A BMXRacingHistory.com chapter · hosted on Legend Bike Co
Titan BMX
The Texas Titanium Brand That Moved to Oregon — 1982 to 1992
By Bill Ryan · Founder of Supercross BMX · 37+ years in BMX
We're telling this story the same way we told the JMC chapter and the SE Racing chapter: neutrally. No brand gets elevated. No rider gets shorted. Where the record is thin or contested, we say so.
The name, first
Two guys in Texas decided to build a BMX frame out of titanium, and the name came straight off the workbench. Titanium, Titan. That was the whole logic. And here's the part I love: the name didn't come from the founders. It came from a kid in study hall. James Foreman, Bert Foreman's son, still in high school, sat there and figured out what to call the thing. His dad ran with it.
Where it started — San Antonio, 1982
Bert Foreman and Ken Burelson Sr. started Titan in San Antonio in 1982. The factory team was barely a team. It was family. Bert's son Jason Foreman was 14. Ken's son Ken Burelson Jr. was 8 years old. A Houston racer named Jason Allison rode for them, and Todd Mitchell came on a couple of years later.
Those first Titans were minis, and that wasn't a marketing choice. The titanium they had to work with couldn't take a bigger, heavier rider, and the head tubes liked to crack — which is exactly why every production frame shipped with a head-tube gusset welded in. The finish was usually just raw metal. Paint wouldn't stick to titanium. Chrome wouldn't either. They tried powder-coat and that wouldn't hold either. So you got bare frames, and honestly that was part of the look.
The 1984 Grands and the Furry connection
This is the part that sounds made up. At the 1984 ABA Grand Nationals, Bert Foreman just walked up to Bob Furry and his son Scott — Colorado guys — and asked, flat out, if Scott would race a Titan. Bob said yes on the spot. He spent that whole night stripping the JMC Andy Patterson Scott had been riding and rebuilding everything onto the new Titan frame. And then Scott rode it and didn't like it. Didn't feel right. So the Furrys packed up, went home, and the deal was dead. A couple of months later Bert turned back up with the geometry changed, met them at a pre-season race in Las Vegas, and this time the bike rode the way Scott wanted. That's how it should work. You listen to the rider.
1985 — the first full factory team and Scott Furry's title year
The first real Titan factory team came together at the Silver Dollar Nationals in Reno, Nevada in early 1985. Scott Furry took 2nd in the 12 Cruiser main there, and Bert offered him a full factory ride right after. The squad that year was Scott, Jason Allison, Ricky Pozzey, Jason Foreman, and the other kids Titan was helping out.
Then Scott went and put together a season that little brands dream about. He raced every single ABA national. He doubled — won both the 20-inch and the cruiser class at the same event — at seven of them. He won the Gold Cup. And in November they crowned him ABA National No. 1 in 12 Cruiser, National No. 6 overall, and National No. 2 in 12 Expert. On a homemade titanium frame from a garage operation in San Antonio. Think about that.
1986 — sale to Bob Furry, move to Eugene
Around 1986 the two founders fell out. It happens. Bob Furry bought the company that year, became the owner of Titan Inc., and moved his family and the whole operation up to Eugene, Oregon.
Eugene is really where Titan grew up. Bob kept the titanium program alive, started pulling 3Al/2.5V titanium tubing from Sandvik, and welded up what gets credited as one of the first single-piece-drawn 3/2.5 titanium BMX frames built in this country. That's not nothing.
1987 to 1989 — the 1/2 Trac and the first titanium mountain bike
In 1987 Titan built its first mountain bike, the 1/2 Trac — a dual elevated chain-stay frame done in True Temper tubing. Then in 1989 they built their first titanium mountain bike frame. And that's the moment Titan stopped being just a BMX story and got pulled into the bigger American titanium-bike conversation, right alongside names like Merlin and Litespeed and the other early Ti guys.
The custom titanium tradition
In 1986 they built a frame for Michelle Gibson's 2-year-old brother. A two-year-old. One of the smallest race frames Titan ever made. And around that same stretch, Jared Krisiloff had a complete Titan that came in under 6 pounds race-ready — a bike valued at the time at over $15,000. That's the kind of thing that gets people obsessed with this brand.
Darrell Young on Titan, 1988
Of all the pros, the Titan name that ties straight back to the JMC chapter is Darrell Young. Young was JMC's signature pro right up through July 1985, and after JMC folded he bounced through a long line of teams. His Wikipedia sponsor record has him joining Titan in early February 1988, and staying on into the run-up to his Oregon ELF deal in 1990. He went into the ABA BMX Hall of Fame in 2003.
The shared-shop chapter
One for the collectors. In the late 1980s a handful of titanium and chromoly BMX brands — Titan, ESP, Quikline, a few others — were sharing welding labor down in Southern California. Jesse Cortez of Ultracraft Welding did a lot of the work, and Ken Burelson Sr. was welding for the group too. So if you've got frames from a couple of those brands and they feel like they came off the same bench, there's a good chance they did.
1991 to 1992 — the S.L. Liu merger and the close
In 1991 Titan merged with S.L. Liu's Bicycle Company. That's usually where these stories start to go sideways, and this one did. By 1992, over disagreements nobody's ever fully spelled out about how the merged company ought to be run, Bob Furry resigned as President of Titan's Racing Division. Scott Furry took the chair for a short stretch. But S.L. moved the whole operation down to Yorba Linda, California, and Scott walked at the end of 1992. And that was it.
Where Titan stands today
An original Titan is one of the toughest U.S. BMX titanium pieces to track down in collecting right now. The brand never came back. Once it closed, it stayed closed.
Look, Titan never had a JMC-sized factory team. Never won an IBMXF World title. Never carried a signature pro frame the way JMC carried the Darrell Young Design or SE carried the PK Ripper. But here's what it did do. It built tiny race frames that won at the very top of the amateur ranks in 1985, welded some of the earliest 3/2.5 titanium BMX frames anybody in this country was making, and put a Hall of Fame pro on the brand for a full season. For a garage outfit out of San Antonio, that's a real legacy.
Sources
BMXmuseum.com Titan brand gallery and brand-history account contributed by the Foreman and Furry families. Wikipedia "Darrell Young" sponsor record. BMX Society community forum thread on the Titan/ESP/Quikline/Blacklite/Ultracraft connection. "TITANIUM in the 1980s" archive.
About this page. See also: The History of BMX, SE Racing, JMC Racing, Redline, Mongoose, GT, Haro, Torker, Schwinn, CW Racing, Webco, Hutch, Skyway, Diamond Back, Hoffman Bikes, S&M Bikes, California Racing Designs, TW BMX, Hyper Bikes, Hustler Bikes, Bottema Forks, Voris Dixon. Sanctions: BUMS, NBA, NBL, ABA, IBMXF, USA BMX.