Raleigh and the Burner — Nottingham's Bicycle Giant and the BMX That Britain Grew Up On (1979 to 1988)

Legend Bike Co · BMX heritage series

Raleigh had been building bicycles since 1885 and had, at one point, been the biggest bicycle manufacturer on earth. None of that size made it fast into BMX. Its American arm signed a factory team in 1979 and pulled the plug eighteen months later. Its home market didn't get a proper BMX range until 1982, years after Southern California kids had already built an industry out of the sport. But when Raleigh did commit, on both sides of the Atlantic, it left a real mark — a Hall of Fame American racer's name in its catalog, and in Britain, a bike that a whole generation still points to as their first BMX.

Ask an American what the defining BMX bike of the 1980s was and you will get a dozen answers, most of them from Southern California. Ask a British forty-something the same question and you will usually get one word. Burner. It was the bike on the Christmas list, the bike in the school playground, the bike leaned against the wall of every corner shop in the country for about four years. Raleigh built it in Nottingham, sold it by the hundred thousand, and in the process turned BMX from an imported American curiosity into something ordinary British kids did.

This chapter covers both halves of that story — the company, its short and strange American BMX team, and the Burner range that outlasted it.

A century of bicycles before a single BMX frame

Raleigh's story starts in 1885, when Richard Woodhead and Paul Angois opened a small bicycle workshop on Raleigh Street in Nottingham, England. Frank Bowden bought into the business in December 1888 and built it into the Raleigh Cycle Company; by 1913 it was the largest bicycle manufacturer in the world. Raleigh built motorcycles and three-wheel cars through the 1920s and 1930s — a departure that spun off the parts and the name that became Reliant Motors — then settled back into bicycles, mopeds, and later road-racing sponsorship, most famously the TI–Raleigh professional cycling team that won the 1980 Tour de France with Joop Zoetemelk.

Given that history, Raleigh was a strange company to be late to a dirt-bike craze built by teenagers in garages. But that's exactly what happened, on both sides of the Atlantic, in two chapters that ran almost entirely independent of each other.

The U.S. team: Bottema, Henderson, and a name in the catalog — 1979 to 1981

Raleigh Cycle Company of America wanted a BMX presence, and the door opened through Chuck Robinson, who put two of the sport's rising names forward: Jeff Bottema and Toby Henderson. Raleigh signed them both in July 1979. It was Bottema's most visible run as a pro — NBA pro finals across the circuit, a Jeff Bottema signature-series frame in Raleigh's own catalog, and BMX Action covers in November 1979 and December 1981. In 1980, Bottema and Henderson became two of the first American BMX racers invited to Europe to promote and demonstrate the sport — riding Raleigh bikes to European crowds who, at that point, barely had a BMX scene of their own yet.

Bottema's own story runs well past Raleigh. The tubular Bottema bullet fork he put his name to became a reference point for how a BMX fork should be built, and that work is told in full in its own chapter.

Raleigh shut the U.S. team down in mid-January 1981. It would restart the program roughly a year later — the same window in which Raleigh's UK operation was finally getting its own BMX range onto showroom floors.

The Huffy years — 1982 onward

In 1982, the Huffy Corporation purchased the rights to the Raleigh USA name after decades as Raleigh of England's American distributor. Under the deal, Raleigh licensed Huffy to design and distribute Raleigh-branded bicycles across the U.S., and the renamed Raleigh Cycle Company of America sold under that license from then on, with production increasingly shifted overseas. It's a corporate detail, not a BMX one, but it explains why the brand that signed Bottema in 1979 looked structurally different by the time BMX's American boom peaked a couple of years later.

Why Raleigh built the Burner

Raleigh had spent the 1970s owning the British kids' bike market with two machines that were not really bicycles so much as objects of desire. The Chopper came first. Then came the Grifter, built from 1976, sitting at the top of an age-graded range that ran up through the Boxer and the Strika. The Grifter was heavy, three-speed, and completely dominant — the must-have British kids' bike of its moment. It was a chunky off-road-styled bike, not a true BMX, but it pointed straight at where the market was heading.

Then BMX arrived from California, and the ground moved. American BMX product had been trickling into Britain through importers since the late 1970s, and by 1981 the sport had British magazines, British tracks and British riders. Raleigh's answer was the Burner, launched in early 1982. The timing could not have been better: Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial reached British cinemas that year with BMX threaded right through its story, and Raleigh's own account credits the film with putting a BMX at the top of that year's Christmas list. The bikes the boys ride in that film are Kuwaharas, not Burners — but the demand the film created landed in British bike shops, and the Burner was the bike sitting there waiting for it.

Raleigh kept the Grifter range going alongside the Burner for a season, and even expanded it. It did not help. The Grifter's buyers had gone to BMX. Raleigh discontinued the Grifter in 1983.

