Mondraker Foxy XR

Whether or not other bike brands want to admit it, Spanish brand Mondraker is largely responsible for the long/low/slack geometry that many of us have been riding and loving over the last few years. They mightn’t have been the very first manufacturer to push this bandwagon but they were certainly there at the start, and they’ve taken it further than anyone else in terms of pushing the boundaries of how far you can go. The Forward Geometry concept, as Mondraker calls it, is now standard fare across all their trail and all-mountain models. After making waves for several years in Europe, the Mondraker range has recently found Australian distribution.

For our first taste of what Mondraker have to offer we were sent a Foxy XR to throw at our local trails; it’s their top alloy ‘quiver killer’ with 140mm of travel out back. The Foxy range is divided into three alloy and three carbon models; the two lower spec models in each material sport matching front and rear travel, however the top-level ‘XR’ models feature 20mm of extra travel up front. It’s like a reverse mullet; party out front and business at the back, and this slackens the head angle by a degree over the matching collar and cuffs of its shorter travel brethren to deliver a more gravity oriented bias.

The complete bike weight for our size medium was 13.3kg without pedals, while the frame weight isn’t unreasonable at 3,150g. Whilst there’s potential to shed a little extra weight with upgrades if you wanted, the stock Foxy is light enough to not feel like a pig on the climbs. Prices for the Foxy range start at $4,315 and go up to $10,217, with our alloy XR selling for $5,891.

I really like the shapes of the Foxy. It’s more lines and angles than curves, which lends some muscularity to its appearance despite the fairly skinny rear triangle. The humpback top tube seems to polarise opinion, but it certainly stands out from the crowd and creates a visually continuous line from the head tube to the rear dropouts.

It has all the standard inclusions for a bike of this type, including both internal and external dropper post routing, ISCG tabs for a chain guide and room for a water bottle. It can even handle a front derailleur, although the 2016 Foxy XR comes 1X11 equipped. Some people might bemoan the lack of internal cable routing, however the underneath the down tube setup with quality metal guides looks clean, is easy to service and adds a bit of protection for the frame—I’d much rather crush a cable than dent the down tube. The threaded bottom bracket will elicit a sigh of relief from mechanics, the pivot hardware is all nicely keyed into place and there’s a very effective little mud flap to stop the rather exposed rear shock from getting covered in mud by the back wheel. Overall I think the Foxy is a nicely finished and uniquely attractive bike.

Back to Forward Geometry
Because it’s such a fundamental component with most Mondraker bikes, I wanted to go over the concept of Forward Geometry. At its most basic level, it involves making the front of the bike (i.e. ahead of the bottom bracket) much, much longer than on a traditional bike, and then using a very short stem to keep the overall length from saddle to handlebar about the same. To give you some numbers, my personal ride is a Norco Range; in a large size the reach (horizontal distance from the bottom bracket to the head tube) is 433mm, which is a fairly average figure for this type of bike. On a large Foxy however, the reach is 501mm and even our medium test bike is still a whopping 478mm.

This extra length also adds considerably to the overall wheelbase; our medium Foxy has very close to 1,200mm between the wheels. When it was first developed, Mondraker’s Forward Geometry bikes came with a 10mm stem that sat up on top of the fork steerer, almost like a motorcross bike. It looked very strange and added quite a bit of height to the handlebar position, so they’ve since moved to a 30mm stem with the 10mm available as an option.

So why bother with all of this geometric chicanery you may ask? Mondraker realised that a great many riders like going downhill fast and that climbing is merely a means to that end; Forward Geometry was born from this realisation. Longer wheelbases increase your stability at high speed, and keeping your weight more rearward in the wheelbase enhances this trait even further in rough terrain.

Of course there are other ways to gain stability when things get hairy; you can slacken the head angle, or drop the bottom bracket height for example. Everything in MTB designs has its pros and cons however. An exceedingly slack head angle will stretch out the front centre but will also make the bike steer very slowly, and at low speed it’ll tend to drop excessively into corners. A very low bottom bracket will add descending security but you’ll tend to smash your pedals into every pebble whilst climbing. We’ve seen numerous combinations of these parameters being used on new-school bikes over the last few years, and for Mondraker the best option was to stick with a fairly conservative head angle and bottom bracket height whilst going hammer and tongs at the front centre length. This is what gives their bikes a truly distinctive ride quality.

Fast Forward
It’s quite strange when you first sit astride the Foxy. You look down and see the fork crown in front of your handlebar; unless you’re used to downhill bikes it’s a view you may have never seen before. Apart from the visual strangeness however, the first few pedal strokes on the Foxy XR felt particularly normal. Even with the very stubby stem there’s still obviously plenty of room to move fore and aft in the cockpit, so as I cruised up the fire road towards the head of my local singletrack descent, I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.

I accelerated into track and hit the first few turns … whoa! The super short stem made the Foxy react so quickly to steering input that I nearly oversteered off the trail. As the gradient became steeper and the pace higher, the front wheel wanted to push a straight line instead of following my instructions to turn. I quickly drew to a halt and rode back to the top.

After considering and collecting my thoughts for a few moments I went in for round two, but this time I was prepared. I pedalled up to speed and armed with the knowledge from my first run, I slammed my inside hand down to push through the first right, left then right combo. This time it came together and the Foxy blasted through the chicane with a level of precision and authority that left me a little shocked.

As my faith in the bike grew, I continued to push harder and by the end of that first descent it became clear to me that Mondraker is on to something quite special. There might be a very short adjustment period when you first ride the Foxy, but it won’t be long until you feel like you’ve been riding it all your life.

