After working for years as an OEM manufacturer for others, Dare Bikes launched their own brand early last spring. Now, their line is growing with the new GF model, and it’s bringing some impressive design features to accommodate the gran fondo, gravel and touring crowds all in a single frame. Clever touches allow it to run road, gravel and mountain bike tires, while letting you tweak the wheelbase to optimize for each…
The most visually striking feature is the curved seat tube, which looks like it’s done to tuck the rear wheel up but is really there to improve rider comfort. The design allows the seat tube to flex under the rider’s weight, helping mitigate bump impacts reaching the saddle.
The bike is designed to fit anything from a 700×25 up to 27.5×2.1, or 700×40. To keep the gap from becoming too large, and to dial the wheelbase for the riding style, sliding dropouts with integrated brake mount are used for about 20mm of axle movement. Final specs and wheel base lengths weren’t dialed yet, this was a non-rideable prototype.
The bike is aimed at endurance (GFE), trail (GFX) and touring (GFt) riders, presumably with complete bike builds to be offered for each category.
An adjustable (and removable) fender mount’s attachment points could double as hidden rack mounts.
Other nice touches include an integrated chain keeper and hidden battery mount, the latter allowing you to run both an internal Di2/EPS battery and a dropper seatpost. No word on availability or pricing just yet.
Also new is a disc brake version of the MR1s DB (Mountain Race) road bike, as well as a new women’s specific rim brake version called MR1s W.
