Do you MOG? Meet ENVE’s first gravel bike

Do you MOG? Meet ENVE's first gravel bike

It’s hard to hide the existence of a gravel bike when it’s been ridden in public for months by one of the discipline’s most prominent athletes, Alexey Vermeulen.

Luckily ENVE no longer has to play dumb about its off-road machine. Its formerly under wraps bike—the brand’s third new bike model in as many years—now officially has a name: MOG.

For its entry into cycling’s hottest category, ENVE has created a bike in its own vision, offering something a touch different from the rest in an increasingly crowded market. What exactly does that look like?

Let’s start with the tire clearance, which is big to say the least. It takes a maximum of 700x50mm tires, whereas 45mm-47mm is the max for most other brands, and often much less than that. Most brands are then quick to follow up with the 650b clearance. ENVE, not so much.

You can certainly run 650b, but ENVE doesn’t recommend it.

“In our experience, 700x50mm is more fun than 650x47mm,” says Jake Pantone, VP of product and brand at ENVE. He went on to compare it to the change in thinking in mountain biking over the years, with riders adopting 29ers (the same size as 700c) over 27.5-inch wheels (the same as 650b).

The MOG can fit 700x50mm tires. For reference, this is a 47mm Vittoria Terreno Dry.

It should be noted that there is also a minimum tire size of 36mm, dictated by BB drop, and ENVE pins the optimal tire range from 40mm to 44mm.

Guided by that insistence on 700c, the brand crammed in as much tire space as possible, and has also gone ahead and tuned the geometry around the larger wheels size. There are six sizes available: 49, 52, 54, 56, 58, and 60. ENVE has tried to keep the trail relatively constant across the size range to result in similar handling for every rider from the extremes to the in-betweens. Doing so required designing three different forks with differing rakes.

Each size has a chain stay length of 420mm. BB drop varies from 73mm to 77mm, and the headtube angle varies slightly from 71- to 71.5-degrees.

The bike lands somewhere in the middle between aggressive road-like geometry, and super slack and laid back.

That is all in service of creating a well-rounded gravel bike capable of racing and exploring. “We wanted to create a bike that is open to definition,” Pantone says.

But even with top tube and fork bag mounts as well as fender mounts aiding in that goal of versatility, “we don’t add exorbitant amounts of weight to add that variability,” Pantone says.

Internal cable routing

The biggest aerodynamic features come courtesy of internal cable routing (called the In-Route System), and internal downtube storage—similar to solutions from Trek and Specialized—which eliminates the need for an external flat kit. Two roll bags fit inside, one slotting toward the heatube, and another toward the bottom bracket. Of course, you can forego the roll bags and just shove in, say, an emergency wind jacket.

The internal downtube storage is similar to offerings from Specialized and Trek, incredibly in a way that complies with existing patents held by both of those behemoths.

For the home mechanic, internal routing, like on most internally routed bikes, aka most bikes today, means earmarking a couple frustrating hours for routing the cables—or outsourcing it to the local shop.

While internal routing was an aesthetic and aerodynamic no-brainer in today’s market, ENVE opted not to chase the marginal benefits of truncated aero tube shapes for this bike, deciding to prioritize the looks of the frame instead.

No complete builds, for now

ENVE began creating its own bikes in the midst of the pandemic and the supply chain difficulties that came with it, meaning securing a “meaningful volume” of groupsets, that is, enough to reliably build up complete bikes, has been difficult. That’s why the MOG will be available only as a chassis at launch.

This is what you get from ENVE (and wheels if you want to add them on). The rest of the build is up to you.

The chassis includes the frame, fork, and headset, along with a handlebar, stem, and seatpost all made by ENVE. There is an advantage here in that the component choices are a la carte, providing access to the brand’s extensive library of models and sizing to help find a good fit. There are four handlebar options that are compatible with the brand’s internal cable routing, as well as a choice between a standard or dropper post. A positive angle stem option that extends the headtube length by 40mm will arrive around May.

ENVE includes a dropper post in its chassis build options.

There is only a single color option available at launch, a tan sandy hue befitting a gravel bike.

Eventually, ENVE plans to offer complete builds, acknowledging that this chassis-only limitation hampers its ability to be a big player in the gravel sector. A bike similar to the one I tested spec’d with Campagnolo Ekar might fetch $7,000-$8,500 USD, whereas an ENVE chassis with finishing kit bought separately makes that price rise closer to $10,000.

There’s also a downside of being forced to buy ENVE’s seatpost, stem, anbd handlebar, when maybe all you really need is the frame, fork, and headset.

ENVE provides many component choices to build out the chassis.

ENVE will not be making these bike in Ogden, Utah, as it does for its high-end Custom Road model. The brand has an ownership stake in the Chinese factory where it produces the MOG, alongside other components, which the brand says provides a lot of control over the production, and a way to better translate its 16 years of carbon layup know-how into the finished product. ENVE even has its own product testing capabilities there, so it can get development results quicker, without having to ship products halfway around the world. The factory also produces bikes for Pon Holdings, whose portfolio includes Cervélo, Santa Cruz, and Cannondale.

Pricing

The chassis costs $5,500 USD/ € 5,300/ £5,300/ $9,999 AUD

Weight

ENVE says the frame weight for a painted size 56, minus the hardware, is 950 grams. My size 52 built with Campagnolo Ekar and ENVE G23 wheels, both lightweight options to be sure, put my bike at under 18 pounds.

First ride thoughts

I got out for a 70-kilometer ride with about 1,250 meters of elevation gain for my maiden voyage, taking on everything from tame hardpack dirt to loose, rocky gravel to boulder minefields.

The MOG is a little deceptive. Perhaps it’s the massive 700x47mm tires staring back at me, or the dropper post, two visual indicators I’ve come to associate with super stable, slack rides. But what it’s not, however, is a tame, laid-back ride.

There’s flare and then there’s these. ENVE’s gravel bar option trends toward the extreme.

It is a delightfully well-rounded experience. It’s planted, but not boring. You can race through twisting, rolling singletrack filled with massive rocks jutting from the ground and confidently pick a line.

At the same time, it’s far stiffer than expected, but definitely not harsh—especially when mounted with 700x47mm tires to take away all the blows from the road. Friend half wheeling you? Put a little bit more into the pedals and it quickly responds.

It remains light and nimble too despite all of its mounting points, something noticeable on the uphills. All too often, my experience with bikes outfitted with this many mounting points is one of slogging through every climb. The MOG, however, is eminently capable of being built into a light final product, even one with generously wide tires.

Otherwise, it feels hardily built, not sacrificing reinforcements around vulnerable areas like the downtube and chainstay while still breaking the 1,000-gram barrier.

It won’t be for everyone, of course. Fans of a super stable ride for all day fire road escapes will still prefer something like the Salsa Cutthroat. And there’s a litany of gravel bikes out there that are nothing more than glorified, fast handling road bikes, barely fitting in 40mm tires.

In searching for drawbacks, I found little to complain about off the bat. Things aren’t so bad when all I can lead with is that its lone available color choice is a fine but uninspiring sandy-tan number that offers all the heart racing thrill that safe, supply chain simplifying choices are known for. But, it’s not a terrible color; I just wish there were more options. There are custom decals available, however, for those with steady hands and the desire to stand out.