The BMX Family Tree
Who bought whom, who came up under whom, and which frame begat which
A Legend Bike Co. chapter · Part of The History of BMX
Every company in this sport came out of another company, another shop, or another argument. Ride a bike built today and you are riding a decision somebody made in a garage in 1976. This page is the map of those connections — three of them, actually, because the sport branched three different ways at once.
Rules I held myself to: every line on this page traces back to a chapter in this library or a source cited on one of those chapters. Where two accounts fight each other, I marked it as a fight and left it there. Nobody’s brand gets pushed to the front, mine included. My line sits in here the same as everybody else’s, because that’s what it is — one branch.
— Bill Ryan
Want this mapped out instead of read? The interactive version — click a name, open a chapter — lives at Six Degrees of BMX →
BMX lineage runs three different ways
People say family tree and picture one chart. BMX does not work like that. Ask who a brand came from and you get one answer. Ask who a person came up under and you get a completely different one. Ask where a frame shape came from and you get a third, and it usually has nothing to do with the first two. A company can be bought by somebody who never touched the design. A frame can be welded in a shop that had no ownership stake in anything. A kid can be taught by a man whose name is on none of it.
So this map is three maps. Each one is its own page, and each one carries its own diagrams, its own written history, and its own list of the fights this library has not settled.
Layer 1 — ownership
Layer 2 — mentors and families
Layer 3 — frames and design
Four fights run through this map and none of them get settled here. Who built the first BMX bike, who drew the RA-7, and how the Hi-Tech and Pro-Neck National Pro dates fit together are laid out on the frame and design layer. The date of the first 2-Hip contest sits with the sanctions on the corporate layer. Every real history has holes in it. Papering over them is how legends get built, and legends are exactly what this library is trying to take apart.
Where the holes are
Some of these lines are thinner than others and you should know which. The exact year Steve Potts’ original Bicycle Source closed is not documented in anything we have checked. The exact date Mike Scurto Sr. passed away, and the full story of the National Pro jigs being destroyed at the Pomona dump, exist only as forum recollection — that is on the Will Scurto page, labeled as such. The Torker founding chapter carries an internal inconsistency about which Johnson brother built the Texon prototype, so this page names neither. And there are brands in this library whose ownership chains simply stop at a certain year because nobody wrote down what happened next.
If you were in one of those rooms, you already know something this page does not.
Corrections wanted
This page will be wrong somewhere. It is a map of about two hundred and thirty-nine chapters and roughly fifty years of handshake deals, and some of what is written down came from memory rather than paperwork.
If a line here is wrong, or a connection is missing, or you were standing in the building when it happened — write in. The correction loop on this library is not a courtesy. Riders, family members and former employees have written in with letters, receipts, magazine scans and firsthand accounts that changed chapters on this site, and several of the connections mapped above only exist here because somebody took the time to send them. Send what you have, including the part you are not sure about.
Start at The History of BMX for the full library, or the BMX History Archive for the chapter index.
How this page was built
Every connection mapped above traces to a chapter in this library, and each of those chapters carries its own sources. Where a claim comes from Bill Ryan firsthand, the underlying chapter says so. Where two sources disagree, both are shown and neither is resolved.
Corporate lineage from the SE Racing, GT Bicycles, Torker, Dyno, Bob Morales, LRV, Robinson Racing, Speedo, Patterson Racing, Hi-Tech BMX, Pro-Neck, CW Racing, Bassett Bikes, Free Agent, Skyway Recreation, Hyper Bikes, Bicycle Source, MCS, Mongoose, Centurion, Diamond Back, Gary Turner and Dan Gurney chapters, plus the BUMS, NBA, NBL, ABA, IBMXF, USA BMX, AFA and 2-Hip sanction chapters. The modern Pacific Cycle / Dorel Industries / Pon Holdings chain, the 2024 GT pause, and Mongoose's continued operation are per bicycleretailer.com ("Pon agrees to buy Dorel Sports," October 2021; "Dorel completes sale of Dorel Sports to Pon Holdings," January 2022; "GT Bicycles pausing new product releases, reducing workforce," December 2024) and Dorel/Pon's own press releases, cross-checked against Bill Ryan's firsthand account (2026). Pacific Cycle and Dorel Industries have no chapters of their own in this library.
People lineage from the Bill Ryan, Scot Breithaupt, Turnell Henry, Sean McKinney, Kevin Hull, Tommy Brackens, Steve Potts, Mike Buff, Bob Morales, BMX Action Trick Team, Bob Osborn, Andy Jenkins, Mark Lewman, Spike Jonze and Don Toshach chapters.
Design lineage from the Hi-Tech BMX, Voris Dixon, Pro-Neck, Rod Beckering, Perry Kramer, Jeff Utterback, GJS, Billy Harrison, Race Inc., FMF, Laguna, Torker, Haro, ACS, Brian Scura, TW Racing, LRP, Marvin Church, Redline and Webco chapters.
SE Racing's second life — the late-1980s restart in Long Beach (Bill dates it to 1988) that also produced the Assassin, the confirmed identity of Mike Devitt as the "Mike at SE" of that story, San Leandro, the second folding, the Alliant partnership between Mike Devitt and Gary Turner, the Advanced Sports International purchase and 2004 relaunch, and the Ideal Bike Corporation / Advanced Holdings ownership question — is per Bill Ryan, firsthand (2026), cross-checked against Bicycle Retailer and Industry News coverage of the 2018–2019 Advanced Sports Enterprises bankruptcy and Wikipedia's Advanced Sports International entry. Full detail on the SE Racing chapter.
Keep going
Layer 1 — The Corporate Lineage — who bought, became, or ended whom.
Layer 2 — The People Lineage — who came up under whom, and the families.
Layer 3 — The Frame and Design Lineage — which designs begat which.
Six Degrees of BMX — the same map, built to click through instead of read.
The History of BMX — the main narrative, start to finish.
The BMX History Archive — every chapter, indexed.
The Bike Shops That Made BMX — where most of these chains actually started.
The Tracks That Built BMX and The BMX Track Atlas — the other half of the map.
Send a correction — the fastest way to make this page better.