BMX Racing History · Chapter 4 · Legend Bike Co

Torker: The Frame That Built Two Sports

Most companies in BMX did one thing. Torker did two of them at the same time, and did both better than just about anybody. Late 1970s into the early 1980s, their factory team was the team to beat at the races. And right then, in the same building in Fullerton, California, they were welding up the first freestyle frame the world had ever seen. Nobody else was standing in both those doorways at once.

This is how that happened.

Built From Airplane Parts

Before Torker was Torker, there was a kid named Doug Johnson who wanted a better frame to race. His dad John had spent his whole career as an experimental airplane test pilot for the FAA. The man knew chromoly tubing and how to build with it at a level almost nobody in Southern California could touch. So when Doug rolled up to the Lincoln Avenue track in Anaheim and took a look at what the other kids were riding, John just built him a prototype himself — out of aircraft-grade tubing he pulled from a small airplane fuselage.

It started in 1975 as Texon. Then Doug's older brother Steve stepped in, called it Johnson Engineering for a while, and finally landed on a name he pulled straight out of the word torque: Torker. Their mom Doris kept the books. Doug went on to run a sister brand called Max, which launched in 1980. From the very first day it had a name on it, Torker was a family shop, run by people who'd been inside BMX since the start.

The first ad ran in BMX Weekly in December 1976. The bike in it was the Torker MX — a big Pro-size frame with a twin top tube that didn't look like one single other thing on any track in the country. The earliest ones had forward-facing dropouts; that switched to rear-facing in May 1978. Mild steel or chromoly, your call. Twenty-inch top tube. It looked like a serious piece of equipment because that's exactly what it was.

The LP and the Shape That Changed Everything

May 1978, Torker brought out the LP — Low Profile. The MX was built big, for Pro guys who wanted room. The LP went the other direction: tighter geometry for the smaller and expert racers, an 18.5-inch top tube, lower stand-over, a frame that snapped through corners and bit into the berms faster. That shape ended up being one of the most copied geometries in the whole sport.

The LP Long showed up not long after. Same idea, 19.5-inch top tube, longer up front — and 6-foot-3 factory rider Doug Olson helped dial it in through his own custom requests. That work on stretched front-end numbers fed right into the 280X that came later.

By 1979 Torker was building complete bikes — the TorkFlyte for Expert class, the MaxFlyte for Pro, and eventually the TrashFlyte — and rolled out an Eddy King Replica, a Low Profile with a European bottom bracket built to spec for their first signature rider. 1981 brought the 26-inch chromoly cruiser. 1982, the 24-inch. The 340 complete cruiser. The 280 and 280X. Every class, every size, every level of racer — Torker had a frame for it.

The serial number told you exactly what you were holding. M for mild steel LP, E for European bottom bracket, O for LP Long, C for cruiser, R for Mini, P for Pro-X. After late 1979 the numbers moved off the bottom bracket and onto the right rear inner dropout. Collectors still use those codes today to date an original and prove it's the real thing.

The #1 Team in America

First proof came in 1977. Kevin McNeal — Torker's first real factory name — won the California State Championship and the NBA/Mongoose Grand Nationals on the original MX Big Bike. Yellow and black sitting on top of the biggest race of the year. And the program was barely twelve months old.

The golden run went 1978 to 1982. Eddy King came onto the factory team in the fall of 1978. He won two #1 plates on a Torker, became the first rider the brand ever gave a signature frame — the LP Eddy King Replica, which he had a direct hand in on top tube length and head tube angle — and landed the cover of Bicycle Motocross Action in June 1980, with a five-page spread inside. ABA BMX Hall of Fame, 1989. When he left for Diamondback in October 1980, the team didn't miss a step.

The official 1979 team photo — Eddy King, his kid brother Mike King, Doug Olson, Mike Aguilera, Jason Jensen, Doug Davis, and Steve Johnson — turned into one of the most reproduced shots in all of old-school BMX. The line that ran with it: Torker Factory Team Was #1 in America. The results that year said it wasn't bragging.

