BMX Racing History · Chapter 7 · Legend Bike Co

Mongoose: From a Garage in Simi Valley to Every Driveway in America

Mongoose didn't start as a bike company. It started as a wheel — one product, designed by an engineer who was tired of watching kids destroy their bikes. Within three years that wheel had grown into the biggest BMX-only manufacturer in the world, and within ten, the name on it was the first original BMX brand swallowed by corporate America. The whole arc of the BMX industry, boom to buyout, runs through this one company.

The Engineer Watching the Kids

Skip Hess came out of drag racing and the automotive wheel business — a mechanical engineering degree from San Diego State, years at Superior Industries designing car wheels, his own Anglia drag cars in the early 60s. In September 1974 he watched the kids in his Simi Valley neighborhood jumping their bikes and bending their spoked wheels into pretzels, and he did what a wheel engineer does: he designed a wheel that couldn't be bent.

The Motomag One was a one-piece cast alloy wheel — heat-treated, five-spoke, built like the car wheels Hess had spent his career on. Kids could jump anything and the Motomag shrugged it off. It defined the look of mid-70s BMX so completely that to this day, nothing says 1975 like a bike rolling on Motomags. BMX Products, Inc. was born to make them, with production at a factory on Superior Street in Chatsworth that would eventually push out around 600 frames a day.

The Name

The name didn't come from a logo. It came from drag racing. Hess's friend Tom "The Mongoose" McEwen carried the nickname so he could be matched against his great rival, Don "The Snake" Prudhomme — the mongoose being the one animal that kills cobras. Hess borrowed it, trademarked it between 1975 and early 1976, and put it on his first complete bike in late 1975.

The Goose Years

The complete Mongoose hit shops in late 1975 — chromoly front triangle, Motomags, ready to race out of the box at a price parents would actually pay. The Team Mongoose followed in 1977 with a full chromoly frame, and in 1979 came the Supergoose, the model a whole generation remembers wanting for Christmas. By 1982, BMX Action was calling BMX Products the world's largest BMX-only manufacturer.

The factory team backed it up. Eric Rupe — one of the great pros of the era and a BMX Hall of Famer — signed with the brand just before Thanksgiving 1981, coming off a season ranked NBL #4 Pro. Riders like Jeff Kosmala and Tim "Fuzzy" Hall carried the plate in different eras, and Greg Hill spent part of his long career on the Shimano/Mongoose program. The brand even made it to the movies: the chrome Supergoose under "Goose" in 1983's BMX Bandits, alongside a young Nicole Kidman.

First In, First Out

In spring 1985, American Recreation Group acquired BMX Products and the Mongoose name — the first time a public company bought one of the original BMX manufacturers. Hess stayed on as president until 1991. From there the name traveled: Bell Sports in the mid-90s, Brunswick in 1997 for $22 million, Pacific Cycle in 2000, Dorel Industries in 2004, and Pon Holdings in January 2022 as part of an $810 million portfolio deal.

Today Mongoose sells everything from mass-market kids' bikes to a serious freestyle line, still fields sponsored riders — Kevin Peraza has won X Games gold on one — and re-issues the classics: the Supergoose, the California Special, and yes, the Motomag, back in production almost fifty years after Skip Hess first cast one.

Timeline

• 1974 Skip Hess designs the Motomag One and founds BMX Products, Inc. in Simi Valley, September 1974.
• 1975 Motomags on bikes everywhere; first complete Mongoose ships late in the year.
• 1975–76 Mongoose name trademarked — borrowed from drag racer Tom "The Mongoose" McEwen.
• 1977 Team Mongoose introduced; full catalog year 1978.
• 1979 Supergoose launches. NBA Mongoose Grand National controversy.
• 1981 Eric Rupe signs with the factory team.
• 1982 BMX Action calls BMX Products the world's largest BMX-only manufacturer.
• 1983 Chrome Supergoose stars in BMX Bandits.
• 1985 American Recreation Group buys the company — the first corporate buyout of an original BMX brand. Hess stays as president until 1991.
• 1997 Brunswick buys Mongoose from Bell Sports for $22M.
• 2000–04 Pacific Cycle, then Dorel Industries.
• 2022 Pon Holdings acquires the portfolio. Motomag III re-issue follows.