The Mk1 — 1982 and 1983

The first Burner frame is the one collectors identify by its loop tail and a frame gusset with two holes drilled through it. Raleigh launched with five models, stacked by price.

Burner

The entry bike. Blue or red frame, matt black forks, conventional wire-spoked wheels, a saddle color-matched to the frame, yellow frame pads and gold-colored brake calipers and levers. Typical UK retail in 1982: around £120.

Tuff Burner

Same frame, same matt black forks, but wearing the part that made the whole range look right — yellow five-spoke Skyway Tuff II nylon mag wheels. Red frames got red saddles, yellow grips, gold anodized levers and calipers and red tires; blue frames got blue saddles, blue grips, blue anodized levers and calipers and blue tires. Around £130. (Collectors are careful to distinguish these genuine Skyway Tuff IIs from the later Mag Burner wheels, which are not the same part.)

Super Burner

The gold one. The frame was chrome plated and then covered in a translucent gold-tinted film, which is why it looks like gold paint and does not behave like it. Black frame pads with gold script. Gold-painted rims on wire wheels for 1982-83. Around £140.

Ultra Burner

Where the range stopped being a toy. The Ultra came in silver-and-blue or black-and-gold, and it used real race componentry: Araya 7X alloy rims, Suntour hubs, Sugino chromoly one-piece cranks, chrome Tange TX1200W forks and genuine Dia-Compe brakes, anodized gold or blue to match. It kept the same steel main frame as the standard Burner, but the alloy parts and chromoly cranks took roughly four pounds off the bike.

Pro Burner

Top of the range, at somewhere around £225. Full chromoly frame, fork and handlebars in chrome plate, blue anodized alloy parts from Araya, Suntour and Dia-Compe, and a frame gusset with the Raleigh R cut straight out of it. That R gusset is the quickest way to tell a Mk1 Pro from everything below it.

Across the 1983 model year the round-tube Burners picked up running changes that collectors use for dating: plastic pedals in place of the original metal rat-traps, two-tone rubber grips replacing the foam ones, and tubing rebadged as Carbospec 23, with Competition 23 decals appearing on the forks in place of the plain Raleigh logo.

1983 — fifteen models and the Aero Pro

Raleigh read the numbers and went all in. For 1983 the Burner range expanded from five models to fifteen, with several color options on some of them. That is the year the Burner stopped being a product and became a range that covered every price point a British parent might be talked into.

It is also the year the range got a genuine race bike at the top of it. The Aero Pro Burner was built around a deep-chrome Japanese-made Tange frame and fork and specced with some of the best parts available at the time. BMX Action Bike, then the leading British BMX magazine, tested it in July 1983 and wrote that serious riders should definitely consider it, calling it a cro-mo contender for the hall of fame. It went on to take Bike of the Year at BMX Bi-Weekly, the other pillar of the British BMX press.

That matters more than a magazine award usually does. Up to that point, a British racer who wanted a competitive bike bought American or Japanese. The Aero Pro was a British-badged bike that the British BMX press was prepared to rate against them.

1984 — half a million bikes and the Mk2

By 1984, Raleigh states, more than 500,000 Burners had been sold in the range's first two years, and the company calls it the most successful BMX ever on that basis. It is Raleigh's own number rather than an independently audited one, and we are labeling it as such — but even discounted, the scale is the point. Half a million bikes in two years, in a country of 56 million people, is a bike in a very large share of British households with a child in it.

1984 also brought the Mk2 frame and thirteen new models. The Mk2 is the easy one to spot: oval-profile tubing instead of round, no loop tail, a longer frame, and a letter R cut out of both the front and rear dropouts. Raleigh called the tubing Oval Competition, and the pitch was straightforward — it borrowed the Aero Pro's look at a fraction of the Aero Pro's price. The geometry was stretched for taller riders, which is a quiet admission of something Raleigh had noticed: the kids who bought Burners in 1982 had grown, and they had not stopped riding.

A Super Tuff Burner joined the range for 1984 — the gold Super Burner finish with five-spoke mag wheels in black. It has since become one of the most requested bikes in Raleigh's own back catalog.

1985-86 — the team years

Raleigh spent the mid-80s buying credibility, and it bought the right kind. For 1985 the company signed Andy Ruffell, Britain's best-known racer and freestyler, to the team. The 1985 line-up around him — Craig Schofield, Martin Jose and Stu Diggins — gave the Burner real credibility on the race circuit, not just at street level.

That same year the Raleigh team went to the IBMXF World Championships in Canada and came home fifth in the overall medal count, with Craig Schofield taking the biggest result of the trip. Exactly what that result was depends on which source you read, and we have set the versions side by side in the box further down rather than pick one. Whatever the title is called, the Raleigh team carried British BMX for another season on the back of it.

