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Jeff Dunhams The Cars That Drove Us S01E07 Dune Buggy H 264
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00:00Hi everybody, it's Jeff Dunham and Peanut at Dunham Family Motors, where you don't just get great prices on great
00:07used cars, you mean there's more, you get family.
00:11Uh, yeah, no thanks.
00:12Most cars were born in a top secret, state-of-the-art R&D facility, surrounded by engineers and executives.
00:19This one, it came into the world in a garage full of surfboards.
00:23No roof, no doors, no reason not to laugh the whole time.
00:27Just you, a throttle, and God's air conditioning.
00:31It arrived as parts in a box, and you built it yourself, for fun.
00:35This is the story of a man with a vision, and the original dune buggy.
00:39This one, you can get wet.
00:41Our Liars makes dune buggy, look at that!
00:46Throughout time, humanity has been obsessed with getting places using anything but their own two feet.
00:53We've tried all kinds of things.
00:55Until, finally, the greatest invention of all time, the automobile.
01:01Moron!
01:02These are the cars that drove us.
01:09Somewhere across the dunes.
01:12A beast with a roar.
01:14A death-defying dream.
01:17This wasn't just a dune buggy.
01:20The Manx wasn't the first dune buggy, but really was the first successful dune buggy.
01:25While Detroit was turning out cars for the masses to benefit the corporate suits.
01:30This wasn't a car that came off of a factory assembly line.
01:33It was designed by Bruce Myers.
01:35That's right.
01:36Just a flip-flop wearing radical dude in his garage, building a revolution.
01:40But, we're getting ahead of ourselves.
01:43Born in 1926, Bruce Myers grew up in sun-kissed Newport Beach, California.
01:49He was a surfer.
01:50Woohoo!
01:51He was a lifeguard.
01:52He was a sailor.
01:53He wanted to go sailing.
01:54He was a musician.
01:56Playing guitar at campsites.
02:00That's right.
02:01Pretty much a classic beach bum, living...
02:04The quintessential California lifestyle.
02:06And when he wasn't bronzing on the beach...
02:10Racing Hot Rods is where Bruce learned the mechanics of custom-built cars.
02:14But on his 18th birthday...
02:16The letter came, said greetings.
02:18A not-so-happy birthday from Uncle Sam.
02:20He went into the Navy during the World War II.
02:24Assigned to the USS Bunker Hill patrolling the Pacific.
02:28The ship was kamikazed.
02:30A few get through.
02:31He heads for the Bunker Hill stern.
02:34373 of our crew were killed.
02:37He was very sad about all of that.
02:38It was very difficult.
02:40So, I think when he got home, he just wanted to create something that made people happy.
02:49After the war, he went to art school at Chouinard in Los Angeles.
02:53He did create a lot of sketches of women.
02:56He was basically in love with the woman's shape.
03:00One day, Bruce decided to go sand sailing at Pismo Beach.
03:04And he saw water pumpers in the sand.
03:07And he decided that that was pretty cool.
03:09They were stripped down.
03:11Stripped way down.
03:12And called water pumpers because they were built with water-cooled motors instead of air-cooled motors from, say, a
03:18Volkswagen.
03:18The chassis with the seats, engine, and transmission.
03:22And he just thought they were ugly.
03:24That's when Bruce had his revelation.
03:26So, he began to use his art skills to draft and design this body.
03:30It was really the perfect blend of utilitarian and fun.
03:34But when it came to Bruce actually building this car...
03:38He didn't have a big investment of money.
03:40He had himself and a guy that he hired who could make fiberglass.
03:44But this wasn't just any guy.
03:47This was his buddy, Ted Mangels, who knew a thing or two about building fun cars.
03:52Ted Mangels got a contract from Disney to create the original Utopia cars.
03:57Ted could see the attraction in Bruce's design.
04:01Lightweight and curvaceous.
04:05He was thinking about hips and the flow of a body.
04:10Probably most of his thinking had to do about women.
04:14And as for the buggy's round, full-bodied headlights, well, Bruce took cues from...
04:20Mickey Mouse.
04:21He designed the headlights on top to look like the Mickey Mouse ears.
04:26See? For the kids.
04:28And then, of course, the fenders are flat so you can put a beer on it.
04:31Mmm, not for the kids.
