2026 MADE Bike Show: Rare Earth 32-inch Aero Gravel

We’re kicking off our coverage of the 2026 MADE bike show with a special bike, a recipient of a Builder’s Choice award. Built by Brian Hall of Rare Earth Cycles, the "Rare Bird" is a wild steel gravel rig that looks like a futuristic aero race bike designed around 32-inch wheels. 

Straddling the line between an aggressive drop-bar gravel bike and a rigid XC mountain bike, there’s no carbon fiber or 3D printing to be found in those deep, aerodynamic tube shapes. Instead, Brian welded together an internal skeleton of narrow steel tubes and then hand-wrapped the whole thing in a custom sheet-metal skin. The result is a sleek, aerodynamic steel frame that’s unlike anything else.

The wheels are another important part of the Rare Bird story. With most 32” wheels thus far, their spokes can be quite long, which can cause the wheel flex and twist when you ride hard. To fix this, Brian used Berd Sparrow 50 Gold rims. 

Because the rims are so deep, the spokes are the same length as on a standard 29er wheel, which helps provide more rigidity. He wrapped them in our new RCG-3 32 x 2.4-inch Protocol tires to offer plenty of traction and efficiency in a variety of conditions. Pair that with a modern geometry for fast, sketchy descents, and you get a bike that will perform on everything from smooth gravel roads to singletrack.

Before getting into bike fabrication, Brian spent many years designing outdoor footwear, specializing in high-performance trail running shoes and hiking boots. When the pandemic hit, he left the footwear industry and pivoted full-time to his passion for making things, building his very first bike frame in his garage in 2022. To test his early creations, he put them to the test riding across epic self-supported bikepacking routes like the Baja Divide and the Tour Divide.

That touring experience heavily shapes Rare Earth Cycle, which Brian officially launched in 2023 out of River Falls, Wisconsin. His design ethos mixes performance and function with what he calls "artistic embellishment." Or, as he puts it, what bicycles would look like if Elven smiths forged them. Rare Earth is small, offering only custom builds, with an annual output of about 20 bespoked bikes. 

Over the last couple of years, Brian has made a name for himself at shows like MADE, with examples of stunning experimentation on display, especially as he has leaned heavily into the emerging 32” wheel platform. He’s built everything from 32” full-suspension rigs to this aero gravel build, using his fabrication skills to solve the geometry and structural challenges.