of, how did that come to be in the country and what did you have to do with it?
About the early ’90s we were looking to set up a company importing mountain bike parts and frames from the US and I went across to Burbank, met the guys, the Teesdale, I think it’s, I can’t remember his first name, I think it’s Teesdale and he was actually the maker of them. We had a discussion and we ended up bringing five back into the UK and those five went to five team riders. And then we had a team of cross-country mountain bikers that came running on through the season and just rode those bikes. At the end of the year we sort of disbanded and nothing really much happened after that. I kept one bike and then I acquired another one a few years ago but they’ve all since gone now, one’s gone to Germany, I think the other one went across to Australia or something like that.
So there’s only about five in the country. Five of that particular Brave model or five Braves in total?
Five Braves in total, so when we imported them we had two Warriors, a Pony, a Spirit…and another Spirit…so two Spirits, a Pony and two Warriors.
So if somebody’s got the Brave Pony that’s probably the rarest one in the country then?
Yeah, that was the one I sold to go to Germany!
Oh, so we know it’s gone, okay.
The guy over in Germany has got another one as well so he’s got two now.
Greedy, greedy! And have you seen anything here at the show that particularly catches your eye?
That obviously caught my eye because it walked past me while I was sat in the van earlier and I thought, ‘Oh there’s a Brave!’, but there’s lots of lovely bikes here. I’ve still got an M2 Specialized myself that I sort of still ride every now and again but you can’t really beat the old ’90s bikes, can you?
Thank you very much for chatting, nice to spot you in the crowd!
