Danny Hart's prototype Norco, Ronan Dunne's Hardline winning Mondraker Summum and more — all the best bikes from Ard Rock 2025
Ard Rock isn't just about top-notch enduro racing - there are tonnes of cool bikes too!
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Ard Rock is the UK's premier mountain bike festival with a range of races to please all levels of enduro riders and one of the most heavily featured expos on the event circuit. With brands and distributors from all corners of the country coming to show off their kit, they also bring some mighty cool bikes for us all to gawp at. Here are some of the best we've seen.
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Danny Hart's prototype Norco downhill bike
2025 danny hart ard rock 1.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Canadian brand, Norco, has had a very interesting 2025 as it signed one of the GOATs, Greg Minnaar, as the director of the Norco Race Division after his monumental shift from the Santa Cruz Syndicate team. Not only is that a huge move in itself, but the team also picked up Brit, Danny Hart, and this is the bike he has been racing throughout the year.
Currently, Norco doesn't have a downhill bike on sale, unless we bring the Shore, the brand's freeride bike, into the mix. So for this season, Danny's been riding a prototype machine, and it's mighty interesting. Firstly, it's an alloy bike, but it's loaded with all of the adjustments you can shake a stick at. There's head angle adjustment, and a flip chip at the shock, which we expect will alter the progression of the rear suspension, as is becoming common on downhill bikes.
2025 danny hart ard rock2.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Perhaps the most interesting feature on the bike is its rear triangle. With it, Norco has bonded both hollow alloy and carbon tubes, all to introduce and experiment with compliance and flex. I imagine that this can be interchanged from venue to venue to eke out the best performance according to the track. Of course, this is a high-pivot bike too.
Ronan Dunne's Hardline Tasmania winning Mondraker Summum
2025 ronan dunne ard rock 1.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Pro bikes were littered throughout Ard Rock's event village, and this is the very bike that took Ronan Dunne to the win at Hardline Tasmania in 2024. It's Mondraker's Summum Carbon, and it's an off-the-shelf frame, so there's nothing unique here apart from that paint job, which has been expertly applied to the bike by Mondraker's in-house Blue Lab paint team.
And that paint job is nothing short of eye-catching. It was painted especially for Hardline Tasmania with nods to the event around the frame. Of course, after such a successful race, it's no longer in perfect nick, but there's nothing like the scars of battle to serve as a reminder of that eventful race, and Dunne's Hardline's 2024 results.
2025 ronan dunne ard rock 2.jpg, by Liam Mercer
As for the spec itself, it's all kit that comes as standard on the Summum RR, so apart from that neat colourway, you can buy the very same bike that won 2024's Hardline Tasmania.
Whyte's new enduro-flavoured Kado
2025 whyte kado ard rock 1.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Earlier this year, Whyte unveiled its new e-mountain bike, the Kado, and to kick off its Ard Rock weekend, the brand showed off the next step in the Kado story, the Kado Works. As expected of a Works-level bike from Whyte, it's dripping with only top-end kit, but this model takes more of an enduro turn with a longer-travelled, 170mm fork in the very latest Fox Podium.
As you can imagine, the Works theme flows through the bike as it gets Hope's new EVO brakes and, well, Hope kit wherever it'll fit, including the short cranks.
2025 whyte kado ard rock 2.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Additionally, the Kado Works features Bosch's new full-colour top tube unit, which grants the user all of the metrics and stats they'll need. Of course, it runs the Performance Line CX motor, too. That's powered by an 800Wh battery, and the bike runs 29-inch wheels as standard, although it can be kitted with a mixed wheel size if that's more your jam.
This bike is for sale, and it'll set you back £10,000.
Mondrakers Grinduro celebration Arid
2025 mondraker arid ard rock 1.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Although Ard Rock is a mountain bike festival, there's no harm in throwing a gravel bike into the mix, and Mondraker did exactly that with its special edition Arid. It's an alloy bike that's also had the Blue Lab touch with this awesome oil slick colour - you can't have too much oil slick, right?
2025 mondraker arid ard rock 2.jpg, by Liam Mercer
This bike was put together for Grinduro, an event that combines the format of MTB enduro with gravel racing, and although the colour may divide opinions, I'm a big fan.
Deviate's upcoming e-mountain bike
2025 Deviate ard rock 1.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Rumours of an e-mountain bike from Deviate have filtered through the press throughout 2025, and Ard Rock gave us the best look at the bike yet. It looks to be a solid contender, too, as the bike took Deviate's athletes to the podium in the e-MTB category.
2025 Deviate ard rock 2.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Details on the bike are still a little thin, but it's a burly enduro e-bike that gets a high-pivot suspension design, as expected of Deviate as an earlier brand to popularise the layout. We can see that it runs a Bosch motor and can accommodate Bosch's PowerMore range extender, so I'm sure it's primed for some huge days out in the mountains. That high-pivot layout is complemented with a coil shock, too, so expect this machine to be an absolute brute.
Pivot's mega spendy but proper pretty Firebird Team XX
2025 pivot ard rock 1.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Another big release for 2025 is Pivot's new enduro bike, the Firebird, and with 2025 being such an exciting year for tech releases, it goes a similar way to the Whyte Kado above, and gets the new Fox Podium fork. But it's not just the fork that makes this bike rather special, as it's draped with an awesome purple splatter colourway, with stickers on the fork to match. Making this bike that bit more noteworthy is that it's equipped with Fox's Live Valve Neo tech, which no doubt ups the asking price considerably.
2025 pivot ard rock 2.jpg, by Liam Mercer
As a bike that's distributed in the UK by Saddleback, it's sorted with loads of high-end loveliness from the Trickstuff Maxima brakes to the colour-matched Chris King hubs. In fact, there are Chris King components throughout the build, with ENVE wrapping up the bike with its enduro-flavoured M8 wheels.
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