You probably weren't expecting this photo on our blog:

But Marc, our photographer friend, is a big Land Rover Defender fan and of course an OPEN fan and we like his new ONE+ so much, we're making it our new Bike Of The Month. As for the name, the original Defender is obviously a 4x4, but in keeping with our Relentless Simplicity mantra, we're sticking to a simpler 2x1 system. Here is Marc's story:

Like most photographers, I'm a gear junkie.

And part of that gear addiction is also for cars. I like cool vintage cars, and especially 4x4 models. The classic Land Rover Defender is one of my favorites and when I heard last year that the English brand was stopping the production of its iconic metal box on wheels at its plant in Solihull, it was a sad day.

So when the time came to build my own OPEN ONE+, I wanted to build a bike that can be simple, all-terrain, maintenance free and obviously, cool looking. I settled on the Plus 27,5 x 3" wheel platform, and when I was thinking about the colors for the Ready-To-Paint frame [in case you're wondering, we're all sold out of ONE+ RTP frames - gv], the classic old Defender HUE166 came to my mind!

So with the help of the paint masters at KORA Designs in Spain, we start searching for the classic "Pastel Green" that was used in the first units of the Defenders few decades ago, and I think we came up with a very close match (even getting the right tones is always difficult, as judging them on the screen) To round it up, we use a few touches of "Sand" color in places like the OPEN letters on the toptube and the bottle cages, similar to the soft roofs that the Defender models of the 50's used back then.

Custom-painting the Lauf fork in the same color scheme was not easy, because it was a red fork in origin, so we had to sand it and spray it from scratch (don't try this at home). It took a while...

Overall I'm pretty happy on how the "green monster" came out, even if I was not 100% sure how was going to look when we started with the project! Some people told me to keep it matte black, and that I was crazy to paint it in such a weird color, but hey, you never know if you never try...

Stay with us and we'll share a full photo gallery next week, and a full list of specs on our third blog about this bike !