Spanish bike maker UNNO follows up their trail bike & XC hardtail with the new limited edition Horn full-suspension XC race bike. With 100mm of short-link rear travel the full carbon Horn is set to be one of the lightest and most lust-worthy cross-country mountain bikes you can buy. It’s been a few years in development – Unno are adamant about taking their time with new models – but the first pre-order is getting shipped out this week.
Unno Horn lightweight carbon 100mm XC mountain bike
From the same minds that brought the superlight carbon DH bike being raced by Greg Williamson on the World Cup, and the lightest production XC hardtail, now comes a suitably lightweight 29er full-suspension XC bike, too. The new Horn is going to clock in as one of the lighter XC frames out there, but Unno was more concerned here with building a modern aggressive race bike that throw down when the trails get steep & technical.
Unno’s calling card is probably their detailed carbon design, development & production – all in-house, all by hand – in their Barcelona workshops. It’s pretty unique in the cycling industry that the bikes are actually conceived, engineered & manufactured in the same place by the same team, but that is one reason it takes Unno around four years to develop a new bike.
That attention to detail shows through more than just in the cool carbon layup exploded view of their limited edition frames, which is laid by hand over EPS forms, but into the proper details of the bikes, as well.
Geometry
But more than just light, made-in-Spain carbon, Unno are the same people that pioneered the extra long, low & slack Forward Geometry working for Mondraker that has come to define modern trail bikes. The XC Horn gets a similar approach that Unno says they have now modified to make bikes that are just fun to ride – balancing stability at speed with a playful nature that you can still slide through berms.
As with the rest of their limited edition bikes, premium light Unno carbon comes in one size only. It’s a largish medium, and if it fits you… great. If not, tough luck. With that one size you get a slack 67° head angle, a 74-ish seattube, super short 418mm chainstays, and 441mm of frame reach.
Tech details
The Horn is a 100mm XC bike with a short-link four bar suspension design and a one-piece rear triangle. Its rear end is asymmetric with a non-driveside strut connecting the front of the seat & chainstays, allowing room for up to a 29 x 2.4″ tire. Its leverage ratio is optimized for medium volume air shocks, and gets a regressive curve to compensate for air shocks’ progressive spring rate.
The bike is designed for optimal pedaling efficiency with 1x drivetrains and a 32-36T chainring for ideal anti-squat sitting at 30% sag.
The final production Horn with a UD carbon finish tips the scale at 1620g with paint, its rear thru-axle & all the shock hardware. Add in the shock itself, and that comes to 1882g.
Into the details, Unno gives the Horn a neat & tidy rear brake post mount that tucks the brake caliper into the chainstay for max brake stiffness & no chatter.
Cable routing also is integrated into the design of the frame – from headtube to dropout – with molded rubber entry & exits, and guided internal routing, plus stealth dropper seatpost routing. The rear dropout is also reinforced with extra carbon, and uses an external clamping design that doesn’t require any thread into the frame.
Unno uses a large integrated design seatpost clamp that delivers even clamping, as well as a rubber lip seal to keep out contamination.
The bike features a 73mm threaded bottom bracket, a 1.5″ tapered headtube with internal headset, a 31.6mm seatpost, molded seat & chainstay protection, gets Boost 148 spacing, room for a large water bottle & a 160mm rear brake.
Pricing & availability
The first production Horn is being shipped out to the first pre-order customer this week. Unno says over the next few weeks frames will be produced to cover all the buyers who had reserved bikes ahead of time, after which they will open up sale of the bike on their website for this year’s remaining bikes.
Unno will only sell 50 of each of their frames a year (each is individually numbered), so it’s unclear how many will remain after these pre-orders get filled. As for the cost, the Horn is available as a frameset with a Fox Float Factory shock starting at 5000€. Once the bikes go on sale officially, expect to fins ‘affordable’ complete bike build options from around 6000€, and a super premium build likely for ~10,000€.
