TW Racing
A BMXRacingHistory.com preview · hosted on Legend Bike Co
The Brand That Taught Pete Loncarevich's Geometry — 1979 to 1981
Same as the other stories on here. Straight down the middle. Nobody gets a halo, nobody gets buried. When the record runs thin, I'll say so right out. And when my own memory fills in something the magazines never printed, that's me talking — I'll tell you when it's me.
Not to be confused with Two Wheelers, Marshall Wheeler's unrelated California frame brand documented from March 1975 — a different company, several years earlier, no connection to Taylor and Wimple's operation below.
What TW actually was
TW Racing was a small Northern California outfit, running from about 1979 into 1981. The name was the two guys behind it: James Taylor and Brian Wimple. Both names show up in the only brand-history references that survived, over on BMXmuseum.com. You'll see the second one spelled "Whimple" half the time. They worked out of Walnut Creek, California — East Bay, east of San Francisco. Nowhere near the Southern California pack where just about every early BMX brand set up shop.
TW didn't weld its own frames. They farmed that out to DG / Green Duck down in Ramona — the same Southern California shop that built DG's own bikes and ran the mild-steel SE Basher and the 26" OM Flyer for SE Racing in that same stretch. TW drew it up and shipped it. Green Duck laid the welds. That's just how the first wave of BMX brands worked back then. Nothing unusual about it.
The frame
The TW race frame had two things going on that set it apart from the rest of the 1980 chromoly crowd. An elliptical top tube, and a dual down tube setup. Twin down tubes running from the head tube down to the bottom bracket, which gave the front end a look you didn't forget. There's a loop-tail version floating around in the photos on BMXmuseum.com too, but it's rare. The geometry played it safe for the day — tight, short, sized for the 12-to-14-year-old kids who packed the BMX class field in 1980. And that geometry? That's the whole reason this page exists. Hold that thought.
The factory team
The TW factory team was tiny. The one rider the published record actually backs up is Pete "Pistol Pete" Loncarevich — on the team from December 1979 through September 1980, 13 turning 14, racing 14 Expert. TW was Pete's third factory ride. Cook Bros came first in 1977, then S&S Performance in 1978. After TW he landed at Diamond Back, where he stuck from September 1980 right up to turning pro in December 1982.
I also remember Denny Davidow on TW around the same time. Most people know Denny from his GT Bicycles ride that kicked off in 1980. His TW days aren't backed by anything in the surviving print record — that one's on me. I'm telling you because I was there and I saw it.
One more name I've got from the TW team is Fred Becker. I haven't been able to nail Becker down through any outside source. So if you've got a TW ad or a race photo with Becker in it, reach out. I'd love to see it.
Pete's father, the partnership, and the $5,000
The part of the TW story everybody repeats is how the whole thing fell apart. Pete Loncarevich's father wasn't James Taylor and wasn't Brian Wimple — the Loncarevich family didn't start TW. But Pete's dad was a business partner in it, in there with Taylor and Wimple on the money side. That's how a 13-year-old ends up with a factory ride.
Then September 1980 hit and it came undone. The account from back then — printed in BMX Plus! April 1984 Vol. 7 No. 4 page 48, and later picked up in Pete's Wikipedia entry — says Pete's father's partners vanished with US$5,000 of his money. Pete walked, signed with Diamond Back, and that was pretty much it for TW Racing.
The advertising — what survives
TW barely showed up in print. I remember exactly one TW ad, in BMX Action, somewhere around 1980 — the only one I can call up from any of the period magazines. Which issue, I still can't tell you. Nobody's pinned it down yet through the oldschoolmags.com BMX Action PDF archive.
Why TW matters — the geometry lineage
TW would be a footnote and nothing more if Pete Loncarevich hadn't gone and done what he did. He didn't quit after TW. He spent 1980 to '82 on Diamond Back, turned pro in December 1982, rode SE for one single weekend in early 1983, and then sat down with his father to build their own race frame. The LRP. Loncarevich Racing Products.
And the geometry on the LRP came straight off the TW. Pete didn't start from nothing. He started with the bike that taught him to race at 12. He and his dad cleaned up what TW had, added the gusset TW never put on it, ditched the loop-tail, and shipped the LRP under their own name in 1983. That frame carried Pete into the AA Pro class. Then CW Racing came calling a few months later, made killing LRP a condition of the deal, and the rest of that one's over on the LRP page.
Forty years on, Pete and I brought LRP back under the Legend Bike Co. banner, built on updated Supercross BMX geometry that runs — through the original LRP — all the way back to the TW. The bike you can buy from Legend right now has that TW frame sitting in its family tree. I don't think a lot of people know that.
Where TW sits in the broader BMX picture
TW belongs to that first wave of real BMX brands that popped up between 1977 and 1981 — the same window that handed the sport SE Racing, Redline, JMC, Mongoose, Diamond Back, Torker, Webco, Schwinn's BMX line, and the early CW, Hutch, and GT. Most of those had a Southern California address. TW had none of that going for it.
What we still don't know
- The exact founding date and the exact date the brand wound down.
- The total number of frames TW shipped.
- The full factory team roster beyond Pete Loncarevich.
- The exact BMX Action issue that carried the TW ad.
- What happened to James Taylor and Brian Wimple after September 1980.
Sources
BMXmuseum.com — TW Racing brand page. Wikipedia — Pete Loncarevich, citing BMX Plus! April 1984 Vol. 7 No. 4 page 48 for the TW sponsorship dates and the $5,000 partnership account. Legend Bike Co. SE Racing history for the Green Duck context. Legend Bike Co. LRP history for the TW-to-LRP geometry lineage. oldschoolmags.com BMX Action archive.
Primary-source recollection: Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX and co-owner of Legend Bike Co., on TW as one of Pete Loncarevich's first sponsors at age 12, the TW factory team including Denny Davidow and Fred Becker, and the TW-to-LRP-to-modern-LRP geometry lineage.