When he built a naked, caramel-colored car mounted on four big wheels to navigate the sand on California beaches in 1963, Bruce Meyers could scarcely imagine that his “dune buggy” would become the iconic car of the day. summer.
Meyers, who first christened his invention Meyers Manx, died at his home in San Diego earlier this month after building thousands of lightweight fiberglass vehicles that only had enough space in the back for a surfboard and a beer.
Meyers, a commercial artist, lifeguard and passionate surfer, also designed boats and surfboards. He built a trading post in Tahiti and survived a Japanese attack on his Navy aircraft carrier during World War II, in which 400 of his fellow sailors were killed.
But Meyers, who was 94 when he died, was best known for the dune buggies he initially built just for himself and his friends, after watching surfers run through the California sand dunes in naked cars in the early sixties.
“He had a life no one has ever lived,” his wife Winnie Meyers said in an interview with the AP. He was still driving his original carriage, called the Old Red.
“All I wanted to do was go surfing in Baixa when I built the subject,” he said in a 2001 interview, adding that the first vehicles were built without a chassis, which made them lighter, but il To drive on public roads. Later models included chassis and Meyers sold kits that allowed fans to build them for about $ 1,000.
Sales went through the rooftop when Meyers and his friends entered Old Red in a 1,000-mile Mexican road race in 1967. Meyers ’dune buggy won in record time and orders went through the rooftop.
A year later, Elvis Presley drove a dune buggy in the early scenes of the movie “Live a Little, Love a Little.”
His company built more than 6,000 Meyers Manx dune strollers before marking the design. The Historic Vehicle Association named the dune buggy the most copied in history, with more than 250,000 versions.
Born in Los Angeles, he was a high school dropout, who served in the Merchant Navy after the war and attended the Chouinard Art Institute, now the California Institute of the Arts.
In 1976, Road and Track Magazine called the dune buggy “a real sculpture, a work of art.”
