Long-standing UK road bike brand have revealed details of their new mountain bike. The Ribble HT 650 Ti. A hardcore hardtail made from titanium.

>>> Best Hardtail Mountain Bike: best reviewed mountain bikes under £500, £750 and £1000

We don’t have much info at the moment. We don’t know the pricing or the build options or the exact availability date. The bike has been produced just-in-time for this weekend’s London Bike Show and technically the bike is classed as a prototype. But it looks to be 99% the finished article.

What do we know about it? Well, we know its name (Ribble HT 650 Ti, although this may change come retail time). We know it’s made from triple butted 3AL/2.5V titanium. It takes 27.5in wheels and up to 2.6in tyres. We know it’s designed around a 150mm travel suspension fork.

We can also see internal cable routing, a few gussets here and there, a 44m headtube, bolt-thru rear axle and how about that integral double bolt seat clamp hey?

Geometry wise, it looks to be the part. It looks long, low and slack in all the right places. And it’s clearly built around modern short stem lengths.

Because we can’t help ourselves, we stuck the studio pics into an online angle-finder. By our reckoning this prototype has a 64° head angle and a 75° seat angle.

Andy Smallwood, Ribble Cycles CEO: “The HT/650/Ti project is completely aligned to the new Ribble brand strategy and further highlights our passion and expertise in product design and R&D. MTB is a new and exciting market for us so it only felt right to start our exploration with a high end hardcore Titanium platform designed by riders for riders”.

Jamie Burrow, Ribble Cycles Head of Product: “This has been an excellent project to have led. The HT/650/Ti is the result of taking the detailed and very specific product requirements and feedback from riders combined with seeing how far we can push the ride capabilities and attention to detail envelope in Hardtail MTB design. Titanium was the material of choice due to its natural material properties and unique ride characteristics”.

Darren Bishop, Ribble Cycles Senior Mechanic and MTB specialist: “Taking my years of MTB riding and testing experience and being part of the HT/650/Ti project design process, from conceptual idea through to actual full on prototype trail testing has been amazing and has only re-affirmed that the HT/650/Ti project has delivered the bike I want to ride”.

Further information including build options, exact delivery dates (summer availability is all we’ve been told) and pricing will be revealed “shortly”.

Update: spy pics from the London Bike Show

As with Ribble’s titanium road bikes, you can expect the price of the HT 650 Ti mountain bike to be very competitive. For example their CGR Ti frameset is £1,799 with complete bikes from £2,099. Obviously there’s no costly things like suspension on road bikes but it’s food for thought.