Jason "Juicy Jaws" Jensen came on as a nine-year-old mini rider. His copper and black mini Torker made the cover of Bicycle Motocross Action. Mike Aguilera was 13 when he got his factory ride. He toured the country on the program, and years later called it a dream come true at that age. The 1980 team feature in BMX Plus! went twelve pages.

The Barbarian

Clint Miller showed up at the end of 1979. They called him The Barbarian, and Torker ran all the way with it — the ad that made his name had him shirtless and war-painted, done up like Conan, holding a Torker frame like a club. To this day it's one of the ads people remember.

Miller's thing was the cruiser classes. He first threw a leg over Torker's 26-inch cruiser in April 1981 and won right out of the gate. He owned Pro Cruiser racing for the next two years, picked up the 24-inch class in 1982, and made the cover of Bicycle Motocross Action in February 1983. He left for Kuwahara in January 1983 — and then went and won the IBMXF BMX World Championship in Slagharen, Holland.

That kept happening. Riders would leave Torker and go win world titles. Tells you something about the program. The talent was real, the development was real. Torker didn't just hand guys a bike. It built champions.

The Frame That Started Freestyle

Back in 1978, two guys at BMX Action magazine — artist Bob Haro and test rider R.L. Osborn — started messing around doing tricks on their bikes after work. First time they did it in public was the ABA Winternationals in February 1980. Spinning, hopping, lifting the front end, working ramps and empty parking lots — what they were figuring out became the whole language of a brand-new sport. And the frames under them were Torkers.

By 1982 Bob Haro had gotten big enough in BMX that, for the first time, a dedicated freestyle frame actually made sense as a product. He took it to Torker. The Fullerton factory built the Haro Freestyler — the first purpose-built freestyle frame in the world — with serial numbers ending in "F." Collectors call those 1982 Torker-made ones the most important Haro Freestylers there are. Once production moved to a factory in Taiwan late in 1983, the frame wasn't the same animal anymore.

Eddie Fiola started his career on Torker gear too. Born September 28, 1964, in Bellflower, California, Fiola rode Torker Low Profile frames in the very first King of the Skateparks events — the contests that basically invented competitive freestyle. "My first sponsor was Premier helmets, then Torker — they just gave us bikes," he said in his BMXmuseum.com interview. He took the King of the Skateparks title six times and went into the ABA BMX Hall of Fame as a Freestyle Pioneer in 2009.

In 1984 Martin Aparijo — the first guy Torker actually put on a freestyle contract — co-designed the Torker Freestylist with Harold "Magoo" McGruther. First freestyle-specific frame ever to wear the Torker name. They barely made any. Then, that November, Torker filed for bankruptcy. So an original 1984 Freestylist sits today as one of the rarest things in all of old-school BMX collecting.

The Torker Twins

Tommy Brackens signed on October 1, 1983, coming over from Powerlite. His best friend and teammate Mike Miranda signed that January. The two of them shared a Fullerton apartment right above team manager Mike McLaughlin. They traveled together, trained together, raced together. The press just called them the Torker Twins.

In 1984 — the last year of the original factory team — Brackens won four Pro races. Miranda won four Pro races. And neither one of them had any idea the company was about to fold. They heard it from other racers at an East Coast event, while the team was still out on the road.

Brackens went to GT after Torker went under, won the 1987 BMXA NORA Cup with 17.91% of the vote, and went into the ABA BMX Hall of Fame in 1991. Miranda took the 1986 BMXA NORA Cup — #1 Racer in America — edging Greg Hill by exactly three votes. Richie Anderson "The Avalanche," and others off that final 1984 roster, built careers that shaped the next decade of the sport. The bankruptcy didn't end their run. It just moved it down the road.

November 1984

The auction went quick. Seattle Bike Supply bought the Torker name for $3,000. Harold "Magoo" McGruther — who'd raced for Torker from 1979 to 1981 and then worked at the Fullerton factory right up to the last day — bought his own wooden desk and chair for $25.

