So a little different from my previous retro builds…
I’m still not 100% sure why, but back in the day I always liked the almost agricultural look of the 97 Vario No Limit downhill bike where it was purely a bike built for function over aesthetics. The Vario No Limit was a very rare bike back in the day due to a very small production line and even more so with the earlier 94/95 models. Over the past few years I've been casually looking for one when a few months ago a not overly great advertised early 1995 Vario No Limit full build popped up and after rolling the dice considering the photos weren’t all that detailed I put in an offer that got accepted.
After around a month the bike arrived and the risk seemed to have paid off as apart from a bit of mud it looked pretty much unused and had some nice and some parts I wasn’t overly familiar with in the retro world.
After doing some research on the bike and after liaising with a former Vario employee who remembered building this very frame it transpired that this frame was a prototype that was from his memory a 1 of 1 prototype with the Hope disc only rear end and other subtle differences over the production version including finish quality, frame reinforcements and was again from memory only ridden for a magazine test for one day and then spent the rest of its life on display and then in storage for 25 years that would explain the very minimal wear on the bike/components.
I’m still not 100% sure why, but back in the day I always liked the almost agricultural look of the 97 Vario No Limit downhill bike where it was purely a bike built for function over aesthetics. The Vario No Limit was a very rare bike back in the day due to a very small production line and even more so with the earlier 94/95 models. Over the past few years I've been casually looking for one when a few months ago a not overly great advertised early 1995 Vario No Limit full build popped up and after rolling the dice considering the photos weren’t all that detailed I put in an offer that got accepted.
After around a month the bike arrived and the risk seemed to have paid off as apart from a bit of mud it looked pretty much unused and had some nice and some parts I wasn’t overly familiar with in the retro world.
After doing some research on the bike and after liaising with a former Vario employee who remembered building this very frame it transpired that this frame was a prototype that was from his memory a 1 of 1 prototype with the Hope disc only rear end and other subtle differences over the production version including finish quality, frame reinforcements and was again from memory only ridden for a magazine test for one day and then spent the rest of its life on display and then in storage for 25 years that would explain the very minimal wear on the bike/components.
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