Classic American people - Bruce Meyer
Steve Havelock profiles the man that Jay Leno calls "THE Car Guy" ... now that's quite some accolade, but well deserved, as we discover ...
Bruce Meyer is an extremely successful businessman and highly respected mover and shaker in the classic car world. Not only does he own a fabulous stable of cars which he is keen to show and share, he is the founding chairman and current vice-chairman of the world-renowned Petersen Museum in Los Angeles, the organiser of the annual Father's Day Rodeo Drive Car Show, a member of Bonneville's exclusive 200mph Club and a champion of the hot-rod movement. He is a true car enthusiast and is just as happy chatting with folk at a local car show as he is with mixing with TV celebrities and billionaires. Jay Leno describes him as "THE Car Guy" and says: "He is probably the greatest ambassador our hobby could have."
First, I asked Bruce about his background and where his love of cars and motorcycles came from. He told me: "I was born in 1941 and grew up in Hollywood. I came from a family that didn't have the means or the interest to have a cool car. My grandparents couldn't even afford a car. My family hated cars. They thought they were the biggest waste of time in the world. My parents were products of the Depression and any spare time you had, you worked and you saved your money. But I think I have a car gene in my DNA. As a child I was very aware of every kind of car.
"Back then, especially in the US, styles would change every year. You could tell a '54 from a '55. My primary school was across the street from probably the finest automotive design school in our country called the Art Center School. (The Art Center College of Design was founded in 1930). The design school guys all had cool cars and they would drive these hot rods and customs to the school. I watched these cars come and go and fell in love with hot rodding, performance and custom cars. That had a lot to do with my love of hot rodding. In 1948 Hot Rod magazine came out and that was the first magazine I subscribed to."
Bruce would later become friends with the magazine's founder, Bob Petersen, and together they would form the Petersen Museum. Bruce recalls: "I worked from the age of nine or 10 and I worked every minute of every day and I saved my money. At 13, I bought a motor scooter called a Doodlebug, then a Whizzer. At 14, I bought a 1953 BSA 650 with high handlebars, like a chopper. I had motorcycles before any of my friends. This was all done without my parents' knowledge as I kept them at a friend's house.
"When I was 16, my great-aunt died and left my sister and me a 1950 Plymouth. My sister would drive it in the week and I would drive it at the weekends. But with that and my motorcycles, they got me around. Some of my friends then had cool cars, late-model Chevys and so on. I took that old six-cylinder Plymouth to the San Fernando drag strip, which was one of the very early drag strips in California. I ran it there and I won a little trophy for going 70mph in the quarter mile. It was a pretty slow class, but I'll never forget that. Every chance I had, I would go to watch the motorcycle races and the drag races. And then when Riverside Raceway opened in the early Sixties I'd go to all their races. The film American Graffiti was exactly what it was like back then. It was so period correct to every detail. I could watch that movie daily and recall my childhood.
''When I was 19, my dad said he would help me out to buy my first new car. I was going to order the cheapest model 1960 Chevy, but with the biggest option engine. By now I was into sports cars and I realised that for almost the same money I could buy a little Porsche. I told my dad that the Porsche only had 60bhp and that it was a safer car. I took a year out of college and travelled the world and in May 1961 I picked up the Porsche in Germany. It was $2700 and my dad paid half."
Armed with a business degree, Bruce initially went to work in his father's gift store in Beverly Hills, but then branched out into real estate and did rather well. He says: "I think we grew up in the perfect generation. We were too young for the Korean War and too old for Vietnam, so we missed all the war years and we had the golden years of automobiles, and in a time when you could find successfinancially. We just nailed it. From the mid-Sixties I always had a daily driver, a motorcycle and a fun car; something I could tinker with or modify. I'm way better at disassembly than assembly. That's my specialty and then I'd call for help. I had a Model A Ford pickup and a '32 Cadillac. I didn't get to own a hot rod until the late Seventies/early Eighties, when I bought a 1932 Ford Highboy Roadster."
Since then Bruce has added quite a few to his collection, which includes the famous recordbreaking 1934 Ford Pierson Brothers Coupe and the 1952 So-Cal Speed Shop Belly Tank Racer, both of which he took to the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2000 (where I first met him), and no fewer than 10 Fords of 1932 vintage. He says: "No one needs 10, but each one is historic and appeals to me in a different way and I drive them all. My wife and I took my chopped threewindow coupe and we did almost 3000 miles in it this year through the National Parks. I just love driving. When I was buying these historic hot rods nobody was restoring these things. Nobody cared about them."
Bruce became so passionate about hot rods and the history behind them that he started to badger the organisers of the elitist Pebble
Beach Concours to try and convince them that hot rods were just as important in car culture as any Packard, Rolls Royce, Cord or Ferrari. They eventually conceded and in 1997 they devoted a class to hot rods, which proved to be the most popular draw of the event. It was won by Bruce's restored 1932 Ford Doane Spencer Roadster, exactly 50 years after it won an award for Best Appearing Hot Rod.
This was one of the rare occasions that Bruce allowed one of his cars to be judged. He says: "I do not judge and I'm not big on judged events. Allyou do is make people unhappy. People love their pride and joy and they don't need anyone telling them what's wrong with it. I do put my cars into car shows, but most of the time, not for judging. I like to drive them there, park up, let people see them, have a look around myself and drive home again."
Bruce continues: "For more than 20 years I've put on a car show every year on Rodeo Drive on Father's Day. We close Rodeo Drive, the big shopping street. We have 50,000 people and we have about 115 cars and there's no judging. People just show their cars and they have no expectations. Everybody goes away happy. It benefits the Beverly HillsPolice Department Foundation, but there's no admission fee and the only money you make is through sponsorships and donations. We do give out a few awards, but
* not for clean exhaust pipes."