OPEN X Yeti: A gravel bike with mountain bike pedigree?
The OPEN U. P. won our group test for a reason. This unusual cocktail of road and mountain bike genes makes it an impressive machine both on and off the road. To emphasise its off-road skills OPEN is now offering the U. P. in Yeti’s legendary turquoise finish.
The story behind this collaboration is quickly explained: the paths of OPEN-founder Andy Kessler and Yeti CEO Chris Conroy crossed regularly. After a while they must have realised that they follow a similar philosophy; they both build bikes with their own needs as a starting point. And these seem to be pretty similar!
The geometry of the OPEN U.P. remains unchanged and the same goes for the features of its frame; flatmount-standard for the disk brakes, quick release axles and an OPEN U-Turn-fork. This last one combined with the stiff head tube offers the same superb steering precision we praised in issue #006. Wide mountain bike tires on 27.5″ make the OPEN pretty special and caused a stir since its launch. These are obviously maintained on the special Yeti edition.
Whenever the editors from our sister magazine ENDURO see a hint of Yeti-turquoise their hearts start racing uncontrollably. After all, for a long time the legendary Yeti paint-job has stood for superb mountain bikes built with unique technologies.
If you want to buy one of these exclusive OPEN U.P. X Yeti, go to their webpage. Unfortunately all models are sold out and if there is enough demand a second series will be produced in the near future. For € 3,200 you will get this exclusive frameset but at this stage we can’t tell you when this might happen. Still not convinced? You can read up all of the advantages and disadvantages of the U. P. in our last group test!
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