Alliant

The Second Act of SE Racing and GT Bicycles (2000 to 2005)

A Legend Bike Co. brand history · cross-referenced with our Gary Turner and Mike Devitt profiles

Two of the biggest names to ever come out of Southern California BMX spent most of the 1990s watching their own companies get sold out from under them. SE Racing went through a bankruptcy and a buyer. GT Bicycles went through a management buyout and then a sale to a bigger parent company. By the time the decade was over, Mike Devitt, the man who had kept SE running through most of its restarts, and Gary Turner, the welder whose initials are still on every GT head tube, were both on the outside of the brands they had spent their careers building. Alliant is what they built next, together, on their own terms, for about five years.

Two builders, two brands, one exit

By the late 1990s, SE Racing had gone through multiple restarts and folded a second time. Mike Devitt, who had been with SE since Scot Breithaupt started the company in 1977, first as a financier and vice president, later as its production mainstay through a string of ownership changes, stepped away from SE in September 2000. Gary Turner had his own exit years earlier: he stepped back from day-to-day work at GT after a 1993 management buyout, though he kept a stake in the company he and Richard Long had founded in 1979.

The two men knew each other from way back. Turner had bought SE's original tooling out of the 6801 Paramount Boulevard building in the 1980s to help get GT's own production running, a purchase that put GT's name on equipment that had built the PK Ripper and the Quadangle. Two decades later, according to Devitt's own account, he and Turner first tried to buy SE Racing back from its owners outright. The offer was turned down. So instead of buying an existing brand, they built a new one.

Building Alliant

Alliant came together around 2000 to 2001, run out of Southern California with a crew that included builders who had worked the welding tables at SE. The frames, forks, and bars were made in the United States, hand-welded rather than imported, which by the early 2000s had become the exception in BMX rather than the rule.

The company sold under three related names rather than one:

• Dirt Master was Devitt's own name before it was ever an Alliant product. It traces back to a parts and team operation Devitt ran in the 1970s, whose riders swept all three classes at the 1974 Yamaha Gold Cup final at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The name came back through SE Racing in the 1990s while Devitt was part owner there, covering frames, forks, and complete bikes, and when SE was sold he had to fight for the right to keep using it. He won, and carried Dirt Master into Alliant as a standalone line in 2001.
• Axxis covered freestyle and dirt-jump frames and parts under the Alliant umbrella.
• Radix covered forks and additional frame models, including a 26-inch fork built in extremely limited numbers.

Alliant also sold a lower-priced complete-bike line built around Radix components, aimed at riders who wanted the Devitt-and-Turner pedigree at a price below the standalone frame sets.

Why it ended

Alliant ran for roughly five years. Mike Devitt left the company in early 2005, and Gary Turner dropped the Alliant name shortly after. Dirt Master, Axxis, and Radix all stopped production at the same point. Neither man has said much publicly about what ended the partnership, and this page is not going to guess at it. What is documented is simpler: two builders who had already lost the brands they founded came together, built something new for a few years, then split, and both moved on. Turner eventually returned to building frames with his son Craig under the Gary Turner name. Devitt was inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame and passed away in May 2020.

Where Alliant fits in the bigger story

People: Mike Devitt, Gary Turner. Brands: SE Racing, GT Bicycles. The bigger arc is in our History of BMX series.

Sources

bmxmuseum.com, Alliant, Axxis, and Dirt Master bike-database entries, for the product-line breakdown, the 2000 to 2005 operating window, and the Devitt/Turner split. bmxsociety.com community forum, All Alliant & Axxis, Radix, Dirt Master, Exxpress thread, for corroborating detail on the company's formation and sub-brands. 26bmx.com, Alliant/Radix brand summary, for the SE-to-Fuji and GT-to-Schwinn sale context that preceded the partnership. Legend Bike Co., Mike Devitt and Gary Turner chapters (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026), for Devitt's SE career, the 6801 Paramount Boulevard equipment purchase, and the Alliant founding story from the inside. oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked first per this library's standing research order; period catalog or advertisement confirmation of the exact founding date and the Xpress/Exxpress spelling was not located.