'A lot roadie, a little groadie': first ride impressions of the all-new Enve Fray, an endurance bike designed for and by former road racers

Initially planned for a 2023 release, Enve Composites today officially launched its poorly kept secret, The Fray. 

After bringing to market a custom road bike, a WorldTour-capable road racing bike and a gravel steed in the span of just three years, the Fray is meant to fill the one remaining gap in the American manufacturer's drop bar line-up: an endurance bike. 

But not just any endurance bike. The Fray is Enve's vision of 'the definitive all-road machine' – designed for those "who came from road racing and are now looking for broader two-wheeled objectives but performance is still critical." 

As Jake Pantone, Enve's VP of Product and Brand, put it: the Fray is "a lot roadie, a little groadie" and aims to meet the demands of the modern road rider by pairing a road racing pedigree with all-road features like wider tire clearance, in-frame storage and a fit comfortable for all-day adventures in the saddle. 

While classified as an 'all-road' or 'endurance' bicycle, Enve emphasizes that the Fray is by no means a slouch.  

"The Fray is for riders who want speed, versatility, and max performance," Pantone says. "This is a [Personal Best] bike, not a sleepy comfort road bike. It's a performance bike in every way."

Enve is so confident in the performance aspect of the Fray that it offered the bike up for team TotalEnergies to ride at last week's Paris-Roubaix. But since the Melee clears 35mm tires just fine, the riders opted to stick with their designated race bikes. 

Let's meet The Fray.

The Fray's Key Features

• Geometry optimized for 31-35mm tires but will fit max 700 x 40mm tires on a 1x groupset or 700 x 38mm tires on a 2x build. 
• Lightweight and durable carbon construction weighing in at 900 grams +/- 2% on a painted 56cm frame sans hardware
• Hidden hoses and wires through Enve's IN-Route System and components
• 1x or 2x drivetrain compatibility
• Threaded T47 bottom bracket 
• SRAM UDH compatible 
• Features the Enve cargo bay and bags for in-frame storage 

• Accessory mounts on toptube and downtube
• Fender compatibility
• Aerodynamic tube shapes and design
• Same cam-tail seatpost as seen on the Melee
• First Enve bike to launch with three colorway options
• 7 frame size options ranging from 47cm to 60cm with four unique fork rakes among them.
• A la carte build options
• Frames are backed by Enve's factory warranty and incidental damage protection
• Price: the chassis retails for $5,500 / £5.500 / AUD 9,999 / €5,799 and includes the frame, fork, headset, stem, handlebar and seatpost.

NOT a gravel bike

Enve entered the frameset market in 2021 with its US-made Custom Road bike followed by the Melee road racing bike —manufactured at their overseas factory—the following year. In 2023, Enve made its first foray into gravel with the MOG, and the Fray is slotted somewhere between categories. The Fray is Enve's fourth bike in four years, and with it, the Utah-based company continues its brand evolution from aftermarket carbon wheel and component specialists to a full-service bicycle brand.

What's interesting about Enve's line-up of bikes is that each model kind of blurs the lines of its designated box. While the Melee is currently being raced on the WorldTour by team TotalEnergies, gravel privateer Alexey Vermeulen proved that it is also perfectly capable of being raced on the unpaved roads when he won the 2023 Belgian Waffle Ride California aboard the Melee with 35mm tires. The MOG meanwhile pairs lightweight carbon construction, aerodynamic tube shapes and 700c-only wheels with beefy tire clearance, a slacker geometry and fork mounts, making it both a gravel racer and bikepacking companion. And now the Fray, again, leads with versatility. 

When set up with a 1x drivetrain, the Fray has clearance for 40mm tires for mixed-surface riding (38mm tires on a 2x drivetrain). It also sports accessory mounts and an in-frame storage solution. Yet Enve is clear in that the Fray was designed for the road, stating: "at a glance, the Fray may appear to be equal parts Melee and MOG, but trust us when we say, this apple falls much closer to the Melee's tree."

The Melee kinship is apparent in the bike's geometry and handling characteristics, which were optimized around 31-35mm tires even if the Fray can clear a 40mm tire.

Geometry-wise, compared to the Melee, the Fray is only slightly taller and elongated, sporting an average of 2cm more stack for a less aggressive position and a wheelbase that's just 1.6cm longer. The headtube angle is almost just as steep with a mere 0.7mm differentiating the Fray from the top-end racer. 

"The Fray delivers a ride that is both dynamic and confidence inspiring. This is pure performance for the long road, rough road, and really any road," Enve states. Key word here being "road."

The short wheelbase and steep headtube angle would really limit the bike's abilities to handle technical off-road terrain and steep pitches, Pantone warns. "If you plan on only running a 40mm tire, you may want to give the MOG a look."

These days, you can't talk about road performance without mentioning aerodynamics and sure enough, Enve took the Fray into the Mercedes GP Wind Tunnel for testing. 

