Mondraker came about as close as you can to a revolution in bike design when it cooked up its Forward Geometry concept back in 2011. For years, aggressive riders have been sizing-up their frames and fitting stumpy stems in a bid to achieve more confident-handling rides. Mondraker took this to its logical conclusion: pairing super-short 10-30mm stems, with extra-long top tube lengths – around 50mm longer than average for each frame size.
Now this concept has trickled down to more entry-level bikes. Applying Forward Geometry to a shorter-travel bike with a more budget spec is an interesting proposition. Will the radical geometry make up for the relative shortcomings in spec and suspension, or will the confident handling write cheques that the components can’t cash? We’ve been out thrashing the base-model Mondraker Factor to try and chase down some answers.
The crux of the spec list is the extra-short 30mm stem, which allows the bars to remain in a comfortable positon despite the extra-long top tube. 10mm or 20mm stems are also available if you want to experiment with the limits of Forward Geometry.
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Swinging a leg over the Factor, the benefits aren’t immediately obvious. Even taking into account the 30mm stem, the reach is roomy, and when out of the saddle, it’s prone to bobbing under hard pedalling, especially in the big ring. Happily the X-Fusion O2 RL shock has a lockout lever to cut this down. The 14.6kg (32.2lb) mass means you’re unlikely to win any hillclimbs on the Factor, but the wide-range 2x9 gearing and fairly steep 74.5-degree seat angle ensure you’ll get there.
We'd have liked to see even wider bars as standard for extra leverage
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