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I appreciate that drop bar MTBs often don’t “work” due to their longer (TT/Reach) design and lower front ends when fitted with a rigid fork.
But … **waves finger** … but with the more recent gravel/MTB crossovers the line becomes blurrier and more starts to look like less of a bodge😁
Case in point the humble Solaris mk1. When compared with the same sized Cascade there isn’t an crazy extreme difference:

The wonderful Geometry Geeks website bringing the hope ☺️
Yes the HT on the Cascade is taller and so is the stack but these figure are based on a rigid for for the Solaris that looks a bit short (~10mm) which ought to counter some of the stack difference and the HT length could be countered with a spacer and stack further running a 110mm fork.
Could this work? What am I obviously missing?
I have the basis so it would just be some tinkering time and if it looked like it might work some brifters:
Basis:
