Sea Otter 2016: Vehicles of Sea Otter

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Chipps is back in the office at last and is sifting through hundreds more photos from the Sea Otter. While he’s doing that, here’s a look at some of the crazy vehicles that appear at the Sea Otter – either to draw people into booths, or just as daily drivers.

Santa Cruz Pickup

We’ve already shown you some shots of the Santa Cruz bike hauler, but we don’t mind showing it again. Built as a concept car in Photoshop, but made reality by Santa Cruz’ new owners (who happen to be VW importers and whose founder helped with the original camper design)

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One of the few vehicles there worth more than the bikes it was carrying
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Complete with ‘old car’ smell

Sierra Nevada Truck

If you’re the beer sponsor of the Sea Otter Classic, you need a big truck to get the beer there, right? This huge green truck probably counts…

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Wonder what’s in the back of that then…

Titan Truck

This was just parked in the Media car park – we’re not sure which bike journo it belongs to. Certainly not that orange geek in the Singletrack T-shirt…

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Specialized Concept Bike

Lounging outside the Specialized booth appeared to be a ’70s twin shock scrambler. Look closer though and you’ll see that it’s actually a Specialized E-bike. Those are Shimano brakes, a Bluto fork, a bike chain and cassette – and those are fat bike tyres and not motocross ones. Another great design by Specialized’s creative director Robert Egger, who’s brought so many great concepts to lift. The ’74 refers to the year Mike Sinyard set up the company.

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Appearances can be deceptive

Breezer Dodge Truck

Joe Breeze has a pretty neat company truck – a 1950s Dodge stepside pickup. He was there with another mountain bike legend, Charlie Kelly, signing copies of Charlie’s book and the Fat Tire Flyer, the first ever mountain bike magazine from back in the early 1980s. There’s also talk that the pair might be doing a UK signing tour in the near future too.

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Just what you need to get you to the trails, right?
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Charlie and Joe, still both very active in the mountain bike scene
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Set in the middle of Laguna Seca race track, it’s no wonder there’s a bit of car culture here too

Fox Racing Shox

Fox showed this custom cafe racer (also with ’74 graphics – 1974 was a good year for bikes it seems as it was the year that Bob Fox started work on motorbike shocks) –

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Wonder if we’ll see this fork design coming out for bicycles any time soon, eh Fox?
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Subtle black on black
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Your trail bike probably has more travel than this
Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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