BMX Racing History · Chapter 8 · Legend Bike Co

Schwinn: The Accidental Godfather of BMX

Schwinn had it all. The bike, the name, the money, a shop in every town in America — years before anybody else even had a logo. And they still found a way to hand the whole sport to a bunch of guys working out of garages.

Think about that.

They built the exact right bike, ten years early, then got cold feet about their own kid. Sat up there in Chicago worrying while California tore the fenders off and went racing. This is the story of the biggest bike company on earth talking itself out of the best thing it ever made.

The Bike Nobody Asked Permission For

In 1962 a guy named Al Fritz — he ran R&D for Schwinn — caught wind of something out in California. Kids stripping down 20-inch bikes, bolting on banana seats and high-rise bars, making them look like little chopper motorcycles. Fritz built a prototype. Story goes management laughed at it. He built it anyway.

The Sting-Ray hit in 1963. Forty-five thousand gone in a few months. It ran until 1981, kicked off the Krate series in '68 — Apple Krate, Lemon Peeler, Orange Krate, the ones collectors still won't part with — and became the best-selling bike Schwinn ever made. There's a 1965 Super Deluxe in the Smithsonian right now. A kids' bike. In the Smithsonian.

Then the kids got hold of it. Tore the fenders off, rode them straight into the dirt, and built a sport out of the wreckage. On Any Sunday opens in 1971 with neighborhood kids jumping Sting-Rays off plywood — and that was it. The idea was loose in every town in America. We tell that part in Chapter 1.

The Hesitation

Now here's the part that still bugs me forty years later. Schwinn had the lead, and Schwinn flinched.

They decided the racing was too dangerous. Worse, they got nervous about that lifetime guarantee they were so proud of — because a bike ridden as hard as a BMX bike gets ridden comes back to you cracked, and you eat the cost. So they ran the numbers and decided the safe move was to do nothing. Skip Hess — who went and started Mongoose, by the way — nailed it in the Schwinn book No Hands: "The people in Chicago only heard the echo."

The echo. The rest of us were standing in the middle of the noise.

140,000 BMX bikes sold in '74. 1.75 million by '77. The brands that said yes — Mongoose, Redline, Torker, SE Racing — built an entire industry in the time it took Schwinn to clear its throat. By 1980 the company that started all of this by accident had maybe 7 or 8 percent of it left. They gave the rest away.

Late, and Built Like a Tank

And when they finally moved, they moved the way a company that size moves. Slow. Heavy.

The '75 Scrambler was the first real swing — tough, well-meaning, and something like 38 pounds. You ever try to throw 38 pounds of bicycle over a double? Good luck. The '77 Competition Scrambler got them onto chromoly and down to 32. The '78 line added the Scrambler 36/36 and a 28-pound SX1000. Better. Still late.

The bike that finally shut everybody up was the Sting, 1980. Hand-brazed, double-butted 4130, built with the factory team out on the national circuit. A real race bike, no asterisk. In 1983 they put out a catalog that was nothing but BMX and dropped the Predator — and Predator meant full 4130 chromoly, no corner-cutting. For a few Christmases there it was the bike under the tree, and their factory amateur Mike Poulson was up front on one putting in work. Credit where it's due — when Schwinn finally built it, they built it right.

The Fall

Didn't matter. By the late '80s freestyle had eaten the 20-inch market, the BMX program quietly died off, and the rest of the company wasn't far behind. Chapter 11 in October of 1992. Sam Zell's people bought the name and shipped it to Boulder. Questor picked it up in 1997 and welded it onto GT — and that whole operation went bankrupt all over again in 2001. Pacific Cycle bought both names for $86 million. Then Dorel in 2004. Then Pon Holdings in 2021. The name's been passed around like a hot potato ever since.

And the bikes? The Sting-Ray, the Krates, the Predator — somebody reissues them every few years, like clockwork. The bikes outlived the company. They outlived everybody who ever doubted them. Schwinn most of all.

Timeline

• 1963 Al Fritz launches the Sting-Ray. ~45,000 sold within months.
• 1968 Krate series: Apple Krate, Lemon Peeler, Orange Krate.
• 1971 On Any Sunday opens with kids on Sting-Rays. BMX spreads nationwide.
• 1974–77 US BMX sales grow from 140,000 to 1.75 million bikes while Schwinn stays out, citing safety and warranty concerns.
• 1975 Scrambler launches — Schwinn's first BMX model, ~38 lbs.
• 1977 Competition Scrambler brings chromoly.
• 1980 The Sting — hand-brazed 4130, Schwinn's first true race bike. Market share: 7–8%.
• 1983 First all-BMX catalog; Predator line debuts in full chromoly.
• 1992 Chapter 11, October 7. Zell-Chilmark buys the name; HQ moves to Boulder.
• 1997–2001 Questor merges Schwinn with GT; second bankruptcy; Pacific Cycle buys both for $86M.
• 2004–21 Dorel Industries, then Pon Holdings.