Almost every component on the Hope HB912 is made in one building in Barnoldswick, Lancashire. The hubs, the brakes, the cranks, the headset, the rocker link, the stem and bar, even the bonded alloy junctions that hold the carbon tubes together: Hope machines them in-house. The complete bike costs around £7,950, the frameset £3,950. That price buys a 120mm trail bike with almost none of the badge-soup parts spec you find on mainstream carbon at the same money. The HB912 first appeared at the Les Gets World Cup and was shown in full at Core Bike 2026, with retail availability set for the end of summer 2026.
This is the shorter-travel sibling to the HB916, Hope’s high-pivot enduro race bike. The interesting part is what Hope chose to leave behind.
What Hope Built: 120mm Without the High Pivot
The HB916 runs an idler-driven high-pivot suspension layout aimed at smashing through enduro tracks at speed. The HB912 drops that entirely. Instead it uses a conventional four-bar linkage to deliver 120mm of rear travel, with a CNC-machined rocker connecting the carbon seatstays to the shock.
That decision tells you who the bike is for. High-pivot layouts buy rearward axle paths and bump-eating composure, but they add chain-management hardware, drivetrain drag, and weight, all of which matter less on a short-travel trail bike that spends most of its life pedalling rather than bombing World Cup descents. By going four-bar, Hope kept the platform simpler, lighter, and more efficient under power, which is the right call for a 120mm bike.
The frame keeps the HB916’s distinctive look. The front triangle is built from hand-layered carbon tubes bonded to machined aluminium lugs, with carbon seatstays and chainstays. It is a construction method almost no other brand uses, because almost no other brand owns the machine shop to do it. As BikeRadar noted when the bike was revealed, the HB912 keeps the HB916’s tube-and-lug aesthetic while ditching its high pivot. The show bikes wore a Cerakote fade to a raw green finish; production frames are slated for a raw black.
The stock build leans on that vertical integration. Suspension comes from RockShox, a Pike up front and a Super Deluxe air shock out back, and the drivetrain is SRAM’s wireless XO Transmission. The dropper is a OneUp. Beyond those, the parts are Hope: brakes, wheels, hubs, headset, cockpit, the lot. For a brand whose whole identity is making its own components, a near-complete Hope build is the point.
The Geometry
Hope has published numbers for the medium so far, with the full size run to follow ahead of the late-summer launch. Here is what is confirmed:
| Measurement | Hope HB912 (Medium) |
|---|---|
| Rear travel | 120mm (130mm with longer-stroke shock) |
| Fork travel | 130mm (140mm option) |
| Wheel size | 29in front and rear |
| Head angle | 66° (65° with adjustable headset cups) |
| Seat tube angle | 77.5° |
| Reach | 465mm |
| Chainstay length | 435mm |
| Sizes | M, L, XL |
A few things stand out before the rest of the chart even arrives. A 465mm reach on a medium is long by short-travel standards; several brands still put that number on a large. The seat angle is steep at 77.5°, steeper than many enduro bikes. And the chainstays are a substantial 435mm, longer than the rear ends on most 120mm trail bikes. None of that is accidental.
Why 435mm Chainstays and a 77.5-Degree Seat Angle Matter
Short-travel trail bikes have spent years getting shorter and snappier out back to feel playful. Hope went the other way. A 435mm chainstay on a 120mm bike keeps weight more centred between the wheels, which trades a little low-speed flickability for noticeably more composure when the trail points down or gets fast. On a bike with only 120mm to work with, that stability is what stops a short-travel chassis from feeling nervous when you push it past its travel.
The 77.5° seat tube angle is the climbing half of that equation. A steep seat angle rotates your hips forward over the bottom bracket, which keeps the front wheel planted on steep climbs and puts you in a more efficient pedalling position. Pair it with the longer rear end and you get a bike built to cover ground and climb honestly, then hold its line on the way back down, rather than a pure jib bike that runs out of composure at speed.
For taller riders this combination is unusually well judged. A long rear-centre paired with a long reach keeps front and rear weight distribution balanced as the frame scales up, which is exactly where many trail bikes fall apart for anyone over six foot. If you have ever felt the front wheel go vague on a steep climb because the chainstays could not keep pace with a stretched front-centre, the HB912’s proportions are aimed squarely at that problem. (For the underlying principles here, see our guide on how to read a bike geometry chart.)
Two Bikes in One Frame: the Travel and Head Angle Adjustments
The HB912 is more configurable than its single-frame, single-build catalogue entry suggests. Two adjustments change its character meaningfully.
