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TPE17: Dare Bikes heads offroad with highly adaptable gravel fondo bike concept

Dare Bikes GFX gravel gran fondo road bike concept switches tire sizes easily
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Dare Bikes GFX gravel gran fondo road bike concept switches tire sizes easily

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…

Dare Bikes GFX gravel gran fondo road bike concept switches tire sizes easily

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.

Dare Bikes GFX gravel gran fondo road bike concept switches tire sizes easily

Dare Bikes GFX gravel gran fondo road bike concept switches tire sizes easily

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.

Dare Bikes GFX gravel gran fondo road bike concept switches tire sizes easily

The bike is aimed at endurance (GFE), trail (GFX) and touring (GFt) riders, presumably with complete bike builds to be offered for each category.

Dare Bikes GFX gravel gran fondo road bike concept switches tire sizes easily

An adjustable (and removable) fender mount’s attachment points could double as hidden rack mounts.

Dare Bikes GFX gravel gran fondo road bike concept switches tire sizes easily

Dare Bikes GFX gravel gran fondo road bike concept switches tire sizes easily

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.

Photo courtesy Dare Bikes.

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.

Dare-Bikes.com

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Beat_the_trail
Beat_the_trail
6 years ago

Flexible seat tube, hidden fender mounts, relaxed geometry, sliding dropouts? Seems like a Domane and a Boone got together with a Crockett and had a creepy three-way love child. (biology isn’t my strong suite)

Greg
Greg
6 years ago

Some decent, clever, actually useful features on this one.

Dylan
Dylan
6 years ago

The fender mount could take care of the upper rack attachment points, but where would the bottom of a rack attach? Bolt it onto the sliding dropout track perhaps?

typevertigo
typevertigo
6 years ago
Reply to  Dylan

Valid concerns. I’m also curious how they’d work out mounting the forward end of the rear fender. To be fair, it is a non-rideable concept prototype.

If this were a final production bike these would be pretty serious shortcomings.

Mudrock
Mudrock
6 years ago

This is the third bike you’ve covered in the past week or so with adjustable geometry. I see a trend. And I wouldn’t trust that bridge to support any weight.

chris
chris
6 years ago
Reply to  Mudrock

does it need to? unless you’ve got really heavy mudguards…

Roger
Roger
6 years ago

Sliding dropouts = monstercross SS.
Excitement!

chris
chris
6 years ago

I’d be quite interested in something like this. sscx disc for winter then switch to geared road setup for the summer. I’m just not sure if I’d ever bother stripping it down to swap it all over twice a year. i suppose it wouldn’t be too bad if using trp hy/rd brakes as less hassle than redoing hydraulic lines… hmmm…

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