ProTaper Releases New Carbon, Aluminum & XC Bars

Press Release: Hayes Bicycle Group

New products from the iconic brand celebrate the glorious past with products designed for the future.

The ProTaper brand through the years has become the go-to cockpit solution for those athletes who want something better out of their time in the saddle. Respect for the brand has been honed over the years as each and every new product highlighted the dedication to constant improvement and innovation. A brief look over the product history only serves to underscore the depths to which ProTaper has been involved at shaping the competitive mountain biking world since its inception. As such, the brand is extremely proud to present several new products that highlight both the past as well as the future of quality MTB cockpit construction.


Icon Gold Bar: Bling, Better

Building the finest cockpit solutions for mountain biking’s future is partly due to having an amazing research and development department, but the engineers themselves would attribute a substantial part of their success to the accumulation of knowledge over the years. Innovating products since the inception of off-road cycling, the ProTaper brand saw fit to release a throwback colorway to celebrate this important heritage that continues to pay dividends with every range of new products.



One of today’s most successful and sought-after handlebars, the ProTaper A25, gets a finishing and graphic treatment that recalls the very first gold bars from ProTaper launched in 1997 on Leigh Donovan’s World Champion bike. So popular and iconic were those original bars that they became immediately synonymous with successful athletes but also became a bit of a ProTaper calling card. This new colorway for the 25mm rise bar celebrates the successful past of the brand atop a product that has evolved to take on the future of mountain biking.

While the fame generated from the original bars has lasted over two decades, the Icon Gold Bars are available in very limited quantities and as such, won’t last very long.



PT C12 + PT C25: Carbon Control For The Rough Stuff
While the Icon Gold Bar celebrates the glorious past of the brand through a throwback colorway on a modern product, the engineering team at the brand’s research and development center has been working diligently to produce solutions for the future of off-road. ProTaper proudly presents two amazing carbon bars, the PT C12 and PT C25 whose introduction represents a lightweight solution for mountain biking’s most demanding disciplines. The ProTaper carbon bars feature PFL (plastic foam lamination) manufacturing technique that adds efficiency into the overall manufacturing process. Such a process allows for the reduction in necessary resin and carbon laminate, which then translates into a 15% lighter bar with respect to traditional manufacturing techniques...while maintaining extreme strength for even the roughest terrain or rider.

In addition to reducing superfluous resin and carbon laminate, wall thickness ensures that material employment in the product’s structure is further optimized, reinforcing areas where strength is necessary and load forces are applied, while eliminating unnecessary material where possible. As these bars are designed for Downhill, Enduro and All Mountain, riders that prefer the more extreme side of off-road riding now have a lightweight solution that fears no terrain.


ProTaper has become the trusted name in bars thanks to its unrivaled reliability through the years. It has become an exciting brand thanks to its tradition of pushing boundaries.

XC Hyperlite: The Featherweight Ticket To The Top Of The Podium

The introduction of the XC Hyperlite marks the brand’s bold step into the cross-country segment. XC and XC Marathon both place extreme importance on efficiency, and in this highly competitive arena every gram counts. A bar built for the most demanding World Cup level athletes must offer extreme reliability, precision handling but also come in an extremely lightweight construction. The ProTaper engineering staff has worked diligently to develop a solution that ensures the hallmark PT reliability and resilient construction are guaranteed while aiming to produce a solution as ambitious in terms of weight reduction as the athletes it is aimed at serving.

Only through meticulous research and development, countless iterations and a great deal of feedback from elite, world cup athletes were they able to produce the ProTaper XC Hyperlite. By employing the relatively new PFL (plastic foam lamination) technology in addition to the precision tapering, excess material was completely eliminated and every remaining fiber in the new handlebar’s construction serves to ensure structural integrity and fantastic ride feel. The fruit of such labor come in the form of a final product weighing in at an unbelievably low 125gr, placing it amongst the lightest production carbon handlebars, if not the lightest, currently on the market. The ProTaper XC Hyperlite is the new featherweight solution for those looking for extreme performance compliments to their racing ambitions. Anyone can produce a lightweight bar...but only ProTaper can produce the lightest and most reliable solution in one single package.


ProTaper is enthusiastic about launching products that celebrate its past in addition to creating products that usher in the future for mountain biking componentry. It has also created a segment of products aimed at the Athletes of mountain biking’s future. A new generation of riders is born every day and today’s youth is potentially tomorrow’s world champion. As such, the ProTaper organization recognized that in order to ensure that as many young riders as possible would make mountain biking a permanent fixture in their life, the initial experiences needed to be as positive as possible.

The tool of the cyclist’s trade is the bike and the young cyclist has been, for far too long, obligated to ride with bikes and componentry designed around an adult rider. Putting young riders atop bikes and componentry developed around a more mature rider with very different weight and size potentially creates an obstacle to enjoyment and even represents a variety of safety issues. Younger hands have a less solid grip on adult bars and have difficulty reaching both brake levers and shifting commands, both of which mean less control and ultimately less safety. Despite both the safety concerns that arise from improper componentry and the unpleasant rider experience in general, no solutions to this long-standing problem were available. Recognizing this extreme void in the market, ProTaper set out to develop a complete range of solutions aimed at creating the safest, most enjoyable and performance-oriented rider experience for the specific needs of a youth rider.

The J-Unit project started by identifying the ideal grip diameters for the hands of younger riders and developing both grips and bars around this specific data. The J-UNIT products that came about from such development come in the form of grips and bars ideally suited towards the particular ergonomic needs of a smaller rider. Smaller hands with smaller diameter grips mean better control, more comfort and an overall safer, more positive experience in the saddle. The ProTaper J-Unit grips incorporate a particular design that sees the bar plug built into the grip, ensuring it will never fall out. The bar and grip system is compatible with all existing shifters as the grip features a standard component mounting diameter. Available in 12.7mm or 25.4mm rise and grips of 23 and 28mm outside diameters (for small and intermediate riders respectively) the J-Unit range offers a dialed-in solution for all young riders.

Many of the new handlebars are available now at HayesBicycle.com with more being added soon.