Then the name drifted. In 1986 Tioga bought it and put out a Torker 2 Freestyle line. Seattle Bike Supply grabbed it again in the 1990s, built alloy 20-inch and 24-inch frames, and got the program healthy enough to sign Steve Veltman — one of the most decorated racers the sport has ever had. Veltman held the 1993 ABA National #1 Pro title, won a stack of IBMXF World Championships, and is still the only BMX racer ever to land on a Wheaties box (1983). He raced Torker under the SBS program from October 1996 to November 1997.

Matt Hadan — "The Diesel," out of Azusa, California — carried the name into the early 2000s. 1986 BMX World Champion. Top national rankings late in the 1990s. He was the last great Torker factory pro before the brand drifted into twenty years of nothing-much: unicycles, townie bikes, three-wheelers. The name was still out there. The program wasn't.

The Revival

Bill Ryan and Supercross BMX started the buy in 2015, picking the Torker name up from Accell North America. The plan was simple. Go all the way back to the racing and freestyle roots, and treat the previous twenty-plus years like they never happened.

Torker officially came back on April 12, 2024, running out of Apple Valley, California. The current lineup tips its hat to every era of the original: the EK (Eddy King), LP, Barbarian, Pro-X, Diesel (a Matt Hadan tribute), Freestylist, MX26, MX29, and the Big Bike 50-Year Anniversary. Every frame is limited production. Every one ships same-day.

"It couldn't be in better hands with Bill Ryan and his team. I can't believe 43 years later I'm still as excited to be part of the Torker legacy as ever." — Alan Woods, Alan's BMX UK, Torker's UK importer since 1981

And the Hall of Fame record just is what it is: Steve Johnson (National BMX Hall of Fame, 2012), Eddy King (ABA 1989), Clint Miller (BMX Hall of Fame), Tommy Brackens (ABA 1991), Bob Haro (BMX Hall of Fame), Eddie Fiola (ABA 2009), Steve Veltman (USA BMX Hall of Fame), and more. No other original-era factory program in BMX put as many riders in the Hall of Fame as Torker did.

Timeline

• 1975 John Johnson founds Texon after son Doug wants a better BMX frame. First prototype built from aircraft-grade chromoly tubing.
• 1976 Steve Johnson renames the company Torker, from the word torque. First ad runs in BMX Weekly, December 1976. The MX (Big Bike) enters production in Fullerton, California.
• 1977 Kevin McNeal wins the California State Championship and NBA/Mongoose Grand Nationals — Torker's first big-race wins.
• 1978 LP (Low Profile) enters production at 18.5-inch top tube. Eddy King joins the factory team. Bob Haro and R.L. Osborn begin developing trick riding at BMX Action magazine.
• 1979 Torker factory team declared #1 in America. LP Long introduced. Eddy King Replica frame launched. Clint Miller joins at year end.
• 1980 BMX Action Trick Team performs first public show at ABA Winternationals. Eddie Fiola rides Torker equipment in the first King of the Skateparks events.
• 1981 26-inch cruiser enters production. Miller wins Pro Cruiser class immediately.
• 1982 Torker manufactures the world's first purpose-built freestyle BMX frame: the Haro Freestyler (serial suffix "F"). Pro-X frame introduced.
• 1983 Pro-X in full production. Haro Freestyler manufacturing moves to Taiwan. Tommy Brackens joins October 1.
• 1984 Mike Miranda joins January. The Torker Twins win four Pro races each. Martin Aparijo designs the Freestylist. Torker files for bankruptcy, November 1984.
• 1984–2015 Name passes through Seattle Bike Supply, Tioga, SBS again. Steve Veltman and Matt Hadan carry the program through the 1990s and early 2000s. Brand goes dormant by 2013.
• 2015 Bill Ryan and Supercross BMX begin acquiring Torker from Accell North America.
• 2024 Torker officially relaunches April 12 from Apple Valley, California.