Rich Rohrich

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Jul 27, 1999
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From http://www.superbikeplanet.com/2008/Jan/080123u8.htm

White Brothers Ceases Operations
by dean adams - Superbike Planet
Wednesday, January 23, 2008

In what can only be described as a shocking development, long-time motorcycle industry firm White Brothers, according to the terse outgoing message on their main phone line, ceased being in business yesterday.

The message states that White Brothers will be "ceasing operations immediately".

While a firm which predominantly served the needs of off-road riders, White Brothers was certainly well known to the street-riding sect of the motorcycle industry; their catalog included parts for Supermoto-style street bikes.

To say that White Brothers was an industry powerhouse is an understatement: they were a major sponsor on the factory Yamaha motocross team last year and were also a mid-level motorcycle parts distributor. In addition, their activities in vintage racing and on the vintage scene are also of renown.

There was a time when if you owned a four-stroke off-road motorcycle it probably had a White Brothers exhaust pipe on it--they were ubiquitous in the XT350 and XR350 ranks. Thus, if there was one firm which could seemingly capitalize on the current seismic shift in off-road motorcycles from two-stroke to four-stroke powerplants, conventional wisdom says it should have been White Brothers.

White Brothers was purchased by MAG (Motorsport Action Group) in 2001.
 

dirt bike dave

Sponsoring Member
May 3, 2000
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FWIW, just googled for info and saw on another board that someone who knows someone who works at White Bros. says they will be re-opening with a new name.

One way or another, there will probably be an official press release soon.
 

placelast

Member
Apr 11, 2001
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We lost an industry keystone although it was a' coming.

They did my IT175 suspension (to long travel) in late 1977; were in Garden Grove, CA at the time and a small 2/3-bay shop in a commercial rental, with a 4-page catalog. I bought every bolt-on goodie they had for my Yami, and that brand was their bread and butter. Most parts were well thought out and improved over OEM performance.

I got out of riding for many years, then when coming back 10 years later, starting buying lots of goodies from them in the mid-to-late '90s/early 2000's. By then they had 2 or 3 huge buildings in Placentia and one in Kentucky. About that time they changed/evolved from general track/off-road R&D and manufacturing/parts middle men to focusing on exhaust and street stuff, then sold the company to another entity; but before that, one of the brothers got out of M/Cs altogether and into competitive MTBing and parts; the other bought him out and ran the company up to the buyout and stayed on afterwards to kinda run things as a GM I believe. This latter brother was into MX well into his 40s and maybe early 50s, whose son suffered a debilitating M/C crash; they needed the $ for his medical needs. That and the attention/stress may have driven the early co. sale.

Since then it got further and further from the enthusiast - to the point of ceasing retail sales altogether and acting like a smaller Parts Unlimited/Tucker Rocky. Last time I was there was 5 years ago, and it was a headache just dealing with the counter guys; much better when the bros had it. Sorry to see another change though the last was not for the better.
 

SpDyKen

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Mar 27, 2005
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I read Dean's post on S.P. around 6:?? est, and 10 min. later read 'the rest of the story' on the C.N. site at -http://www.cyclenews.com/ShowStory.asp?HeadlineID=11800

INDUSTRY NEWS - Vance & Hines Acquires White Brothers
By Paul Carruthers
Going Off-Road

Aftermarket exhaust specialists Vance & Hines has acquired White Brothers, according to Vance & Hines president Terry Vance, with the company set to produce a line of off-road exhaust systems that will be introduced at the Indianapolis dealer show in February.

Word hit the street yesterday that White Brothers had ceased its operations in Yorba Linda, California, a fact that Vance confirmed in a phone conversation today. Vance & Hines and White Brothers are both owned by the Motorsports Aftermarket Group (MAG) so the acquisition makes perfect sense.

“We’ve taken White Brothers and broken it down and Vance & Hines has acquired the assets on the exhaust side," Vance said. “We will produce a line of off-road systems that will be branded Vance & Hines and introduced at the Indy show.”

The acquisition includes White Brothers’ management and engineering teams, including Tom Morgan, Vance said.

“They will come to Vance & Hines and we have a building in place and ready for them,” Vance said.

The deal also makes sense in that the Vance & Hines name is widely recognized and distributed worldwide.

“It’s the best of both worlds for us,” Vance said. “We will have the technical side and the distributing – it will be done right.”

Existing White Brothers customers will also be taken care of, according to Vance, with Vance & Hines handling any White Brothers customer service issues at 800/592-2529.


I owe a great debt of gratitude to Tom & Dan. In 1987 and '88, they sponsored my WERA Nat'l. Endurance team. They were just expanding their product line to include sportbike products, and were the U.S. distributors for White Power suspension products. They were both great guys to work with, and they did an extensive amount of work on our suspensions, along with other support.

The best part of all, though, was that they featured our bikes very prominently in their catalogs and other advertising materials that they produced over a 3 year period. This was a huge benefit to us, giving both our team and our other sponsors a great deal of exposure to both the industry and the public.

I had hear that Dan had left quite a while ago to do his mtn. biking thing, but had heard that Gary Jones (a while ago; heading up R&D,) and Mike Bell (more recently) were working for W.B. Either I missed, or forgot, that someone else had bought them out.

Tom and Dan have done some great things for the motorcycle business since they started W.B. 28 years ago. :cool: :boss:
 

XRpredator

AssClown SuperPowers
Damn Yankees
Aug 2, 2000
13,510
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dirt bike dave said:
. . . someone who knows someone who works at White Bros. says they will be re-opening with a new name.
I would imagine that's the case. After "losing" the White Bros. name to MAG, they probably have to do something different to make it work and bring something back under their control.

The Brothers White, anyone?
 

BadgerMan

Mi. Trail Riders
Jan 1, 2001
2,479
10
XRpredator said:
The Brothers White, anyone?

Hermanos Blancos :cool:
 

BadgerMan

Mi. Trail Riders
Jan 1, 2001
2,479
10
XRpredator said:
weiße Brüder

But they are located in California, right?
 

dirtbike321

Member
Aug 3, 2018
3
0
Aftermarket exhaust specialists Vance & Hines has acquired White Brothers, according to Vance & Hines president Terry Vance, with the company set to produce a line of off-road exhaust systems that will be introduced at the Indianapolis dealer show in February.
 

indynotch50

Member
Oct 13, 2004
33
0
I was doing some research on that company (I was looking at a used bike and the guy said it has full white brothers exhaust, turned out to be two brothers exhaust). It looked like after V&H took it over, all their off-road stuff disappeared.
 

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