YT CAPRA 29 CORE 4

Will we enjoy another fairytale shred into the sunset on YT’s latest Capra?

- Jamie Darlow

£5,849.69 / 29in / yt-industries.com

NEED TO KNOW

165mm enduro bike with 170mm fork, slack geometry, and bottle-ready full carbon frame

New Capra comes as a race-focused 29er, or a mullet park bike with 5mm more travel

Spot on spec, with Fox Factory suspension and SRAM X01 on the Core 4

IIn the interests of full disclosure, the YT Capra and I are old friends. I had the previous generation as a long-term test bike three years ago and I still catch myself mindlessly flicking through old mbr copies with pictures of the two of us together. Good times. It remains to this day my favourite test rig.

In the three years since rating the Capra 29 CF Pro Race 10/10, a lot has happened in the world of enduro – the competition is stiffer and components and suspension are more capable, meaning the Capra needs to have progressed too. What was great three years ago could feel mediocre when judged by today’s standards.

This is YT’s third version of the Capra after launching the original bike back in 2014. The Mk3 comes in two guises: the 29in version with 165mm travel, 170mm fork and an enduro race attitude, and the MX with mullet wheels, an extra 5mm at the rear, and park rat pretensions. There’s a difference in kinematics between the MX and 29 too, the former is slightly more progressive to suit its more racy design. What happened to the 27.5in Capra? Well, YT reckons it learnt enough about how well mullet bikes work from the launch of the original Decoy e-bike to drop it altogether.

Both the 29er and the MX are offered at two different price points. YT employs two different levels of carbon frame, Ultra Modulus for the higher-specced bikes, and High Modulus for the Core 3 models. The UM layup is lighter, although YT couldn’t put a figure on it.