What happened to Volante Wheels?
If you used to practice longboard freeriding and your thing was to doing stands ups over ten years ago, you probably know the brand Volante Wheels. It was the trendiest brand in 2012 and everyone wanted to ride them. I remember when they got released, my local store, that used to sell a pack of wheels a week, sold 20 packs of Volante Wheels the same day they arrived.
The beginning of Volante Wheels
First time that we heard about them was the 26th of july of 2012. We still dind´t know what was going to happen but it was a surprise a new brand being released.
Little by little we started to see riders from Comet Skateboards Skating these wheels and most people assumed that they were part of the same brand and they were collaborating most of the times, but it got never confirmed.
What we didn´t know yet, was that Liam Morgan was riding them in this video that was posted two days earlier.
This video was crazy at the moment. First of all, skating was terrific. It was probably the first time someone did a slide over 100ft slide with style. Don´t take us wrong, we know that the longest slide world record was already set at 150ft, but they were flat slides without that much “steeze.”
The other big news we saw with this video was that Liam Morgan was the Abec11 kid. It was the rider with more potential from that team, and seeing him live was big news. Yes, we know there was a lot of hype during that time, and rider switching teams or abec11 releasing white wheels was big news.
As crazy as it seems, we didn´t see Liam Morgan being posted in Volante´s Instagram until september of the first year. It was a picture of him, filming a video for Blood Orange, during the time that they were only a bushing company, and he was already skating his unreleased prototypes.
Volante Wheels Riders
Volante wheels had some of the best freeride riders at the moment, as we mentioned the most known rider was Liam Morgan, but they were other great riders such as Marissa Nuñez, Ed Garner, Eric Jensen and Aaron Grulic.
Volante Wheels Models
Checkers 68mm
Volante checkers was the first Model ever realesed by Volante Wheels. It was great a great option for freeriding, it was 82a what means that they were soft but not to much, it made them really slidy but not icy. It was overall a great option for freeriding and throughing huge stand up slides.
Checkers 64mm
It was the smaller brother of the original 68mm model. Being smaller made them great for freestyling because they were lighter to do tricks but they still were soft enough for sliding. They were released a year after the brand was launched, the exact date was 13th of august of 2013.
Nano Checkers 57 mm
It was the last model launched it was targeted to skaters that wanted to use small wheel but that was soft enough for sliding. It was a great option for bowl skating and for old school skating.
Liam Morgan 70mm
Liam Morgan were the first pro model that this great rider got. They were the only model that was designed for fast freeriding. It was a great option for people that loved the Volante Urethane but also wanted to go really fast and through stand ups.
Serratas 72mm
The Serratas were the only model ever designed for downhill. They were ahead of their time with the aereted core, being one of the brands to ever use it, but they never got really used in the downhill scene because the urethane had fame of being really buttery.
But, What happened to Volante?
Well, if you come here to find out what happened to them, there are few answers but we have collected all the information that is out there and brought it here so you don´t have to look all over the internet.
It all started in 2014 when Liam Morgan left the brand, after his departure a lot of riders from the brand started to leave too, most of them were joining blood orange, but some were joining other brands. During the next year they were constantly uploading content until the summer of 2015.
We don´t know what coulded cause the switch of those riders but we will assume that better contracts. Probably the lack of really known riders made the sales decrease and that lead to less funds for sponsoring new riders.
After that summer the amount of content being generated started to decrease exponentially. Only 2 pictures were posted after july of that year, one of them being the first appereance of the Nano Checkers.
The last 3 posts, from our perspective, are a little bit sad to watch. They posted: a picture of the Nano checkers in January 2016, a picture of Eric Jensen in May 2017 and a post talking about a new downhill prototype that, never got realeased in march of 2019.
It seems like they wanted to push the project once again but the lack of posting, content and being on the scene for over 3 years made it hard for them.
We analyzed their website data and saw that the stoped having real traffic on april 2019, but we have no way of knowing the exact date that they deleted the website.
It seems like they are not going to bring the brand back since the volante wheels website has been down since 2019.
If you still want to buy Volante wheels, there are still some in the market. If you go to the products that are in this article, they will lead you to pages that are still selling them.
Thank you for reading this article, if you want to know everything about wheels, we suggest you to read this. We hope you like it, don´t forget to comment we want to hear about your experience with Volante Wheels.
