Gary Turner — Co-Founder of GT Bicycles
BMX Racing History · Founder Profile · Legend Bike Co
Gary Turner
Every GT bike ever sold carries his initials on the head tube. Gary Turner didn't set out to build a bike company. He set out to build his kid a frame that wouldn't fold, using skills he already had from welding drag-racing chassis. That frame turned into GT Bicycles, and GT Bicycles turned into the biggest BMX brand the sport has ever seen.
The Welder Before the Bikes
Turner came out of drag racing, not bicycles. Through the late 1960s and into the early 1970s he built and welded chromoly chassis for dragsters — real race cars, real speeds, real consequences if a weld failed. That's what separates Turner from most of the guys who started building BMX frames around the same time. He wasn't learning to weld on the job. He already knew thin-wall steel tubing before he ever cut a piece for a bicycle.
A Frame for Craig, 1971–72
The story starts with his son. In the early 1970s Turner took young Craig out to a dirt field near Holifield Park in Norwalk, California, and watched the neighborhood kids launching their heavy department-store bikes off jumps. He figured Craig deserved something better. So he went into his garage in Orange, cut up leftover race-car tubing, and welded together a 4130 chromoly frame. He put a decal on it that read "Gary Turner BMX." He still had his day job. The frame was just for his son.
Then the other kids at the track wanted one. Then the local bike shops did too.
Pedals Ready, and the First Ad
By 1976 Turner was building frames for Pedals Ready, the pro shop tied to the Western Sports-A-Rama track. A "Pedals Ready/GT" ad — the Ames Replica — ran in the very first issue of BMX Action in December 1976. For three years Turner's frames sold under somebody else's name on the ad copy. He built the bikes. He didn't yet have a brand of his own to put on them.
The Call From Rich Long
That changed when Richard Long called him. Long owned Anaheim Cycles and ran the Azusa BMX track, and he'd noticed Turner's frames moving off his shop floor as fast as he could stock them. Long picked up the phone and asked if he could sell them direct. In 1979 the two of them made it official and incorporated GT Bicycles, Inc. Turner's initials went on the head tube — GT is literally Gary Turner. Turner ran engineering and production. Long ran the business and the sales. The first frames under the new company name were welded up in Sam and Anita Shockley's garage in Santa Ana, and that Santa Ana address was the first one GT ever printed in an ad.
What They Built
GT grew from there into the biggest BMX company that ever existed — a full race line, then the Pro Performer freestyle bike, then a run of acquisitions (Dyno, Robinson, Auburn, Powerlite) that had GT claiming roughly half the U.S. BMX market by 1995. The full story of the brand is its own chapter: GT Bicycles: The Biggest Brand BMX Ever Built.
A Legend Bike Co footnote: when SE Racing went bankrupt, it was Gary Turner and Richard Long who came to the building at 6801 Paramount Boulevard and bought SE's equipment to get GT running at full strength. Legend co-founder Bill Ryan — then a teenager working at SE Racing — was in the building that day, and walked straight out of SE into a job at GT. Small sport. Always has been.
Stepping Back, Then Stepping Back In
In 1993 GT went through a management-led buyout and Turner stepped back from day-to-day operations, though he and Long each held onto a stake in the company they'd started. He later co-founded Alliant/Axxis/Radix with Mike Dewitt. More recently he's back where the whole thing began — building frames with his son Craig, the same Craig who got that first chromoly frame in 1971–72, now under the Gary Turner name.
What we don't know: we don't have a confirmed birth date or birthplace for Gary Turner. Some published accounts place his early garage work in Fullerton rather than Orange — Craig Turner's own first-person account, and Bill Ryan's direct recollection from working at GT, both say Orange, so that's what we're running with here. If you can help fill in the gaps, let us know.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Gary Turner?
A professional drag racer and chromoly welder who built his son Craig a BMX frame in the early 1970s, then co-founded GT Bicycles with Richard Long in 1979.
Why is GT Bicycles called GT?
GT stands for Gary Turner's initials.
What was Gary Turner's role at GT Bicycles?
Turner ran engineering and production. Richard Long ran the business and marketing side.
Is Gary Turner still building bikes?
Yes. He builds frames again with his son Craig under the Gary Turner name.
Sources: bmxmuseum.com reference 7358, Craig Turner's first-person account of his father's early frame-building; 23mag.com GT Bicycles company history, quoting a February 2009 bmxsociety.com forum post; contemporaneous BMX Action and BMX Plus! coverage via oldschoolmags.com (partial access — several archive PDFs would not load for full-text review); Los Angeles Times, "Crash Kills Bike Firm's Chief," July 16, 1996; Wikipedia, GT Bicycles. The Orange, California garage location, the SE Racing equipment purchase at 6801 Paramount Blvd, and Richard Long's ownership of Anaheim Cycles are confirmed firsthand by Bill Ryan, who worked at both SE Racing and GT in those years.