04:34Beers, ears, and rears inspired the first fiberglass body for Bruce's buggy.
04:39For the chassis, he took a more singular approach.
04:42The chassis was integrated into the fiberglass like a boat.
04:45It was essentially one solid unit.
04:47The whole thing was like a bathtub.
04:49And in 1964, Bruce came clean with a prototype.
04:53He named it Old Red.
04:56He was driving around Newport Beach with this beautiful flow of a body.
05:01People turned their heads.
05:03And they really thought, wow, this is something different.
05:05Inevitably, people wanted one.
05:07However, he wasn't interested in building a corporate empire.
05:11I could never see Bruce going with the traditional big automaker route.
05:16He's too much of a free spirit.
05:17But he decided, you know what I'm going to do?
05:18I'm going to just create something that was way more affordable, way more accessible to the common man.
05:23And so, instead of the corporations, he would put the power into the people's hands.
05:28So, it was decided that he would just make it into a kit.
05:31And the business model was simple.
05:33People would order the kit from Bruce.
05:35How to build your own dune buggy.
05:37It would come with a body, hood, dash, and a windshield.
05:42And as for everything else, you know, like the...
05:44Engine and transmission and all the other parts that a car needs.
05:48The buyer was on the hook for that stuff.
05:50Take a close look at the engine.
05:53It used parts from the Volkswagen, which was designed specifically to be a car that anybody could wrench on.
06:00Make sure you get a receipt.
06:01Literally ready for the junkyard or ready to be thrown away.
06:04There were tons of parts available.
06:06And the idea was you could do it in a weekend in your garage.
06:09Mother !
06:10You could say, I did it.
06:13But did anybody do it?
06:15Because Bruce managed to sell only 12 kits at $995 a piece.
06:21Yeah.
06:22Which is almost $10,000 each in today's money.
06:27The kits cost too much to produce.
06:30Specifically the fiberglass monocoque.
06:32The whole thing was like a bathtub.
06:34And Bruce was certainly taking a bath.
06:38Bruce Meyer's dune buggy was pricey to manufacture.
06:41The kit needed an overhaul.
06:43There are many steps that must be done quite carefully.
06:46But building a new prototype would cost money.
06:48Surely someone would help Bruce stay afloat.
06:51And as it turns out, that person was Shirley.
06:54That's right.
06:55Shirley.
06:55That's right.
06:57Bruce's wife number four.
06:58That's Shirley.
06:59But Shirley.
07:00There were other wives before.
07:02And there was a couple after too.
07:04I was wife number six.
07:06I was wife number six.
07:09Shirley worked for Road & Track in the advertising department.
07:12Two owners of Road & Track magazine were so smitten by these first 12 cars.
07:17They decided to invest.
07:18With time and financial backing, Bruce went back to the drawing board and had a breakthrough.
07:23Bruce realized that it was more practical and helped with cost savings to incorporate the VW chassis.
07:31The one piece monocoque was out, but you still of course had to find your own chassis.
07:35And lo and behold, there, shivering in its awkward nakedness, lies the heart of your new dune buggy.
07:41The kit could now be sold for a more affordable and profitable $495.
07:47Bruce was in business.
07:50Well, almost.
07:51Bruce didn't know what to call his creation.
07:54And the folks at Road & Track were like, oh, don't even worry about it.
07:57We're going to come up with a name for you.
07:58After a lively boardroom brainstorm.
08:01They come back to Bruce and they're like, we got it.
08:03We're going to call it the Manx.
08:04And he's like, what's a Manx?
08:06There's a Manx cat from the Isle of Man.
08:09Kind of got a little bobtail, like a jaguar.
08:13But smaller and cuter.
08:16Well, at least his engine's purring.
08:18But also if you look, you can kind of see it, right?
08:21No tail, no problem.
08:22And as for the logo.
08:24This cat is holding a sword.
08:25And excuse my language, but the cat's balls are hanging out.
08:30Just like the engine would be hanging out of the rear of the car.
08:37Wow.
08:37Yeah, I've never, I have never heard that one.
08:40But when in Airborne, Bruce Myers leapt onto the cover of Hot Rod magazine in 1966.
08:46Say cheese.
08:47That's the picture that changed his life.
08:50From there, sales just went through the roof.
