A BMXRacingHistory.com chapter · hosted on Legend Bike Co.

Panda Racing Products

One of the earliest factory-produced BMX brands — and a name most riders today have never heard.

In 1974 a kid named Randell Kim drew up a BMX bike, sent the drawing across the Pacific, and a Taiwan factory turned out around 450 of them the next year. While everybody else was welding frames one at a time in a Southern California shop, Panda jumped straight to a factory floor overseas. It should be a name every rider knows. Instead, ask a hundred riders today and ninety-nine have never heard it.

Panda is a strange one. People have called it the first factory-produced BMX bicycle. The founder sat down and told his own story on camera. Three magazine tests from 1980 are sitting in the archive. And still, ask a hundred riders today and ninety-nine of them have never heard the name. That is the puzzle.

The name and the founder

You will see it written four different ways depending on the year — Panda, Panda Racing, Panda BMX, Panda Racing Products. BMXmuseum.com files it under "Panda." The Boss reference history calls the distribution side "Panda Cycles." Same outfit, different letterhead.

Randell Kim is on the record at BMXmuseum and in a 2025 Mossie Rides Bikes interview, the one FATBMX reposted, as the designer and owner of Panda Bike Company from 1973 to 1976. In his own words on a BMXmuseum forum, he drew the bike up in 1974 and the factory turned out around 450 of them in 1975. Panda is the brand a lot of people point to as the first one to come over from Taiwan, and one of the first to be built in a real factory instead of welded up one frame at a time in the back of somebody's shop.

That last part is the whole thing, really. Look at who came before — Redline, Webco, SE Racing, JMC, Torker. All of them built right here, a frame at a time, usually in some Southern California shop with a guy and a torch. Panda jumped to the thing that ended up running the whole industry: a factory, in Taiwan, cranking out volume. They got there early.

The 1980 magazine record

Three Panda tests are catalogued over at oldschoolmags.com, the full-PDF magazine archive we lean on as a primary source for the print years:

  • Panda Charger — BMX Action 1980
  • Panda Pro-am — BMX Action March 1980 (file code BMXA8003)
  • Panda Pro-am mini — BMX Plus 1980

Three tests inside one year, in two of the three big magazines of the day. That tells you something. The editors were putting Panda on the test track right alongside everybody else. They were in the conversation.

The model line

The brand listings on BMXmuseum.com run a lot deeper than those three tests let on. Collectors have entered the Charger, Charger 2, Elite, Elite Pro, Pro-Am, Mini Pro-Am, Super Mini Pro-Am, MX, MX-1, MX-3, Shocker MX-4, Pacer-1, and the Power Cruiser in both 24- and 26-inch. Frames from 1975 on through the early 80s are sitting in private collections with photos posted on the museum site.

Two things come up over and over in the collector talk. One, Panda ran some seriously laid-back seat tube angles — gave the bikes a look all their own next to the steeper stuff that took over later. Two, they messed around with ideas early. Collectors point to 1975-era touches like hydraulic shocks on the Shocker MX-4, a 3-speed quick-change rear end, screw-in bearing cups on the cranks, raised-letter knobby tires. Now, that is collector-reported, pulled off Kim's own forum posts. We are passing it along, not swearing we cross-checked every one against a 1975 catalog. We did not have a catalog to check it against.

The 1980s — distribution and the Boss partnership

From roughly 1980 to 1990, Panda was also moving other people's product. They carried Redline bikes, GT bikes and parts, Skyway mags, Haro plates and numbers, Oakley gloves and goggles. That distribution side gave the name a second life clean through the 80s boom — not just a frame builder anymore, but a supplier feeding the shops in the region.

The one everybody can document is the Boss deal. Late 1986, Boss owner Carlo "#1 Bossman" Lucia shook hands with Panda Cycles. The deal pushed the Boss line out into complete bikes, scooters, freestyle completes. And Panda put up the money for a fully-expensed national Boss factory team going after ABA Factory Team titles. That is the part that matters. That money is what got Boss frames under kids at the nationals who never could have paid their own way through a season otherwise.

It ran to the end of 1989. When Lucia and Panda split up, here is the kicker — Panda walked away with the Boss Racing licensing rights. Boss got sold off to Jesse Guymon in 1991, but where the license went after that is somebody else's chapter, not Panda's.

Exit from BMX

The Boss / Panda reference stuff on BMXmuseum says Panda stepped out of bikes and into electronics, building gear under the name Golden State Instruments Co. Nobody has the dates nailed down in public. What we do know is that by the early 90s the brand was done as a player in BMX. That is how a lot of these first-wave names finished, honestly. The founders rode the boom for ten years and then took the money and went and did something else.

There is a webstore over at bmxproducts.com, run separately, selling reissue Panda decal sets for the Charger and Pro-Am for the restoration crowd. We are not telling you that is the same company on paper as the old Panda. Just that if you are restoring one, the graphics are out there again.

Where Panda sits in the early BMX story

The brands everybody can still name are the ones that lived — Redline, Mongoose, GT, Haro, Diamond Back, Hutch, Schwinn, Skyway, SE, Torker. The ones that slipped out quiet — Panda, Voris Dixon, JMC, California Racing Designs, Webco, Hustler, the early days of CW Racing, and a stack of others — left a lot less paper behind. Thinner paper trail does not mean they did not count. Panda helped shove BMX production toward a real factory floor in Taiwan, and that is a piece of how this whole sport got big enough to scale.

What we are asking the community to fill in

We have got the founder, the production number, the magazine tests, the distribution business, the Boss deal — all on the record. Here is what we are still missing, and we would love your help closing it:

  • Who owned and ran Panda between 1976, when Kim's window ends, and the late-1986 Boss partnership
  • Annual production figures past 1975
  • Tubing specs and geometry for the Charger, Charger 2, Pro-Am, and Mini Pro-Am — frame by frame, year by year
  • The Panda factory team rider list, if anybody kept one
  • The exact year Panda fully walked out of bicycles

Related Legend Bike Co. chapters

Sources

oldschoolmags.com — Panda Pro-am test, BMX Action March 1980 (file code BMXA8003); Panda Charger test, BMX Action 1980; Panda Pro-am mini test, BMX Plus! 1980. BMXmuseum.com — Panda brand pages and forum threads, including Randell Kim's own posts attributing the 1974 design and 1975 production run; Carlo "#1 Bossman" Lucia reference page (bmxmuseum.com/reference/7468) covering the late-1986 to 1989 Boss / Panda partnership. FATBMX.com — "Whatever happened to Panda BMX?" by Mossie Rides Bikes (January 31, 2025).

Last reviewed: June 2026.