Kevin Saunders' custom Guru Geneo. Photo Rendering by Guru
If you could have your bike painted any way you wanted, what would it look like? Here at KGS Bikes I almost never sell a bicycle off the floor, so have floor bikes in my personal size. It allows me to use the floor bikes as rolling billboards since they represent the work I do, plus they allow me to test bikes objectively. I never sell anything I wouldn’t feel comfortable owning myself. This limits what I offer to clients as I am very picky but it assures clients that a recommendation is backed up with hands on experience.
The Genio is Guru Bicycle’s top of the line road frame. When I visited the Guru factory last November I got the opportunity to see first hand the tooling, subassemblies, manufacturing processes and quality control that Guru uses to build their frames. As a sidebar, I have been an industrial designer for decades and have been in hundreds of factories and machine shops. I have designed multi-million dollar aircraft components and know what good manufacturing is. Guru is located in Montreal, Canada, home of the aerospace manufacturer Bombardier. It was apparent that the carbon fiber materials and manufacturing techniques were similar to those used in VIP aircraft, which is most impressive.
At the end of my visit to Guru I was sitting in their design department looking at some of the unadvertised custom paint jobs they had created for clients. When I showed them pictures of my custom superbikes, we both knew that we had to build a custom Geneo for me with an incredible paint job. I told them that I wanted to see a design that represented the pinnacle of thier expertise and only asked that they include the KGS Bikes logo somewhere and to integrate stylistically some elements of the Texas flag, as I am a Texan by birth and by choice. The rendering of that new bike is shown here and I expect delivery of the frame in eight to ten weeks. I haven’t priced the custom paint yet, but the bike frame and fork is the standard $4,500. I expect the paint job will run a little over $4,000, but we will wait and see. Now the next stage occurs, just as it would if this were a client’s dream machine. Let’s see, what shall we build this bike up to be?
The first choice of components will be Campagnolo Super Record 11 speed. That part is easy. The next decision isn’t. I am torn between an SRM wireless power meter and a PowerTap. My gut feeling is to go with the SRM as this bike is being built up as a training workhorse, not a super light “weight weenie” hill bike. My Parlee Z1 already has that slot in my dream bike stable. The SRM gives me more wheel choices and if possible, I think that will be the ticket!
Thanks so much for looking and I greatly appreciate your comments.
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Thank you so much for the link and comment!
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