08:52And apparently, Bruce almost went through the floor.
08:55Son of a !
08:57But a little back pain was a small price to pay for the big bump in sales.
09:02They had some 300 orders.
09:04Built for adventure, Bruce set out in his buggy to one of his favorite playgrounds,
09:09the rugged, untamed Baja Peninsula.
09:15In the 1960s, Baja was home to a small tribe of off-road diehards.
09:19They ran what they call a Baja Run.
09:21They were going down and seeing how fast you can get from one point to another.
09:24People were doing it and they were timing it.
09:27Unorganized, unsanctioned, and tried whenever someone got a wild hair.
09:30It could be years between Baja run attempts.
09:33But in 1962, two guys on two wheels rode roughly 1,000 miles and set a record running from Tijuana
09:41to La Paz.
09:4239 hours, 42 minutes.
09:45And one night, the biker boys and the dune buggy dudes got together and talked some shift.
09:51And they said, well, what do you want to do?
09:52And I said, let's do it.
09:54Bruce decided to race Old Red down Baja with Ted Mangles.
09:57A stock Volkswagen tank is only 10 gallons, so getting between gas station and gas station
10:02is a problem.
10:03We managed to get 65 gallons of gas on the car.
10:07Around our legs, between our knees, behind the seats were jugs.
10:11Driving 1,000 miles, packed with 65 gallons of combustible gasoline, in the dry desert heat
10:17with cliffs and rocks on all sides in the middle of nowhere.
10:20What could possibly go wrong?
10:24In 1967, Bruce Myers and Ted Mangles attempted to beat the record for the fastest Baja run.
10:30So much that can go wrong.
10:32We broke lots of things.
10:33All the bouncing broke the transmission route.
10:36Little rocks jammed the suspension.
10:38They broke a brake line, so they had three wheeled brakes.
10:44Somehow, Bruce, Ted, and Big Red made it to La Paz.
10:4734 hours and 45 minutes.
10:49We beat the bikes by over five hours.
10:51And then the press kit went out.
10:54Around the world.
10:55Buggies beat bikes in Baja.
10:57But nobody knew what any of that was.
11:00It means nothing.
11:01What they needed was something the public and the press could get their heads around.
11:06That's right.
11:07Turned the ragtag Baja run into a bona fide off-road race.
11:11Ed Perlman, along with Bruce and others, decide, hey, we can start this National Off-Road Racing
11:16Association, Nora, and actually organize their very first real official Mexican 1000.
11:25Myers-Banks won that first race, so I'm a little proud of that.
11:29And in 1968, the Manx was king.
11:32Or at least it transported the king.
11:34You saw Elvis Presley drive it in a movie.
11:37Eh, watch your back.
11:39Then it leapt onto the screen in a Thomas Crown affair.
11:43This time, not by a king, but a McQueen.
11:46People are ordering these things so fast, they can barely keep up.
11:51They didn't have enough molds to fill those orders quickly.
11:54Although the Manx does have feline origins, now Bruce was trying to outrun different kinds
12:00of cats.
12:01Copycats.
12:02We're mass-producing dime store knockoffs.
12:04Over 300 companies.
12:06It was time to summon another creature to combat the copycats.
12:12The toad.
12:13You hook it onto your tow package and off you go.
12:16So it's not a toad.
12:18It was being towed.
12:19T-O-W apostrophe D.
12:21Rather than haul it to the desert on a trailer, the toad had an integrated tow bar that could
12:26be hitched to the back of a vehicle.
12:28But when Bruce entered the toad in the 1968 Mexican 1000, tragedy struck in the desert.
12:37He crashed.
12:38About 100 yards later, I'm laying there in the dirt with broken legs.
12:42Could have easily killed him.
12:43The injury ended Bruce's racing career.
12:45Came together at once.
12:47Bruce was hurt.
12:48Copiers had copied the car.
12:50Business was starting to tank.
12:52Finally, Bruce had had enough and he knew what he had to do.
12:55Sue one of the biggest of the copiers, which was Lincoln Industries.
13:00But things didn't start out so well.
13:02The judge, he actually fell asleep.
13:05And when he finally woke up, the judge ruled against Bruce.
13:09The judge declared there was previous art and threw it all out.
