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Bottema Forks: The Bullet Fork That Set the Standard for BMX Tubular Forks
Quick word before we start. I'm not here to sell you on Bottema or talk anybody down. I'll give you what the record gives me, and where the old sources fight each other or just go quiet, I'll tell you that too instead of papering over it.
Bottema isn't a bike company. It's a fork. One product line, really, and that line is the Bullet. Next to what Redline or GT or SE built, that's a narrow strip of ground. But Bottema owned it. From 1979 on, if you wanted a tubular unicrown fork that could take racing and take a skatepark beating, the Bullet was the one everybody else was measuring themselves against.
Who Jeff Bottema Was
Jeffery "Battling" Bottema was born April 14, 1960, in Norwalk, California. He got on a gate in 1974 at 14 and worked his way up through Two Wheeler's BMX, Webco, and D.G. Performance Specialist. His best years on the track ran 1976 to 1981. In 1979 he signed with the Raleigh factory team next to Toby Henderson, and in 1980 the two of them were among the first Americans flown to Europe to sell BMX racing to a continent that didn't have it yet. He hung it up at the end of 1983, moved to Nashville, and went to work for Murray of Ohio running the race team. The ABA put him in their Hall of Fame in 1990. Jeff Bottema passed away on September 19, 2025. He was 65.
Why the Fork Existed
Bottema started building forks for the same reason half the parts in this sport ever got built. He kept snapping the ones he raced on. So he sat down with Toby Henderson and prototyped what turned into the M-1 Bullet. Now, the first widely produced tubular unicrown fork in BMX wasn't his. That was Redline Engineering, 1974, and it set the shape the whole industry copied for the next five years. By 1979 the racing had gotten quicker and that original geometry was begging for an answer. The Bullet was the answer.
1979: The M-1 Bullet Fork
The M-1 Bullet Fork dropped in 1979. Here's what made it. .065-inch wall chromoly, thicker than the tubular forks it was lined up against. Extra-long fork legs that ran about an inch past the dropouts, which is what gave it that profile you could spot across a pit. A straight-leg design, legs parallel to the head tube instead of raked out front. And a one-inch axle lead built right into the dropouts.
On paper the deal Bottema cut was weight for strength. But here's the thing. Bicycle Motocross Action ran a fork test in February 1982 and the Bullet held its weight right in there with the lighter tubular forks even with those thicker walls. Skatepark guys bought it for one reason. It didn't break.
And it found the freestyle crowd just as fast as it found racers. Bowl riders like Jeff Watson and Eddie Fiola ran the M-1 because those dropouts and thick walls ate landings that would've folded a lighter fork into a taco. Fiola listed Bottema among his early sponsors in that 1981–82 stretch, right alongside SE Racing, Haro, and Premier Helmets.
The C-1 Cruiser and the M-2 Race Fork
He put out a C-1 cruiser fork in 1979 for the 26-inch cruiser class, which was getting bigger by the season. Then in early 1981 came the M-2 racing model, thinner tubing than the M-1 and the axle line dropped further down the legs.
When the Knockoffs Showed Up
Here's where it gets ugly. Demand for these forks peaked right while Bottema was out on tour racing, and a guy on the road can't fill orders. The way he told it, he came home to find that shops, and at least one distributor and a manufacturer, had filled those open orders themselves. By making knockoffs. Fake Bottemas were already floating around by the mid-1980s. Imagine that. You build the best fork in the class and you come back to find people counterfeiting your name while you're off racing.
The 2020 Revival Through American BMX Company
Then the name went dark on the production side. Most of the '90s, the 2000s, the 2010s — quiet. That broke in October 2020, when American BMX Company signed a long-term license with Jeff Bottema. Same outfit had picked up Race Inc. three months before that and would grab Cook Bros. Racing two months after. They were collecting the old names.
The fork they build now is Tange-made, 100% 4130 chromoly, with a 1-1/8-inch threadless steerer, oversize 1-1/8-inch legs, 4mm laser-cut dropouts that take both 10mm and 20mm axles, and wheel sizes from 20 inch all the way up through 24, 26, and 29.
Where Bottema Sits in BMX History
The Bullet belongs to a short list. Single parts that owned a piece of this sport for ten years or more — Redline's original tube fork, the GT Pro Series cranks, Tioga's Comp III tire, the Hutch Bear Trap pedal, and the Bottema Bullet. That fork outlived the man's racing career. It outlived the original company. And it came back forty years later wearing the exact same silhouette it left with. Not many parts can say that.
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Jeff Bottema."
- BMXmuseum.com, "Bottema Forks" brand gallery.
- BMXmuseum.com Reference, "Jeff 'Battling' Bottema."
- Bicycle Motocross Action, Bottema fork test, February 1982 Vol.7 No.2 pg.80.
- bmxultra.com, "Bottema BMX Fork Review" and "Product Spotlight: Bottema Fork."
- Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, "Race Inc.'s new owner plans to bring back the Bottema fork" (October 5, 2020).
- American BMX Company, "Bottema Fork" product page.
- BMXmuseum.com Forums, multiple Bottema authentication and history threads, 2008–2025.