1991 Bonzai © - The Bomb - Factory Set Up

1991 Bonzai©

These frames were big in the NBL in the early 90's ... Great bikes , based here locally in Palm Beach, FL ..

Ok this is a 90-93 Aluminum Bonzai© frame ....Pro A little bit about Bonzai© , they started making frames in late 89-thru 93/94ish...They were all 6061 heat treated aluminum .... The story is in 93 sometime someone broke into Bonzai© Bicycles and stole all there inventory... Causing Burt the owner of Bonzai© to supposibly cut cost's on some frames by not putting them thru the expensive heat treating process ( so the story goes ?? ) ... Which led to frames cracking and eventually the downfall of Bonzai©.. I was lucky enough to get this frame thru a member who ran into a Old Friend ... Thanks JetRock My plans for it are to build it just like my signature bike (pearl white) I was only 13 in the pic shown with the Bonzai© Gear on ... This is a Pro Size Frame , with round tubing ...mine had Floval tubing like a PK ripper ... JR size ..

Submitted by oneluv1979 (14 bikes in museum)
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OKAY, HERE WE GO. THIS IS A RESPONSE TO THE ABOVE WRITTEN POST SUBMITTED BY oneluv1979 IN BMX MUSEUM WEB SITE. THIS WILL HOPEFULLY SET THE STORY STRAIGHT.

1. THIS IS A 91 BONZAI© BECAUSE THE NEWER ONES HAD THE CANTILEVER BRAKE STUDS ON THE BACK STAYS AND THE SEALED BEARING HEADSET.

2. The heat treating story is exactly that, a story! Don't believe everything you hear. We had a very short bout with one batch of frames that had been heat treated incorrectly at one of the Lindberg Heat treating plants which was about 40 frames of which we caught up with 20 of them before sold and offered replacements to our customers that had gotten one of these frames. Our closing down had nothing to do with that problem.

3. IN 1992 LABOR DAY, MY ORIGINAL PARTNER, RON SEITZ, OWNER OF OUR LOCAL DELI PASSED AWAY AND TO SETTLE THE ESTATE HIS WIFE BECAME VERY DIFFICULT AND WOULD NOT ACCEPT NUMEROUS OPTIONS I HAD OFFERED HER TO RESOLVE HER WANTING ALL HER AND HIS INVESTMENT BACK RIGHT AWAY. I ATTEMPTED A NUMBER OF SENSIBLE NEGOTIATIONS TO NO AVAIL, TOOK ALL THE FRAMES I OWNED PERSONALLY, MY DESIGNS And my team and tried to go on and sustain myself as an individually owned corporation. Did my best and the team did excellent as did the mail order. However our retail sales through our retail outlet helped greatly to sustain our team and expansion program. We had a good sales pattern and great response to our product and our factory team, but without fresh working capital, and the crunch going on in the bicycle industry at the time, I became forced financially to pay all my bills and walk away at that time in good standing, hoping one of my promised backers would come through to reopen and go gangbusters ahead. The ideas, the spirit and the winning attitude have not left me or our legend. Keep your eyes and ears open for the re emergence of one of the greatest BMX Bikes of all time, THE BONZAI© !!

By the way, I do appreciate your positive comments.

post written by Bert Calderon, Owner and Founder of Bonzai Cycles, Inc.©