‘Leap’ the frog made the leap to the roof – a new design element for 2010

The annual U.S. migration of the SRAM Neutral Race Support (NRS) Volvo XC-70's began last Thursday as the final decals were being applied to the first of the eight cars that will then spread their tires (yep, you just read that analogy) and relocate to service courses across the country. SRAM's NRS program is the nation's premiere cycling support crew that provides neutral service to professionals and amateurs at over 120 cycling events annually. Once fully decaled the cars will flock (did it again) to locations including Rhode Island, Illinois, Texas, California, and Virginia. Each car can expect to travel between 50 and 80,000 miles this year.

Vinyl decals sheets roll off the printer, ready to be applied

The SRAM NRS program starts with a top notch staff that includes several of the nations premiere technicians; Butch Balzano, Jose Alcala, and Chad Contreras are the three mainstays. Each of their Volvo XC-70’s, capable of hauling up to six Specialized bikes, tools, spare parts, pumps, wheels, coolers, a virtual rolling service course. The XC-70’s are beautiful cars and, according to Butch, drive like a dream, even when fully loaded.

Butch walks by a few of the finished cars

SRAM adopted this program in 2006 and will enter their fifth year of service as ‘SRAM NRS.’ Attached are some pictures that take you through the process of turning these Volvo’s from Clark Kent in to Superman (yep, another analogy), but it’s really only a change of outfits, but we at SRAM are incredibly proud of what the entire program accomplishes every year and the top notch service they provide.

The Volvo, naked, moments before the decals are applied, the process takes a few hours for each vehicle

The side gets wrapped, slowly but surely

…very nice…

Window perforations being printed, these go on the side and rear glass, easy to see out but not easy to see in. This helps protect the spare wheels, tireds, tubes and parts stored in the car from direct sun exposure and heat

Very nice, looking forward to seeing these cars on the road…

Thanks to Jose Alcala and Justin Costa for photo and editorial contributions.