MCS Bicycles — The Florida BMX Brand George Esser Started (1976 to Today)
MCS Bicycles — The Florida BMX Brand George Esser Started (1976 to Today)
A BMXRacingHistory.com preview · hosted on Legend Bike Co
Most of the brands that built BMX came out of Southern California garages. MCS came out of a Florida motorcycle shop, started by a man who was already busy building the sport's East Coast sanctioning body at the same time. Fifty years later, MCS is still making BMX bikes. Almost nothing else from 1976 can say that.
A motorcycle shop in Pompano Beach, 1976
MCS Bicycles was started in 1976 by George Esser and Rick Connery, out of a motorcycle shop in Pompano Beach, Florida. It was the same year Esser split his bicycle racing division off from the National Motorcycle League and stood it up as its own organization, the National Bicycle League. Running a sanction and starting a frame company in the same year, in the same town, tells you how small and tangled early BMX still was in the Southeast — the people building the sport's structure and the people building its equipment were often the same people.
MCS is widely cited by bike shops and parts retailers as standing for Motor Cross South, though MCS's own published company history doesn't spell the acronym out directly, so we're presenting that as the generally accepted reading rather than a confirmed fact from the company itself. The first product was the MCS "Z-1" frame, and the earliest riders were family: Esser's sons Greg and Brian, plus Timmy Judge.
Welding around the clock — 1978 to 1979
As BMX took off across the Southeast in the late 1970s, MCS couldn't weld frames fast enough. The company ran day and night shifts to keep up with orders for the new MCS Magnum and MCS Spider frames and the MCS 6-Bolt stem. Jamie Burrows and David Argyle rode for the factory team through this stretch.
Esser sells to focus on the NBL — 1980 to 1981
By 1980, running the NBL had become a full-time job on its own, and Esser sold MCS to Ron Cann and Norman Livin so he could concentrate on the sanction. Around the same time, Cann also started Hot Inc., a number-plate company — Hot plates and MCS's own plates were both fixtures of the crowded 1981 number-plate market, alongside Haro, Wizard, Neal's Proto Plates, Zeronine, JT, Uni, and Aero. MCS itself was advertising as a full-line frame and component brand that year, running alongside Skyway, Redline, and Schwinn in the pages of Total BMX — a real name in a crowded field, not a regional also-ran. Jeff Ruminer was the team's rider through this period.
Freestyle, Magnum Force, and a second ownership change — 1983 to 1988
In 1983, Ron Cann sold his half of the company to Norm Livin. As freestyle exploded, MCS built its first freestyle frame, the Styler, alongside the racing-focused Magnum 2000. The company also formed Magnum Force, a co-sponsor amateur team that grew to roughly 500 riders around the country — MCS support without a full factory paycheck, the same structural bargain component brands like Skyway were offering racers of that era. Bill Prince managed the race team from 1985, and in 1987 MCS hired pro racer Jeff DeVido as a sales rep to run Magnum Force — the same DeVido who'd eventually own the whole company.
MCS changed hands again in 1988, sold to Les Hertz and Lawrence Ribco. The MCS/Eagle Snacks amateur team formed that year, and pro Terry "Mr. T" Tennette joined the factory team riding the new XLX frame and fork set, which became one of MCS's best sellers. By early 1989, MCS's Magnum Force program was still active enough to pull in outside talent on a co-sponsor basis — Frank Post, the 1980 UBR/NBA/ABA triple Grand National champion, rode a co-factory MCS Magnum Force deal that year between other sponsorships.
The 1990 World Championship and Pistol Pete's stopover
In 1990, MCS's European team — led by team manager Gerrit Does, the Dutch BMX pioneer and IBMXF co-founder — won the World Championships in France on the MCS Magnum 24-inch frame. Riders Christophe Leveque, Dale Holmes, Bas DeBeaver, Nico Does, and Petier Does made up that squad.
On the American side, MCS also had a name recognizable well outside Florida come through its doors that same window. Pete Loncarevich — four-time ABA National #1 Pro — rode for MCS after leaving Haro Designs in May 1989, one stop in the run of primary and co-primary deals (MCS, then Vans/Diamondback, then Vans/Hawk Racing) that carried him into the 1990s.
DeVido buys the company — 1991 onward
In October 1991, MCS was sold to Jeff DeVido, the racer and employee who'd been running Magnum Force since 1987. DeVido started a BMX distribution company, Custom Cycle Supply, to go with it. Through the 1990s MCS stayed in racing while a sister brand, Bully Bikes, took off in the emerging dirt-jumping scene. Into the 2000s, team manager Brian Fell built a program around the MCS Speed Freak frame that won the Florida State Series championship four years running, and by 2005 MCS was back in the complete-bike business for the first time in over fifteen years, picking up reviews in BMX Plus! and Ride UK.
MCS marked 30 years in business in 2006 and, per the company's own site, was still marking its history as of a 2021 update noting 45 years. The company operates today out of Coral Springs, Florida, still under Jeff DeVido, alongside Bully and Race Inc. products.
What we don't know
MCS's own published company history doesn't spell out what the initials actually stand for — Motor Cross South is the version repeated across bike-shop and parts-retailer listings, but we haven't found it confirmed in MCS's own words. We also haven't independently verified exact rider tenures for every name in MCS's own year-by-year history; those are presented here as the company tells its own story, cross-checked against outside sources only where outside sources exist (the NBL/Esser origin, the Gerrit Does-led 1990 Euro title, and Frank Post's and Pete Loncarevich's MCS stints).
MCS and Legend Bike Co.
MCS isn't a Legend Bike Co. brand, but its founding story runs directly through one of the sport's foundational figures. George Esser built the NBL and MCS in the same Florida stretch, in the same year, and MCS is one of the few brands from that first wave of BMX manufacturers still cutting frames under its own name today.
Related pages
George Esser · NBL · Gerrit Does · Pete Loncarevich · Frank Post · Wizard Number Plates · Total BMX Magazine · AERO Racing Products · Skyway
Sources
MCS Bicycles — official company history (mcsbmxracing.com/pages/history), the primary source for the company's own year-by-year products, riders, and ownership chain. BMXmuseum.com — MCS Bicycles reference and model listings, and the "History of MCS" forums thread, corroborating the Esser/Connery founding and the Cann/Livin ownership changes. americancycle.com and other current BMX parts retailers — corroborating the founding account and the Motor Cross South name reading. Legend Bike Co. — George Esser, Pete Loncarevich, Frank Post, and Wizard Number Plates chapters, cross-referenced for the Esser founding detail, the Loncarevich and Post MCS sponsorships, and the 1981 number-plate market. Wikipedia, "National Bicycle League," for the NBL founding timeline that runs parallel to MCS's own.