Evil's daring new gravel bike design

Evil has brought its daring mountain bike design flair to the gravel segment. The Seattle company, highly regarded for its advanced geometry and sophisticated suspension mountain bikes, is now ready to significantly disrupt the gravel bike market.

With its new Chamois Hagar, Evil has applied geometry numbers which are beyond anything you’d encounter among most conventional gravel bikes.

From its stance, there is no mistaking the Chamois Hagar for a road-bike-derived gravel frame. Evil has crafted the carbon frame and fork to possess an extraordinarily slack 66.8-degree headtube angle and those drop bars are kept in place by a very short 50mm stem.

To most gravel bikers, that headtube angle would appear way too extreme, yet Evil’s industrial design team has ensured that the Chamois Hagar’s overall geometry is deftly balanced. To achieve this, there is a roomy top tube, with reach numbers that are much greater than traditional gravel bikes. 

A size large Chamois Hagar has 440mm of reach, which allows Evil to run a short stem, improving steering agility, without compromising rider comfort.

With its low standover height and mountain bike equivalent geometry angles, the Chamois Hagar is geared towards gravel riders who aren’t afraid of some technical off-road riding. Evil has also solved one of the great annoyances which has occurred in the migration of road bike geometry to gravel bike design: front wheel toe overlap.

Thanks to the custom carbon fork and slack geometry, you are never at risk of buzzing your shoe against the front wheel, when flicking the Chamois Hagar through those tight forest singletrack corners.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of Evil’s progressive gravel bike geometry is the huge increase in stability at speed, which will create much greater confidence on long fire road descents.

As one would expect from a boutique bike brand, the Evil Chamois Hagar has an abundance of clever design details. It can home up to seven hydration bottles and Evil has been very ambitious with its dropper seatpost specification, which ranges from 125mm to 170mm, depending on frame size.

Evil is offering its Chamois Hagar in four sizes (S, M, L and XL), with prices for a frame kit starting at €2999.