The first is travel. With the stock shock the bike runs 120mm rear and a 130mm fork, a true short-travel trail setup. Swap to a longer-stroke shock and a 140mm fork and it becomes a 130mm rear, 140mm front bike with a more aggressive bent, closer to a do-everything trail bike than a downcountry weapon. Hope built the linkage to accept both, with the switch coming down to shock stroke, 47.5mm for the 120mm setting or 50mm for 130mm, as off-road.cc detailed from the launch. The same frame covers two distinct travel brackets depending on how you spec it.
The second is the head angle, adjusted through Hope’s own adjustable headset cups between 65° and 66°. One degree sounds minor, but it shifts the bike from a 66° trail-bike steering feel to a 65° setting that suits the longer-travel configuration and steeper terrain. Run the bike at 120mm and 66° for efficient trail duty, or 130mm and 65° for rowdier riding, and you have effectively bought two bikes in one frame.
This kind of built-in adjustability has become the norm on 2026 trail bikes, but the HB912 does it without flip chips or proprietary hardware, using parts Hope already makes for the open market.
How It Compares to Mainstream Short-Travel Trail Bikes
The HB912 lands in the same travel bracket as bikes like the Yeti SB120 and the Santa Cruz Tallboy, both 120mm rear, 130mm front, 29in trail bikes. Where it differs is philosophy, and price.
| Bike | Rear / front travel | Head angle | Reach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hope HB912 | 120 / 130mm | 65 to 66° | 465mm (M) |
| Yeti SB120 | 120 / 130mm | 66.5° | 475mm (L) |
| Santa Cruz Tallboy | 120 / 130mm | 65.5° | 475mm (L) |
Read that reach column carefully: the HB912 figure is a medium, the other two are larges, so the Hope is genuinely long for its size rather than simply matching a large. The head angle range brackets both rivals, slack enough at 65° to chase the Tallboy’s descending bias, steep enough at 66° to keep the SB120’s lighter-footed trail feel. On numbers alone the HB912 is competitive with the best short-travel trail bikes from the established brands. (We have full charts for both the Yeti SB120 and the Santa Cruz Tallboy if you want to dig deeper.)
The gap is the build and the bill. A Yeti SB120 or Tallboy at £8,000 buys you a carbon frame hung with a mix of SRAM, Fox or RockShox, and third-party finishing kit. The HB912 at the same money buys a frame built one valley over from where the brakes and wheels were machined, with a parts spec that is overwhelmingly one brand’s own work. Whether that is worth it depends entirely on what you value, but it is a genuinely different proposition rather than a more expensive version of the same thing.
Sizing, and the Tall-Rider Question
Hope offers the HB912 in three sizes: M, L and XL. There is no small, which says something about the intended buyer. This is not a bike chasing the entire market; it is aimed at average-height-and-up riders who want a long, stable, efficient trail bike.
As a 6’4″ rider, that sizing logic is encouraging. The 465mm medium reach suggests the large and XL will be genuinely long, and the 435mm chainstays mean Hope is at least thinking about rear-centre as the frame grows. The open question is whether the chainstay length is size-specific or fixed across all three sizes. The best 2026 trail bikes lengthen the rear end on bigger frames to keep weight distribution consistent, and a fixed 435mm stay would leave the XL slightly front-heavy compared with the medium. Hope has not confirmed this yet, and it is the single geometry detail I would want answered before putting down a deposit at this price.
For now, taller riders can take the available numbers as a good sign. A brand that puts 465mm of reach on a medium and skips the small entirely is not building a bike for the average of the bell curve.
Who the HB912 Is Actually For
The HB912 is not trying to be the best-value 120mm bike, and it is not trying to be the lightest. At roughly £7,950 it is a deliberate, low-volume object built by a brand that would rather machine its own headset than buy one in. The geometry backs that up: a long, stable, steep-seated trail bike that climbs honestly and stays composed when short-travel bikes usually start to feel out of their depth, with enough built-in adjustment to cover two travel brackets and two steering characters.
It will not be for everyone, and the price guarantees it will be rare on the trail. But the combination of in-house manufacturing, sensible short-travel geometry, and real configurability makes it one of the more genuinely interesting trail bikes of 2026. When the full size run and final weights land ahead of the late-summer launch, the HB912 will be worth a much closer look, particularly for taller riders who have spent years compromising on rear-centre length. For more on where the rest of the category is heading, see our breakdown of 2026 mountain bike geometry trends.