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Vintage Serrota choice question - Atlanta or Nova Special X

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Vintage Serrota choice question - Atlanta or Nova Special X

Old 10-20-15, 07:13 AM
  #1  
jeff44
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Vintage Serrota choice question - Atlanta or Nova Special X

I want to add a vintage Serrota to my small collection. I found two models within my budget: a 25th Anniversary Atlanta or a Nova Special X. Both are my size and seem well cared for and will not need much effort to be road worthy. Are they equal in terms of build quality? If you were me, which one would you choose? I am leaning toward the Atlanta only because of the anniversary year aspect.

Thanks, Jeff
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Old 10-20-15, 07:36 AM
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Without knowing more, I'd say the Atlanta. The Nova Special X was Serotta's "stock" option (i.e. not custom), made from SLX tubing, I think. Very nice bike, but the Atlanta was higher end, with Serotta's Colorado Concept tubing.
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Old 10-20-15, 07:40 AM
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Both bikes are prized and collectable. Both the Nova Special X and the Atlanta we ment to be sold in volume at a moderate price compared to the more exclusive race bikes. The Nova Special X is built with Columbus SLX or SPX tubing. It's geometry and design provided the bike with a comfortable ride while remaining stiff while sprinting or climbing.

The Atlanta and the CSI shared geometry but little else.

The tubeset, lugset, fork crown and dropouts were all different. The idea behind the Atlanta was to build a bike that rode as well as the CSI but sold at a lower price due to the lower cost of materials and less time being spent on aesthetic metal work like dropout shaping.

The Atlanta was not offered, at least at first, with any custom options to help keep costs in check. Unfortunately the company slowly slipped on it's "no custom" pledge over time and one could get a custom Atlanta with all the bells and whistles of a CSI. This effectively was the end of the Atlanta as it was basically a CSI being sold at a considerably lower cost while taking the same amount of time to build.

The Atlantas was the real performance bargain of the time.

Hard to go wrong with either.
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Old 10-20-15, 08:05 AM
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A lot of the time it's better to have a stock bike than a custom built to someone else's order. I would not be discouraged by a Serotta being stock, indeed I may consider it a selling point.
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Old 10-20-15, 09:17 AM
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Originally Posted by KonAaron Snake
A lot of the time it's better to have a stock bike than a custom built to someone else's order. I would not be discouraged by a Serotta being stock, indeed I may consider it a selling point.

This is a VERY good point. Serotta sure built some strange custom bikes!
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Old 10-20-15, 11:17 AM
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True. On the other hand, they also built some very different stock bikes. I've owned four of them, and the first three (Phinney, Nova and Colorado II) left me cold. But the '83 Club Special in SL I picked up this past Spring is a marvelous bike and has seen quite a bit of mileage this season. I always felt I was working harder to maintain speed on the first three, but the CS just flies.

YMMV
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Old 10-20-15, 11:29 AM
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I really like the Colorado II...which was made stock and custom.
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Old 10-20-15, 05:28 PM
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I have not ridden a Nova but I have an Atlanta and used to have 2. (See my avatar) The first one has a steel fork and then I got one with a carbon fork. I prefer the steel fork so the other one moved on. I don't think I will ever let it go. OK maybe if a CSI with Harlequin paint fell from the sky and it rode better. The Atlanta gets the most saddle time by far. It's not that light but doesn't feel heavy. I have a 6700 group on it with some 1500 gram wheels. I love it. It's stiff enough but I can ride it all day. It climbs well too with that springy steel jump. As always this is just my 2¢.

You could ask over at the Paceline forum. Most likely someone there will have ridden both. That is where I snagged my first Atlanta.
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