Kross had a hand-full of new bikes to show at Eurobike that piqued our interest, both on the trail and on the road. The company based in Poland has been stepping up their game in the last couple years, and had a few of their all new trail bikes on display at Eurobike. That green Soil is an 130mm travel aluminum bike, while the Reynolds 853 bike behind it is modern take on a trail hardtail, offered in both 27.5″ and 29″ varieties. Add to those a new series of carbon disc-brake road race bikes and some TT/triathlon bikes both under the Vento name, and Kross has filled out a pretty solid range with their new offerings.
Join us after the break for a closer look at all of the bikes, with some more of their highlights…
The Soil trail bikes come in 3 spec versions that share the same butted and shaped aluminum frame, with Kross’ Revo Virtual suspension layout (a virtual pivot point system.) The Soil aims to be that all capable full-suspension bike to have fun on everything from winding singletrack to bikeparks.
This top end Soil 3.0 gets Fox Factory Kashima suspension front and rear, a SRAM X01 drivetrain, Guide RS brakes, a Reverb dropper, and DT M1700 wheels. The 27.5″ wheeled Soil has 130mm of travel front and rear, and uses a 12x142mm thru-axle with a 15x1oo up front. The Soil 3.0 has a claimed weight of 13kg and comes in 4 sizes.
The Smooth Trail is a 27.5″+ aggressive steel hardtail, set up with a 120mm Reba Boost fork. The Reynolds 853 bike gets a modern tapered headtube with an internal headset and both top and downtube gussets. Cable routing is all external and includes semi-internal stealth dropper post routing for the included Reverb. The bike gets modular dropouts and comes set for a 12mm Boost thru-axle, but other dropouts should be available. Wheels are spec’ed as WTB Scraper i45s with 2.95″ Nobby Nics, and the drivetrain is SRAM GX1 with Avid DB1 hydraulic brakes. Only one complete bike spec is available with a claimed weight of 13.9kg.
A 29″+ version called the Pure Trail shares almost all of the same details on its 853 frame, as well as a near identical spec. The 29er shares a size-appropriate version of the WTB Scraper wheels and keeps the GX1 group, but does skip the dropper for a standard seatpost. Little other detail than what we were able to get out of the Kross rep was available on these steel bikes so far. They aren’t in any of the English or Polish catalogs yet, but do show up partially in the German versions missing most data, so we are not sure how wide their distribution will go.
On the road side of things, Kross deepened its road race line-up this year with a big expansion of the carbon Vento range. First up for 2016 this top-of-the-line Vento 9.0 joins the next two road bikes in switching over to disc brakes. Now Kross’ top three-spec’ed road bikes are all disc-brake only.
The new frameset builds on last year’s top 7.0, carrying over a lot of features (and some vestigial caliper brake mounts it appears) with an updated post-mount disc on the frame’s rebuilt chainstay. The new 9.0 gets a spec bump as well, now moving up with Dura-Ace Di2, DT RC28 Spline clinchers, and Zipp SL bar, stem, and seatpost. The whole new bike has a claimed weight of 7.5kg.
Two more new disc version of the Vento will be available. The Vento 8.0 gets an almost identical build, merely swapping in Dura-Ace mechanical/hydraulic to save some money, and apparently add 100g along the way. The new Vento 7.0 is built up with a mechanical/hydraulic Ultegra groupset and DT R23 Spline aluminum clinchers, and Easton EC70 controls. All three bikes share the same carbon frame in a 4 size run, and the same tapered 1.5″-1.125″ fork. As there is a lot of carry over from the previous caliper-braked Vento (which is still available from models 6.0 down to 3.0), the disc brake bikes stick with QRs front and rear for now.
For a quicker take on things, Kross has dialed up the aero on the base road bike into the four levels of Vento TR. Singled out as a triathlon bike the Vento TR doesn’t have too drastic of shaping (or angles from what we are told), and will likely be equally happy on a TT course (lack of UCI sticker not withstanding.) The frameset does get aero tubing profiles throughout, but curiously sticks exclusively with external cable routing, and not the cleanest at that.
The bike does get a pretty Tri-specific kit, with a snub nose ISM saddle, no/negative offset post, and a Vision Team aero bar setup. Otherwise, the components are pretty standard quality stuff. The Vento TR 4.0 gets an Ultegra build with DT R32 wheels to come in at 9.2kg. The 3.0 drops down to 105 with 105/Alex wheels at 9.4kg; while the 2.0 gets the same 105 build, but drops down to an aluminum version of the frame also at 9.4kg; and lastly the 1.0 takes that down to a Microshift/Sora mix and up to 9.6kg.
The new carbon frameset though, does get an overall aero treatment, with a short bulbous aero headtube that flows smoothly into the shaped top and down tubes, will come in 5 standard sizes. Instead of the fork transitioning directly into the downtube, it takes the opposite approach and the straight steerer-ed fork narrows at the headtube, and the downtube keeps its distance back to allow air to more smoothly around. Out at the back, a set of hollow, horizontal track ends allow the wheel to be slammed forward to get the tire close into the seattube cut.
Pricing wasn’t yet available for any of the bikes, but availability was expected to be in shops by early 2016.