The Fray was designed with Enve's "real world fast" aero technologies, which take a holistic approach to performance, balancing aerodynamic efficiencies with desired ride characteristics, and evaluating the interaction of the wheels, bike frame, and rider both in the wind tunnel and on the open road.

On the Fray, aerodynamic considerations are seen in the tube shapes, the cam-tail seatpost (same as the Melee) and the fully hidden wires and cables. 

The end result is that in the wind tunnel, at 40kph speeds and 0 to 15 degree yaw angles, the Fray lags just 3.3 watts behind the Melee with both frames outfitted with Enve's the brand's SES line of components, wheels and tires.

Riding the Fray

I got to test the Fray on the winding roads of California's central coast. For three days, we resided near the town of Paso Robles with its sprawling rolling hills adorned with ranches, vineyards, oak groves, and golden grasslands. The rugged coast within reach of a 40-mile bike ride. 

Sun-cracked and weather-worn, the roads here can be rough but also pleasantly low-trafficked. Paired with some gravel, they served as the perfect testing ground for this all-new, all-road bike.

The 50cm Fray chassis for testing was kitted out with a Shimano Ultegra Di2 groupset and Enve's SES line of components including SES 4.5 wheels wrapped in 35mm SES tubeless tires. 

Even in California, the weather doesn't always play nice and so, hoping to dodge the worst of the springtime rain, we tackled our big ride first. After a 30-mile shakeout ride upon arrival, we set out for a 75-mile adventure the next morning. With 80 percent of the way paved and  20 percent not, some decently long climbs, steep pitches, speedy pacelines along Highway 1, good camaraderie and a mid-ride coffee shop stop —this day perfectly encapsulated what the Fray was made for.

With its tall stack height, the Fray's geometry is certainly less aggressive than a race bike, but it doesn't force you in an all-out, wind-catching upright position either. The geometry essentially accomplishes what many (non-racing) riders are inclined to create with the use of headset spacers and stem angles: a position that eases the strain on the lower back, neck, and shoulders for all-day riding comfort and a more evenly distributed weight across the bike for confident handling. But instead of an unsightly stack of spacers or, worse, riser stems, you get the sleek front-end aesthetics people love about speedy road bikes.

Not that this bike isn't speedy. Enve was right in hammering home the fact that the Fray was made to perform, no matter its endurance bike distinction. While some endurance-oriented bikes can feel a tad vanilla, the Fray offers a pleasantly lively ride; the front end could even be described as twitchy. And the responsiveness is there when called upon to go after a city limit sign or to get up and over a steep pitch. It holds pace in a group ride setting and with its lightweight carbon construction, won't keep you back on any climbs either. Even on one particularly testing gravel climb, the only thing keeping me back (my fitness aside) was the road gearing.

The ability to run wider tires is clutch on mixed-terrain rides or in areas where pavement maintenance has been neglected for years. Whereas traditional road tires will have you bouncing in the saddle, the 35mm tires added both comfort and grip across cracked pavement and graded gravel.

Our third ride was a quick 52-mile fully paved loop inland, which felt very much like any other weekend group outing with a conversational tempo, a couple sprints for no apparent reason, and that collective beehive sounds of two dozen carbon wheels rolling along in sync Here, 30s would have sufficed but 35s didn't seem to hold us back too much either.

These different rides effectively showcased the well-roundedness of the Fray. No it's not a race bike but it's a fast and capable bike with added conveniences like fender and accessory mounts and in-frame storage so you'll never be stranded without fix-a-flat necessities and a rain jacket.

Along with the Specialized Aethos or Canyon Endurace, I am a big fan of this fast-but-not-racey category. It simply makes sense. I realize that my opinion may be unpopular but most of us shouldn't be riding a purebred racer.

Race bikes are fun, absolutely, but they were purpose-built to be fast with less regard to comfort and conveniences. How many high-end race bikes have you seen on club rides with 3 inches or more of spacers on them? When it comes to bicycle ridership, even among avid riders, the fact is that only a small percentage ride competitively. I understand that race bikes showcase what's possible with the latest technologies and we, as an industry, are big fans of the 'lightest', 'fastest', 'most aero' superlatives but personally, a bike like the Fray excites me.

Admittedly, I am, also, very much its target audience: a former road racer who loves nothing more than all-day mixed-terrain adventures on the weekend. At the same time, I still like to go fast and challenge myself. As such, the Fray ticks all the boxes for me.

Price and availability

Like the Melee and the MOG, the Fray is available from Enve and its retailers as a "chassis" only.

The chassis consists of a frame, fork, headset, handlebar, stem and seatpost and retails for $5,500 / £5.500 / AUD $9,999 / €5,799.

A "rolling chassis" is also available which includes an Enve SES, G-Series or Foundation wheelset. Price varies based on wheelset chosen. 

The Fray is the first of Enve's bikes to launch with more than one color option. You can get the frameset in three colorways: Salt (off-white), Venom (an iridescent green) and Ash (dark gray). 

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