Two bikes came out of that. The Team Aero Pro was sold as a complete bike for the first time in 1985 rather than as a frameset. Alongside it Raleigh sold an Andy Ruffell signature edition built on the Oval Competition frame — team looks, everyday money. That range ran through 1986.

What the Burner actually was to Britain

What the Burner had that the first-wave American imports didn't was Raleigh's own retail network — the shops, the trust, the parents who already knew the name. One longtime UK collector's description sums up how the bike is remembered locally: Raleigh was to British BMX roughly what Huffy was to the American mass market — not automatically the choice of the serious racer, but the bike that put BMX in front of more British kids than anything else on the market.

That reading and the Aero Pro's magazine reviews sit slightly at odds with each other, and both are worth keeping. A range that runs from a £120 wire-wheeled Burner to a Tange-framed race bike the British press rated against American and Japanese hardware is going to be described differently depending on which end of it you were looking at. It was a mass-market bike with a genuine race bike on top.

How it ended

It ended the way BMX ended almost everywhere. In 1987, mountain bikes arrived in volume, mainstream BMX fell away, and Raleigh followed the same customers into the new category. The Burner name is documented as running through to 1988 — which sits right inside the wider mid-to-late 1980s BMX collapse in Britain. It came back in the early 2000s, though nowhere near the 1980s scale.

What did not fall away was what the Burner had already done. It had put a BMX under a generation of British kids who would otherwise have been on a Grifter, and it had done it at a price and a distribution reach no importer could match. Some of those kids went to a track. A few of them stayed. The line from a Burner in 1983 to Jamie Staff winning a BMX world title in 1996 and Olympic gold in 2008 runs through a lot of British garden sheds.

The reissues

Raleigh started releasing limited anniversary models in 2007, working with Burner enthusiasts to re-create what they collectively judged the most memorable version — the Aero Pro in the Raleigh team colors. Mag-wheeled Burners followed.

The best-documented run is July 2017, for the model's 35th anniversary. Raleigh built 350 Team Aero Pro Burner replicas at £500 each, sold through advance registration, specced to match the original: Tange tubed frame and fork, white Skyway Tuff II wheels, Dia-Compe MX-1000 brakes, Cam grips, plus a three-piece pad set the original never came with. An Aero Pro Burner remake followed in 2018, and a limited-edition Super Tuff Burner in 2019.

Raleigh published an unusually candid account of how the 2019 Super Tuff was made, and it is worth being straight about what it says. The 1983 bike was reverse-engineered in-house into a 3D model, run through finite element analysis, then adjusted — modern tubing sizes, and more room up front so that riders who were nine in 1983 and in their mid-40s in 2019 would stop hitting their knees on the bars. The frames were TIG welded and hand-finished, chrome plated, then given the gold Super Chrome finish, which on the original was an epoxy paint and on the reissue is a water-based translucent lacquer. Raleigh even reproduced its 1980s frame-numbering system on the reissue, with the first letter marking the country of assembly. These are honest re-creations, not survivors. That distinction is the whole point of a reissue and Raleigh did not hide it.

Where Raleigh stands now

Raleigh's UK business has changed hands more than once since the 1980s and now sits inside the Accell group. On 6 August 2026, joint administrators from FTI Consulting LLP were appointed over Accell UK & Ireland Ltd, and the company's affairs are being managed by them — a notice to that effect appears on Raleigh's own UK site. That is a statement about the current corporate entity, not about the Burner's place in history, which was settled forty years ago.

Raleigh and Legend Bike Co.

Raleigh isn't a Legend Bike Co. brand, but its U.S. team put a Hall of Fame name — Jeff Bottema — in its catalog during BMX's first commercial wave, and its Burner range did for a generation of British kids roughly what Schwinn, Mongoose, and Huffy did for American ones: put a mass-market bike in front of nearly everyone before most of them ever saw a real race track.

