What started last year as a RKT mountain bike with drop bars turned into an alloy test mule that we saw during our headquarters tour. Now, the full suspension gravel bike has a name, and a full carbon fiber future. It’s called the Niner Magic Carpet Ride, and it’s coming in 2019…

Niner wasn’t giving up much in terms of details, and this one’s a plastic 3D printed proof of concept for testing fit and finish. But it’s in full development mode. They won’t say how much travel it has on either end, but they did say they had to rework their CVA suspension design to focus on seated performance rather than the sitting and standing mix of mountain biking…and that they’ve applied for a patent on this new design. We have a video run through with them coming soon, but for now, plenty of photos.

The design offsets the rear shock to make room for an integrated fender and 2x cranksets, but it works just as well with 1x groups and wide range cassettes.

Slick cable routing takes advantage of the limited travel.

Tire clearance is pegged at 700×50 or 650B “road plus”.

One of the benefits of this design is a wide open front triangle, letting it work with frame bags and multiple bottles for bikepacking and touring. Up front, they modified a Rockshox RS-1 to reduce the travel to (we’re guessing) 30-40mm. Based on that, we’re guessing the rear will be similar.

Lockouts for both ends will make it fully rigid on pavement. There’s routing for a stealth dropper post, too, but the low rear end should still let you fit a seat pack on there. Stay tuned for the video run through soon (hint: follow @bikerumor on social media for an update notice!).

NinerBikes.com