The inventor of the dune buggy has passed away (original) (raw)

This feature was originally published in the December 2013 issue of Top Gear magazine

"I'm not smart, but I'm talented. I can draw, I have a good sense of proportions, I know a lot about fibreglass, and I'm a horny old ******. I've raced at Bonneville, shaped surfboards, and I've never had a business plan. The whole of that - the whole of me - is in the Manx buggy."

Bruce Meyers is 87, and in 2014 the Meyers Manx will celebrate its 50th birthday. A car that became a bandwagon, defined the Californian beach culture it grew from, fathered the Baja 1000 and wheel-to-wheel off-road racing, exploited one of VW's most celebrated innovations, and intercepted the chain letter of play-it-safe received automotive aesthetics. It's been copied more than 300,000 times, all over the world, and it owes its creator a fortune. Literally.

It's also utterly, indecently cute. "When I was a little kid in Newport Beach - before the buggies and the cars and the beach boy life - I crawled around with comics," says Meyers, insouciant to the fiercely colourful, baked-on charm of his home and workshop in Valley Center, near San Diego. "Mickey Mouse drove around in these tiny cars with great big wheels. I wanted to drive them right off the page. I never thought I would, but I kind of had an idea that cars would be part of my life."

Words: Matthew Jones
Photography: Robert Yager