Timeline

• 1885 Richard Woodhead and Paul Angois open a bicycle workshop on Raleigh Street, Nottingham.
• 1888 Frank Bowden buys into the business in December and builds it into the Raleigh Cycle Company.
• 1913 Raleigh is the largest bicycle manufacturer in the world.
• 1976 Raleigh launches the Grifter, the must-have British kids' bike of the pre-BMX era.
• 1979 Raleigh Cycle Company of America signs Jeff Bottema and Toby Henderson in July, through Chuck Robinson. Bottema takes a BMX Action cover in November.
• 1980 Bottema and Henderson are among the first American BMX racers invited to Europe to demonstrate the sport. TI–Raleigh wins the Tour de France with Joop Zoetemelk.
• 1981 Raleigh shuts the U.S. BMX team down in mid-January. Bottema takes a second BMX Action cover in December.
• 1982 Huffy Corporation buys the rights to the Raleigh USA name. In Britain, the Burner range launches with five models. E.T. reaches British cinemas and BMX goes to the top of the Christmas list. UK prices run roughly £120 to £140 across the first three models, up to about £225 for the Pro Burner.
• 1983 The range expands to fifteen models. The Aero Pro Burner arrives on a Japanese-made Tange frame and fork, is rated by BMX Action Bike in July, and takes Bike of the Year at BMX Bi-Weekly. Raleigh discontinues the Grifter.
• 1984 Raleigh reports over 500,000 Burners sold in two years. The Mk2 frame arrives with oval Competition tubing and thirteen new models. The Super Tuff Burner joins the range.
• 1985 Andy Ruffell signs to the Raleigh team, alongside Craig Schofield, Martin Jose and Stu Diggins. The team finishes fifth in the medal count at the IBMXF World Championships in Canada, where Schofield takes the title the sources describe three different ways. The Team Aero Pro is sold as a complete bike for the first time, alongside an Andy Ruffell signature edition.
• 1986 The team-era range continues.
• 1987 Mountain bikes arrive in volume and mainstream BMX falls away. Raleigh follows the same customers into the new category.
• 1988 The Burner name is documented as running to about here.
• 2007 Raleigh begins releasing limited anniversary Burner models, starting with the Aero Pro in team colors.
• 2017 350 Team Aero Pro Burner replicas built for the 35th anniversary at £500 each.
• 2018 Aero Pro Burner remake.
• 2019 Super Tuff Burner limited edition, reverse-engineered from an original 1983 bike.
• 2026 Joint administrators are appointed over Accell UK & Ireland Ltd, the current Raleigh UK entity, on 6 August.

Sources

raleigh.co.uk, The Story of the Burner (Retro Raleigh series) — the company's own year-by-year account of the range: the 1982 launch with five models, the E.T. effect, the 1983 expansion to fifteen models, the Aero Pro Burner and its Tange frame and fork, the July 1983 BMX Action Bike test quote, the BMX Bi-Weekly Bike of the Year award, the 500,000-in-two-years sales figure, the 1984 Mk2 and Oval Competition tubing, the 1985 Andy Ruffell signing and Craig Schofield's Whistler title, the Team Aero Pro complete bike and Ruffell signature edition, and the 1987 shift to mountain bikes. raleigh.co.uk, The Making of the Super Tuff Burner — the manufacturing and reverse-engineering account behind the 2019 limited edition, including the FEA testing, geometry changes, chrome and Super Chrome finishing process, decal reproduction, and the 1980s frame-numbering system. raleigh.co.uk — administration notice naming FTI Consulting LLP as joint administrators of Accell UK & Ireland Ltd, appointed 6 August 2026. Wikipedia, Raleigh Bicycle Company — the 1885 founding, Frank Bowden, the 1913 scale, the motorcycle and three-wheeler years, the TI–Raleigh road team, and the 1982 Huffy licensing deal. Wikipedia, Raleigh Burner — Mk1 and Mk2 frame identification, per-model color and component specifications, 1982 UK retail prices, the Ultra Burner and Pro Burner component lists, the Carbospec 23 running changes, and the 1988 end date and early-2000s revival. Wikipedia, Raleigh Grifter — the 1976-1983 production run, the Grifter's position in Raleigh's age-graded range, and its discontinuation in the face of BMX. BMXmuseum.com, Raleigh Bicycle Company History reference page — UK Burner trim-level detail, Pro Burner pricing, and the 1985 UK team line-up of Ruffell, Schofield, Jose and Diggins with the World Championship result and medal-count placing. SplendidBMX.com, About Raleigh Bikes — BMX Profile and History — UK market context and the Grifter-to-Burner timeline. Singletrack World Magazine, 11 July 2017, Raleigh Reissues The Burner — the 35th anniversary Team Aero Pro Burner reissue: 350 units, £500, advance registration, and the Tange, Skyway Tuff II and Dia-Compe MX-1000 specification. Legend Bike Co., Jeff Bottema chapter — primary detail on the Raleigh Cycle Company of America team, the July 1979 signing via Chuck Robinson, the 1980 European tour, and the January 1981 shutdown, sourced there to Wikipedia and BMXmuseum.com's Jeff Bottema reference pages. Additional web reporting on Toby Henderson's Raleigh tenure (1979-1981) and the Bottema and Henderson Europe demonstrations, cross-checked against the Bottema chapter for consistency. Unreachable for this research: bmxsociety.com (site down throughout) and bmxmuseum.com's live search (blocks automated access), both of which hold substantial Burner dating and catalog material.

Related Legend Bike Co. chapters

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