Meyers invented the dune buggy
LOS ANGELES – Bruce Meyers was hanging out at Pismo Beach on California’s Central Coast one afternoon in 1963 when he saw something that both blew his mind and changed his life: a handful of old, stripped-down cars bouncing across the sand.
It sure would be fun to get behind the wheel of one of those, Meyers thought, if only they weren’t so ugly and didn’t appear so uncomfortable. He built his own solution: a “dune buggy” fashioned out of lightweight fiberglass mounted on four oversized tires with two bug-eyed looking headlights and a blindingly bright paint job.
The result would become both an overnight automotive sensation and one of the talismans of California surf culture, especially when he created a space in the back to accommodate a surfboard. He called the vehicle the Meyers Manx and it turned the friendly, soft-spoken Meyers into a revered figure among off-roaders, surfers and car enthusiasts of all types.
Meyers died Feb. 19 at his San Diegoarea home, his wife, Winnie Meyers, said Friday. He was 94.
Meyers built thousands of dune buggies in his lifetime, but he did far more. He designed boats and surfboards, worked as a commercial artist and a lifeguard, traveled the world surfing and sailing, built a trading post in Tahiti and even survived a World War II Japanese kamikaze attack on his Navy aircraft carrier the USS Bunker Hill.
“He had a life that nobody else has ever lived,” his wife said with a chuckle.
Bruce Franklin Meyers was born March 12, 1926, in Los Angeles, the son of a businessman and mechanic who set up automobile dealerships for his friend Henry Ford.
Growing up near such popular Southern California surfing spots as Newport, Hermosa and Manhattan beaches, it was wave riding, not cars, that initially captivated Meyers, who liked to refer to himself as an original beach bum.
He designed and built boats, learning to shape lightweight but sturdy fiberglass. That experience gave him skills he would put to use in building the first dune buggies.