FOX Museum Opening Offers In-Depth Experience of FOX History
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FOX Athlete & multi-time X Games Medalist Tucker Hibbert

Tucker Hibbert may have been featured further down the timeline for his snocross six-peat at the Winter X Games, but he was more focused on the bikes hanging in the museum and the snowmobile history.

“Oh wow! Look at that old snowmobile!” Hibbert gestured toward the Polaris XCR “I didn’t know what to expect, but this is awesome. I love the mix of mountain bike and snowmobile stuff. When I look at all this old stuff — the bibs, the sled — I think of my dad.”

Hibbert’s father, Kirk, was instrumental in early snowmobile suspension with Arctic Cat in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. One of his dad’s inventions, the crosslink, was mounted on the wall.

Winding around a bit farther into the 4000-square-foot space sat a mountain bike suspension time capsule. Starting with some of the earliest forks and shocks in the ‘90s, there were plenty of cross sections, photos and old advertisements for any enthusiast to geek out about.

“It’s really cool looking back to see how far we have come. I remember being a jealous kid wanting suspension like that,” said Greg Minnaar, a downhill racer who has plenty of podiums with FOX suspension.

Minnaar was joined in by other bicycle greats like Gee Atherton, who was the first to win a downhill championship on FOX suspension.

“It is amazing to see where all the technology started,” Atherton said. “It’s easy to forget how much history there is in the company, and it makes me feel proud to be a part of it all. Racing has really been the No. 1 focus for the whole journey. 
Aaron Gwin, the first American male to win the downhill World Cup Series marveled at the museum as well and was featured prominently on one of the final displays.

“It’s great to see the bike in here and some of the photos and stuff. It’s humbling. It’s a total honor to be up there with all those other guys.” Gwin said as he was trying to make his way over to meet Bob Fox. “It’s cool to see an awesome guy — this hard worker — make his dreams come true and now doing the same to help us out: the riders, the company and a whole bunch of people. He’s just giving back.”

RAD (Racing Applications Development) Display

Opposite of the entrance across the long halls of the museum sat the RAD display, a monument to the Racing Applications Development program that FOX uses to make some of its most ingenious products like the Cactus Cooler, an off-road bypass shock cooling component.

Jesse Jones, trophy truck racer, scoped out the exhibits. He drove the first trophy truck to race with FOX shocks and won the 2006 trophy truck championship with them. His rider feedback within RAD was instrumental in the development of the Cactus Cooler.

“What an evolution. It’s pretty cool when I look at all the stuff we did together. And we did a lot more stuff than just what they’ve shown. They brought a lot of the finished stuff but not all of the R&D pieces.”

When chatting with Bob Fox, it was clear that the museum is a work in progress with plans in the making, so perhaps some of what Jones talked about will be featured later.

“We want the museum to have some rolling exhibits where we can change what we display in certain spaces over time. The #70 Maico will be done in a couple months and will be added. Maybe we’ll add a Brad Lackey bike if we can locate a ’77 RC500 Honda. But they’re very hard to find. It was never a mass-production model; maybe only a handful of them still exist.”