R&R Racing Products

A Legend Bike Co. BMX history chapter · researched from bicycle-industry and museum archives

R&R Racing Products never became a household BMX name the way Mongoose or Redline did. What it left behind instead is a start: two future professional racers, Harry Leary and Jeff Kosmala, both rode an R&R before anyone outside their local track knew who they were. Here's what the record shows about the brand that gave them that start.

What R&R actually was

R&R Racing Products was a BMX bike and parts brand out of North Hollywood, California, documented in the record from at least 1975 into 1978. The plan behind it, according to a period account written by bicycle-industry figure Howie Cohen, was to build a line of BMX bikes and related products and sell them direct to bicycle dealers - skipping the distributor layer that most of the early brands relied on. R&R Racing Products bikes turn up often enough in collector circles today that BMXmuseum.com's own archive holds close to fifty of them, a working sign of how much the brand actually shipped in its short run.

Rick Varner, his father, and the North Hollywood shop

The company was run by Rick Varner and his father. Cohen's account puts him meeting with the two of them in January 1977 at their North Hollywood facility to talk over business, and a follow-up letter dated May 2, 1977 was addressed directly to Rick Varner at R&R. The same account names Bruce Varner, Gary Varner, Sandy Finkelman, and Larry Curry as people planned to be brought on as employees - Bruce and Gary Varner sharing the family name suggests R&R stayed a family operation on top of being father-and-son at the top.

One wrinkle worth flagging directly: R&R shared its North Hollywood building - office, factory floor, and equipment - with a separate brand called White Lightning. White Lightning's founder was also named Rick - Rick Ankrom, a different person from Rick Varner. Two brands, one building, two Ricks. It reads like a natural mix-up waiting to happen, and nothing in the record suggests the two companies were the same business under two names - they were separate brands that happened to share space and a first name at the top.

The frames

R&R's line ran through at least a handful of chromoly models across the mid-to-late 1970s, best documented today through the bikes that survived: an R&R Centurion line running from 1975 through at least 1978 model years, a CR-1 tested in BMX Action's December 1976 issue, and a novelty Sidehack model - a sidecar-style build - built around 1976. Full model-by-model specs and exact production windows are not documented in a factory catalog we could locate; what's presented here comes from surviving bikes and period print rather than a company parts book.

The riders who started here

Two names carry R&R's reputation forward. Harry Leary rode an R&R early in his career, before the run that made him one of the sport's biggest names. Jeff Kosmala, born September 16, 1961, in Van Nuys, California, also started on an R&R before turning pro with Mongoose in July 1977. Kosmala's Mongoose years produced the Kos Kruiser, one of the best-selling cruiser models of the era, and by 1980 he'd won 21 of 24 nationals along with the ABA number-one, the NBA number-one, and the JAG World Championship. He moved to Redline in April 1982, where he helped design the Redline PL-24. Neither rider's R&R years lasted long - it was a starting point, not a career-defining sponsorship - but it's the reason R&R shows up in BMX history at all beyond the bikes themselves.

What we don't know

• What the two Rs in the name actually stood for.
• The exact year R&R Racing Products started, and the exact year it stopped.
• A complete model lineup with factory-documented specs and production years.
• Total production numbers for any R&R model.
• What became of Rick Varner, his father, and the North Hollywood shop after the brand's last documented model year.

Related Legend Bike Co. chapters

The History of BMX (1970–1995) · Mongoose · Redline

Sources

Everything Bicycles / proteanpaper.com archive, "R and R Brand BMX Racing Products" - Howie Cohen's first-person industry account of meeting Rick Varner and his father in January 1977, the dealer-direct business plan, the planned employee list, and the shared North Hollywood facility with White Lighting. BMXmuseum.com - R&R Racing Products brand and model pages, confirming the Centurion and Sidehack models, model years 1975 through 1978, and the size of the surviving collector population. oldschoolmags.com - R&R CR-1 test archive, BMX Action, December 1976 issue, confirmed by title; full text not extracted through the tools available for this page. Wikipedia, "Jeff Kosmala" - race record, sponsor timeline, and career dates. bmxsociety.com and oldschoolmags.com were checked directly for additional period coverage of R&R; no material beyond what's cited above was found through available search access.

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