I remember building that bike up. Never laid eyes on the Silvio before. It had been months on my screen and I had the odd photo of the frame as it came together. That's what its like designing in the southern hemisphere and prototyping in the northern hemisphere. We picked up the boxes and took it to our hotel room and unpacked it all. Gradually put it together. I put the coffee table upside down on the arms of a lounge chair to make a place to set my tools. Late at night it was all together and my wife and I set to figuring out exactly where the decals should go. In the harsh electric down lights it was hard to really appreciate but next morning I rolled it into the hotel car park and did a couple of laps. Wow, very nice. Looked nice, felt nice, ran nice. Later I took the bike to LA to meet Tom Traylor and we spent an afternoon going over it and his many nice bikes. It was then that I decided to develop the whole new front end, which took a year to get 10 into production and shipped. Its a huge piece of work to design a totally new bike from scratch and I'm glad people like the result. William likes his and since he is a bit of a collector of rare items it was fitting to let him have it. And he fits it up with antique bicycle parts, which all fit. Wow, still blows me away. Definitely the bike for the museum one day.
At the time the other cruzbike people were not too sure where I was going and if it was what we should be investing in. For me, it was just a design passion I had to let out. There will be other revolutionary bikes come off my drawing board, but the Silvio experience will never be repeated. It can be improved upon in time I'm sure, but there will never be another world's first FWD MBB road bike.