With Forward Geometry your hands sit much further behind the front wheel than with a traditional setup, so you need to keep noticeably more pressure on your hands than normal to weight the front tyre and maintain traction. This automatically puts you in an aggressive ‘attack’ position, so you really feel like you’re driving the bike from the middle, rather than hanging off the back. The long front centre means you can do this without fear of going over the bars on the first baby head or steep roll-in.

Overall it’s hard to imagine how much more descending confidence the Mondraker gives you without actually trying it. The expression ‘a downhiller’s trail bike’ has been used before, but nothing I’ve ridden fits that description better than the Foxy XR. The long cockpit lets you fine-tune the weight distribution between front and rear wheels, so you can easily find that Goldilocks point of not too far back, not too far forward, but just right. The faster and gnarlier you go, the more Forward Geometry makes sense, and the bigger your grin will be at the bottom.

Of course there is a compromise here; at low speed and in tight trails there’s no escaping that very long wheelbase, so you need to take a wider arc around turns and steer the Foxy more than you lean it. That said, it’s much more manageable than a similar wheelbase with a shorter reach and slacker head angle, and the relatively short chainstays allow you to easily lift the front wheel and tighten your line as you pedal out of turns. The short back end also keeps the Foxy feeling agile and playful when you want, or need, to leave terra firma, so to some extent it doesn’t feel as long as you might expect.

Climbing on the Foxy is relatively effortless as long as the gradient doesn’t get too steep. Once it does, the Forward Geometry works against you a little. On a couple of technical climbs, I simply couldn’t get my weight far enough forward to prevent the Foxy from wanting to loop out, whereas my ‘normal’ bike felt firmly planted—there’s no free lunch in the MTB world. It’s certainly not all doom and gloom though, because when things aren’t super steep, the long cockpit allows you to easily manage fore/aft balance to keep both wheels firmly on the ground.

Mondraker’s Zero suspension also does a great job of hugging the trail surface to maintain traction without undue pedal feedback. The more traditional bottom bracket height allows you to pedal over and through rocks without constant ground strikes, which is refreshing given that a Foxy rider is almost certainly going to earn their turns.

Zero Equals Something
On the suspension note, the Foxy uses Mondraker’s own take on a short link four-bar suspension. It’s dubbed ‘Zero’, which is supposed to be the amount of influence that braking and pedalling have on its performance. Whilst that might be stretching the friendship a little, it does nonetheless do a great job of getting the rear wheel up and over whatever presents itself without feeling sluggish, and it does equally well at absorbing quite sizeable impacts.

I set it up with 30% sag and found it gave a great balance. With the three compression settings on the Float shock, the open setting was nice and forgiving for the downhills, the middle mode offered a firmer and more poppy ride that was still compliant, while fully closed offered a solid pedalling platform. The funny thing was, no matter what trail I rode, and whether I was in the soft or middle setting, I consistently used full travel—the O-ring was always on vacation and off the end of the shock. Despite this, I can’t ever recall feeling the suspension bottom out, even when taking no-transition hucks.

This ability to consistently use full travel without feeling like you have gives the Foxy’s rear suspension a bottomless feel and makes the 160mm fork on the XR models a valid choice. I also spent some time on the test bike with a 140mm fork. In this guise it maintained most of its descending swagger whilst simultaneously getting a small boost to its climbing cred.

In terms of general spec, there’s really not much to report except that everything works pretty well. Our demo bike was a 2015 model that was kitted out as per the 2016 spec, all except the wheels, brakes and fork that is. The new Foxy XR gets a Pike up front, trades the Formula brakes for SRAM Guide R stoppers and the Mavic wheels are exchanged for DT Swiss M1900s. In either case you’ll get decent brakes but the rims are pretty narrow—when are they going to stop making road bike width rims and fitting them to mountain bikes? The Reverb seatpost is great option and for 2016 the remote moves to under the bars on the left hand side—right where you want it on a 1X equipped bike.

So what do I think of Mondraker’s Foxy XR and its strange Forward Geometry? I think it’s a very cool, very fast and very fun bike that allows you to descend fast enough to scare the crap out of yourself whilst simultaneously egging you on to go faster, and watching your back when you when you overstep the mark. It’s not the best spec’d or lightest bike for the money but it’s not a cookie-cutter bike either, and props must go to Mondraker for challenging traditional bike design and coming up with a winner.

For those who ride a lot of tight trails, or those who love steep and technical climbing as much as dropping into a brake-free chute, its flaws may outweigh its strengths. However, if you like to hit steep or rough trails with conviction, the Foxy will have you descending faster and make all of your riding more fun. Foxy indeed…

Thumbs Up
Mega fun descender, especially when it’s steep
Loads of cockpit length, even with a 30mm stem
Great suspension performance 

Thumbs Down
Long wheelbase is restrictive on really tight trails
Tough to wrangle up really steep climbs
Narrow rims 

Specifications (2016 Spec)
Frame:  Stealth EVO Alloy
Shock:  Fox Float Evol Performance 140mm Travel
Fork:  RockShox Pike 160mm travel
Headset:  Semi-Integrated sealed
Handlebars:  Mondraker Riser 740mm
Stem:  Mondraker Alloy 30mm
Shifter:  SRAM X1
Front Derailleur:  N/A
Rear Derailleur:  SRAM X1
Cassette:  SRAM X1, 10/42 11-speed
Chain:  SRAM X1
Cranks:  RaceFace Affect 30 tooth
Bottom Bracket:  RaceFace
Pedals:  N/A
Brakes:  SRAM Guide R
Wheels:  DT Swiss M1900
Tyres:  Maxxis High Roller/Ardent
Saddle:  Fizik Nisene Mg
Seatpost:  RockShox Reverb Stealth
Weight:  13.3kg without pedals (Medium frame 3,150g)
Available Sizes:  S, M (tested) L and XL
Price:  $5,891
Distributor:  Flow Bikes 0432 427 895 / www.flowbikes.com.au