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Bruce Meyers, who used his skills as a boat builder to invent the first fiberglass dune buggy, sparking the late 1960s craze for off-road riding, and thrived until imitators flood the market, died Feb. 19 at his home in Valley Center. , California. He was 94 years old.
The cause was myelodysplastic syndrome, a cancer of the blood, said his wife, Winnifred (Baxter) Meyers.
Mr. Meyers’ invention got a big promotional boost after he and a friend drove the Meyers Manx (named after the cat with a tail end) to a time record over nearly 1,000 miles of rough roads from the Baja California Peninsula in 1967. The victory proved the vehicle’s viability and made an aging beach boy the darling of off-road enthusiasts.
“Go back to the lifestyle I lived when I entered this business,” he said in a 2017 interview with Motorward, an automotive website. “It wasn’t about education or higher education, it was just having fun.”
Mr. Meyers was a Southern California surfer with a fine arts education who in the late 1950s and early 1960s saw four-wheel-drive Jeeps struggling for traction on the dunes of sand.
But he saw better expressions of off-road freedom in the modified Volkswagen Beetles, which were more efficient at navigating the dunes because their engine’s weight was in the back. At the time, enthusiasts modernized the Beetles by cutting the bodywork to make them even lighter and adding wide tires.
Something about these vehicles reminded Mr. Meyers of his childhood.
“All these characters – Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse – all drove crappy little cars with big tires,” he told The National, an Abu Dhabi newspaper, in 2012. “Maybe my instincts when I created the dune buggy was guided by my memories. “
For 18 months, he worked in his small garage in Newport Beach to create the Meyers Manx. He removed the body of a Beetle, shortened its floor section, then bolted onto a one-piece fiberglass shell (with fenders, sides, and a front cowl area) that was moldable and lightweight yet sturdy.
He completed the Beetle that became Manx in 1964, making it light and fast, with a shorter turning radius and greater traction than the dune buggies that came before his. He named his creation Old Red for his paint job.
He started selling kits that would allow others to convert their beetles. But sales didn’t improve until 1967, when he and a friend, Ted Mangels, an engineer, drove the Meyers Manx from La Paz, Mexico, north to Tijuana in just 34 hours and 45 minutes – beating the previous record, which had been held by two motorcyclists, for about five hours.
A cover story in Road & Track, which chronicled Baja’s wild adventure, kicked off the kit orders. But demand eventually outstripped the ability of Mr. Meyers’ company to produce the kits – he insisted he was not a businessman – and his rivals made imitations of his design.
Mr Meyers has produced over 5,000 kits, but it has been estimated that at least 20 times as many fake Meyers Manxes have been produced. He lost a legal fight against a copier manufacturer to enforce his patent on a “sand vehicle”. In 1971, he closed BF Meyers & Company.
“It took 10 years before I could hear the words ‘dune buggy’ and not get mad,” he told Car and Driver in 2006.
And almost three decades before his return to the company.
Bruce Franklin Meyers was born in Los Angeles on March 12, 1926. His father, John, helped set up car dealerships for Henry Ford. Her mother, Peggy, was a song capper.
Mr. Meyers dropped out of high school to join the Merchant Navy and volunteered for the navy during World War II. It was serving aboard the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill when it was attacked by two Japanese suicide planes on May 11, 1945, near Okinawa. He remembered jumping into the water as the burning porter started to sink; he gave his life jacket to a sailor and helped a badly burned pilot until he was rescued by a destroyer hours later.
In the carnage, 346 sailors and airmen died, 264 were wounded and 43 missing.
“I spent almost a month coming back with a skeleton crew, getting the dead off the ship,” Meyers told The National.
After the war, he returned to the merchant navy, spending time in Tahiti. He then attended art schools in San Francisco and Los Angeles for six years, specializing in portraiture.
He worked for several years at Jensen Marine on fiberglass sailboats – an experience that helped him build his revolutionary buggy.
Over the nearly 30 years since his business closed, Mr. Meyers held a variety of jobs, including working for a boat manufacturer.
Then, at the end of the 1990s, he returned fully to the world of dune buggy. With Winnie Meyers, his sixth wife, he created the Manx Club and then produced a limited edition Meyers Manx kit identical to the original. He has also developed several other kits, such as the Manx 2 + 2 and the Manx SR.
The couple sold the business in November to Trousdale Ventures, an investment firm.
“He was 94,” Winnie Meyers said over the phone, “and I had to stop.”
In addition to his wife, Mr. Meyers is survived by a daughter, Julie Meyers; five grandchildren; and a brother, Richard. Another daughter, Georgia Meyers, and a son, Tim, have died in recent years.
In 2014, the Meyers Manx was the second car, motorcycle or truck (after the 1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe CSX2287) to be inducted into the National Historic Vehicle Register, an eight-year-old project detailing the historical and cultural significance of American vehicles. The registry is a collaboration between the Historic Vehicle Association, a group of owners and the Home Office.
In a nod to Mr. Meyers’ ingenuity and business problems, the registry said the Meyers Manx was “the inspiration for more than 250,000 similar cars made by other companies, and so is the most reproduced car in history.
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