Brendan McAleer
A Manx is the opposite of elaborate. It is made out of a simple fibreglass frame set on the shortened chassis of a Volkswagen Beetle. The name comes from the Manx cat, a stump-tailed feline from the Isle of Man, skilled at hunting. Lightweight, simple, and durable, Meyers’ buggy took the everyman appeal of the original VW and infused it with a dash of surf and sun. It was affordable, fun, and immediately iconic.
However, the story isn’t as simple as that. Bruce Meyers’ life had more ups and downs than the dunes his machines bounded over.
Automobile/Nostalgie Buggy : le symbole de l insouciance des années 60
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Automobile/Nostalgie Buggy : l icône à la bouille rigolote de toute une génération
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Bruce Meyers, Who Built the First Fiberglass Dune Buggy, Dies at 94
His creation revolutionized off-road riding. But he fell victim to companies that knocked off his design for kits that turned Beetles into buggies.
Bruce Meyers in his invention, the Meyers Manx, which ignited the dune buggy craze in the 1960s.Credit.Eric Rickman/The Enthusiast Network, via Getty Images
March 6, 2021
Bruce Meyers, who used his skills as a boat builder to invent the first fiberglass dune buggy, igniting the late-1960s craze for off-road riding, and thrived until copycats flooded the market, died on Feb. 19 at his home in Valley Center, Calif. He was 94.
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Bruce Meyers was hanging out at Pismo Beach on California’s Central Coast one afternoon in 1963 when he saw something that both blew his mind and changed his life: a handful of old, stripped-down cars bouncing across the sand.
It sure would be fun to get behind the wheel of one of those, Meyers thought, if only they weren’t so ugly and didn’t appear so uncomfortable. He built his own solution: a “dune buggy” fashioned out of lightweight fiberglass mounted on four oversized tires with two bug-eyed-looking headlights and a blindingly bright paint job.
The result would become both an overnight automotive sensation and one of the talismans of California surf culture, especially when he created a space in the back to accommodate a surfboard. He called the vehicle the Meyers Manx and it turned the friendly, soft-spoken Meyers into a revered figure among off-roaders, surfers and car enthusiasts.