The granddaddy of the beach buggy and a key instigator of desert racing along the Baja Peninsula died on 19 February at his home in California, aged 94.
Bruce Meyers, pictured above on the left, was a remarkable polymath with a wide range of talents and achievements way beyond the cult off-roader.
Musician, sailor, artist, surfer and engineer, Meyers’ many skills stemmed from his parents' diverse careers: his father was an engineer with Ford who set up Model T dealerships on the West Coast, while his mother once performed on Broadway.
After his brother drowned at an early age, Meyers was forbidden from water sports but, rebelling against his parents, he became a lifeguard. During Navy service in WW2, Meyers was a gunner on the USS Bunker Hill aircraft carrier and, when the ship attacked in Okinawa by kamikaze fighters, he valiantly swam through the flaming oil slick to save comrades.
In peacetime, sailing became an escapist passion, including trips to the Cook Islands in a trading schooner, before Meyers settled down in southern California to build glassfibre boats at Jensen Marine, where he acquired the skills that would help him develop his innovative beach buggy.
Keen surfer Meyers first converted a VW camper nicknamed ‘Little Red Riding Bus’ to get across sandy terrain, and on one trip to Pizmo Beach he was taken by a group of crude dune buggies pounding the sands.
After developing his bus, in 1962 he focused on building his own Beetle-based buggy in his home garage in Newport Beach. The body was shaped in wood and plaster, from which he created a stressed glassfibre monocoque. Clever features included a 14-gallon moulded-in rear fuel tank and flat-topped front wings to steady drinks.
