TURNER SCRUB 2024 11

Flowrider Racing has been the official distributor of Turner Bikes in Switzerland for almost 10 years. Marc Wohler, the founder of Flowrider Racing, has been racing bikes since around 1995 and for many years on Turner bikes.

We have visited the Turner crew several times in California and a good friendship has developed.  Since Turner Bikes is celebrating its 30th birthday this year, I really wanted to build 2 bikes to celebrate. One from the first year 1994 and a current 2024 model.

Turner Bikes was founded in 1994 by David Turner, a former professional mountain bike rider who had ridden for the Marin and Mongoose teams. Turner had also worked with Horst Leitner at AMP Research whilst Horst developed the Horst Link suspension design.

David Turner started designing his own bicycles in 1992. By 1993, he was riding his designs for the Mammoth Mountain Kamikaze Manufacturers Cup downhill race and finished 1st. In 1994, the first 150 production Turner mountain bike frames were built by Ventana Mountain Bikes USA. These bikes were known only as „the Turner bike“ until reviewed by the magazine Mountain Bike Action, which dubbed it the „Turner Burner“. This name would be applied to many of Turner‘s future designs. Burner had 2.75” inches rear travel with a down hill race option of 3.6 inches. To meet the demand for Turner‘s frames, production was carried out by FTW manufacturing out of Arizona in 1995.
30 years, and many great Bikes later, David Turner is still the owner of Turner Bikes and still makes outstanding bikes.

Pics: Melih Bildik

Paintjob: Cyclework, Stefan Utz