Panda Racing Products — Brand History

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.

We are telling this story the same way we told the SE Racing chapter, the JMC chapter, the Voris Dixon chapter, and the broader History of BMX: neutrally. No brand gets elevated. No rider gets shorted. Where the record is thin, we say so.

Panda sits in an interesting spot in early BMX history. The brand has been called the first factory-produced BMX bicycle. Founder Randell Kim has told his own story on camera. Three 1980 magazine tests are in the archive. And yet most riders today have never heard the name.

The name and the founder

The brand is written as Panda, Panda Racing, Panda BMX, or Panda Racing Products depending on the era. BMXmuseum.com files it under "Panda." The Boss reference history refers to the distribution arm as "Panda Cycles." All point to the same operation.

Randell Kim is documented on BMXmuseum and in a 2025 Mossie Rides Bikes interview (reposted by FATBMX) as the designer and owner of Panda Bike Company from 1973 to 1976. In Kim's own words from a BMXmuseum forum, the bike was designed in 1974 and the factory produced around 450 units in 1975. Panda is widely cited as the first BMX brand to come over from Taiwan and one of the first big brands to be factory-produced rather than welded together one frame at a time in a small shop.

That detail matters. The earliest BMX brands — Redline, Webco, SE Racing, JMC, Torker — were built domestically, often a frame at a time in a Southern California shop. Panda was an early example of what later became the dominant model for BMX production: a real factory, in Taiwan, producing in volume.

The 1980 magazine record

Three Panda tests are catalogued on oldschoolmags.com, the archive of full BMX magazine PDFs that we treat as a primary source for the print era:

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

Three tests in one year, in two of the three major BMX magazines of the era, places Panda firmly inside the 1980 factory conversation — a brand the magazines were testing alongside the rest of the field.

The model line

BMXmuseum.com's Panda brand listings span a wider model line than the three magazine tests suggest. Documented on collector entries are 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 Power Cruiser (24- and 26-inch). Frames from 1975 through the early 1980s are owned by collectors and entered on the museum site with photos.

Two design notes show up repeatedly in collector commentary. First, Panda ran some very laid-back seat tube angles, which gave the bikes a distinctive look against the steeper geometries that became standard later. Second, the brand experimented early — collector entries reference 1975-era features like hydraulic shocks (Shocker MX-4), a 3-speed quick-change rear, screw-in bearing cups on cranks, and raised-letter knobby tires. We are reporting those as collector-reported features off Kim's own forum statements rather than verifying each one independently against a 1975 catalog.

The 1980s — distribution and the Boss partnership

From roughly 1980 through 1990, Panda also operated as a distributor, carrying Redline bicycles, GT bicycles and accessories, Skyway racing wheels, Haro number plates and numbers, and Oakley gloves and goggles. That gave the brand a second life through the 1980s BMX boom — not just as a frame line, but as a regional supplier into bike shops.

The most documented partnership of the era is the Boss Bicycles deal. In late 1986, Boss owner Carlo "#1 Bossman" Lucia formed a partnership with Panda Cycles. The deal expanded the Boss product line into complete bikes, scooters, and freestyle completes. In exchange, Panda financially backed a fully-expensed national Boss factory team chasing ABA Factory Team titles. That is what put Boss frames on tracks under riders who otherwise could not have funded a national season.

The partnership ran through the end of 1989. When Lucia and Panda separated, Panda kept the Boss Racing licensing rights. Boss was eventually sold to Jesse Guymon in 1991 — the licensing chain past that point is outside the Panda story.

Exit from BMX

BMXmuseum's Boss / Panda reference material states that Panda stepped out of the bicycle business and into electronics manufacturing under the name Golden State Instruments Co. Exact dates are not pinned down in the public record. What is clear is that by the early 1990s, the brand had stopped being a force in BMX. That is a common ending for first-wave BMX brands — the founders rode the boom for a decade and then redeployed into something else.

A separately-operated webstore at bmxproducts.com sells reissue Panda decal sets for the Charger and Pro-Am, aimed at the vintage restoration market. We are not asserting that this is the same legal entity as the original Panda — only that the graphics are available again.

Where Panda sits in the early BMX story

The BMX brands most riders can name today are the ones that survived: Redline, Mongoose, GT, Haro, Diamond Back, Hutch, Schwinn, Skyway, SE, Torker. Brands that exited quietly — Panda, Voris Dixon, JMC, CRD, Webco, Hustler, CW Racing's early period, and many others — left smaller paper trails. That does not mean they did not matter. Panda's role in moving BMX production toward an actual factory floor, in Taiwan, is part of the structural story of how the sport scaled.

What we are asking the community to fill in

This chapter has the founder, the production volume, the magazine tests, the distribution business, and the Boss partnership on the record. Open questions we would like to close:

  • Who owned and ran Panda between 1976 (end of Kim's ownership window) 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 one was kept
  • The exact year Panda fully exited 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.