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

S&S Performance

The Street & Strip brand that sponsored Pistol Pete between Cook Bros. and TW

By Bill Ryan · Founder of Supercross BMX · 37+ years in BMX · Started at SE Racing, 1981

We are telling this story the same way we told the SE Racing, JMC, Hustler, CRD, and Rebel Racing chapters: neutrally. S&S Performance is one of the brands where the published record is thin — but where it does exist, it sits in an interesting place in the timeline. The full chapter follows what the sources say. We flag what they do not.

The name, first

S&S stands for Street & Strip. The full company name in the BMX press of the era was S&S (Street & Strip) Performance Products. The naming follows the hot-rod and drag-racing parts tradition of the late 1970s — parts catalogs across that era used the same Street & Strip phrasing for components that could run on the street and at the strip.

The Pete Loncarevich anchor

The clearest paper trail for S&S Performance in BMX runs through one rider: Pete Loncarevich.

The Pete Loncarevich Wikipedia entry — which traces his sponsor chain in detail with magazine citations — lists his amateur teams in order:

• 1977 — Cook Bros.
• 1978 — S&S (Street & Strip) Performance Products
• December 1979 to September 1980 — TW Racing
• September 1980 to December 1982 — Diamondback (Loncarevich would turn pro on Diamondback in December 1982)

The S&S Performance line item is footnoted in the Wikipedia entry to BMX Plus! July 1993 Vol.16 No.7 pg.64 — the "Pistol Pete Speaks" career interview, which is the closest thing to a long-form primary source on Loncarevich's full sponsor chain. Pete was 12 years old in 1978, racing 12 Expert through Southern California's National Bicycle Association district. He had already taken his first national win — 1978 NBA Corona National, 12 Expert — by the time the S&S chapter wrapped.

That makes S&S Performance the bridge sponsor: the year between Cook Bros. and TW. Without it, the Pistol Pete career timeline has a gap. With it, the timeline reads cleanly.

What S&S Performance made

Frames and parts. The clearest surviving evidence is the cruiser line. BMXmuseum.com catalogues S&S Performance Products bikes including the S&S Newport (a 26" full-size cruiser racer) and the S&S Bigfoot 26, with examples dated 1979 and 1980 in chromoly steel. S&S advertised 20" and 26" frames in the back pages of BMX Action through the late 1970s and early 1980s. The 26" cruisers are the bikes that survive in collector hands today — the 20" race frames, by community account, were rarer.

Forum threads on BMXmuseum.com place the company in the Newport Beach area in its early years, with a later move to Anaheim, California. After S&S exited the bicycle market in the mid-1980s, the Newport cruiser tooling carried over to a separate brand called TBS, which renamed the model the Islander. S&S itself pivoted out of bicycles and into aftermarket Harley-Davidson parts.

Founding year, closing year, founders' names, and the relationship (if any) between S&S Performance Products and the later TBS operation: we do not have these locked to a primary-source citation. Anyone with original paperwork, a dated trade-press mention, or a magazine ad with a contact address is invited to send it in.

Where S&S sits in the era

The late-1970s Southern California BMX scene was thick with small operations like this. The dominant brands — Redline, Mongoose, SE Racing, Torker, Webco, JMC, GT, Diamond Back, Skyway, Schwinn, Hutch, CW Racing, Haro — ran national factory programs. Underneath that tier sat a long list of regional shops cutting their own frames, running quarter-page ads, sponsoring a local hotshot for a season or two, and then either growing into the next tier or disappearing as the boom contracted between 1986 and 1988.

S&S Performance sponsored a 12-year-old kid in 1978 who would go on to four ABA national No.1 Pro titles, two NBL National No.1 Pro titles, a 1990 IBMXF Pro World Championship, and a 1997 ABA BMX Hall of Fame induction. That is enough to put S&S Performance on the map even with a thin written record.

What we are asking the community to fill in

• The exact founding year of S&S (Street & Strip) Performance Products
• The founders' names and the company address
• The year S&S Performance exited the bicycle market
• The full S&S Performance team roster from 1978 to 1982 beyond Pete Loncarevich
• The relationship between S&S Performance Products and TBS (the brand that continued the Newport cruiser as the Islander)
• Original BMX Action, BMX Plus!, or Super BMX ads — issue, page, scan or photo

Sources

Wikipedia — Pete Loncarevich; amateur sponsor table listing S&S (Street & Strip) Performance Products as Loncarevich's 1978 sponsor, footnoted to BMX Plus! July 1993 Vol.16 No.7 pg.64 ("Pistol Pete Speaks") and to Bicycle Motocross Action January 1981 Vol.6 No.1 pg.74. BMXmuseum.com — S&S Performance Products brand pages, including the 1979 S&S Bigfoot 26 (entry 55274), the 1982 S&S Works Replica (entry 64652), and the forum thread "Some semi-reliable info on the S&S / TBS Connection" (id 490486). oldschoolmags.com — archived PDF scans of BMX Action, BMX Plus!, and Super BMX, late 1970s through mid-1980s.

Last reviewed: June 2026. This chapter will be updated as additional source material becomes available.