White Brothers Ceases Operations
By Dean Adams

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.