13:13And Bruce lost his patent.
13:15The Myers-Manks was a free-for-all.
13:17After the copiers just came out in droves.
13:20Bruce is struggling.
13:21He had a lot of other ideas he thought maybe would save the company.
13:26So, it created a vehicle called the Manx SR.
13:29Some people say that the SR stands for Stuart Reed.
13:32My name is Stuart Reed.
13:33Or others say it's Street Roadster.
13:35We work side by side in the shop, creating products intentionally more complex, not easily
13:41plagiarized.
13:42Bruce saying, let's think diabolic.
13:44Everybody was saying, well, Bruce, what does that mean?
13:47Bruce had a deliciously diabolical plan.
13:50The parts themselves would tend to shrink and close up a little.
13:53So, it would be almost impossible to make a mold off those parts.
13:56Make it really hard for anybody to follow in those footsteps.
14:00Stuart is one of the fathers of that scissor door system.
14:04The first scissor doors.
14:06So, Lamborghini didn't invent those.
14:08Those were a Bruce Meyer and Stuart Reed invention.
14:11But Bruce's sports car in a box was a lot to unpack.
14:15Very complicated, fairly expensive.
14:18And only 200 SRs were ever made.
14:21It just took the wind out of Bruce's sails.
14:23A little bit of him died.
14:25Bruce said, that's it.
14:27I'm done.
14:29Bruce Meyer and the Meyers-Manks were on the skids.
14:33He decided to leave the company.
14:35And without him, the company didn't last long.
14:37Went into bankruptcy.
14:38But the dune buggy business continues on without him.
14:41Yet for Bruce, there was nowhere to hide.
14:43He couldn't even watch TV in peace.
14:47It's in television.
14:48It's in the cartoons.
14:50That's me.
14:51Everybody loves them.
14:52It really hurt Bruce Meyer.
14:54I mean, he was really crushed by what had happened.
14:56But then...
14:57Then I came along.
14:59It was a whirlwind romance.
15:01That first night sealed the deal.
15:03That's my story.
15:05I'm sticking to it.
15:07And even though Bruce was clearly an old romantic at heart...
15:11Bruce was married six times.
15:13But Shirley...
15:14Shirley?
15:14No, Winnie.
15:15I was wife number six.
15:18But Winnie was the one.
15:20Because Bruce had saved the best for last.
15:24Yet with this new chapter in his life...
15:26Bruce was still struggling to turn the page on his past.
15:30But it was from the pages of this magazine...
15:32Super VW...
15:34Publisher Jackie Murrell...
15:36Had an idea to write Bruce a new story.
15:38Jackie had talked him into the Super VW Nationals.
15:42So he invited us to come to France.
15:44And his task was simple.
15:46Hey, I want you to lead this parade of dune buggies...
15:49Around the track.
15:50And Bruce looks at the dune buggies.
15:52Knock off fake ones.
15:54Copycats.
15:56And he says, I am not leaving those.
16:00They ruined my life.
16:01They stole from me.
16:02But then Bruce saw a sign.
16:04Everywhere he went, people would say...
16:10Aloha.
16:11Aloha in any language is a symbol of friendship, respect, and gratitude.
16:17Everybody loves a buggy.
16:18And you're the reason everybody loves a buggy.
16:20His dream had lived on in the hearts and minds of others.
16:25All of these clever, pretty, creative buggies were connected to this man.
16:31It was amazing to him, because he thought the world had forgotten all about him in the car.
16:37And it gave him purpose.
16:41People would say, thank you.
16:43And he'd say, for what?
16:44And they'd say, for the concept.
16:46They all looked at Bruce as, you made this for us.
16:51He was in tears almost the whole time we were there.
16:54And suddenly he began to enjoy the legacy that he had left behind, as opposed to getting angry about what
17:00had been taken away from him.
17:02And he would always say, I may not be rich in money, but I'm rich in love.
17:05And he always felt the love from across the community.
17:09Bruce forgiving really helped him realize that it was all for a reason.
17:13And maybe that was enough reason for Bruce to get back to work.
17:18The first easiest thing to do was after we start the club.
17:21And the Manx Club opened its doors in 1994.
17:24To today, there's 6,000 plus members.
17:27We decided to start Myers-Manks up again.
17:30Bruce went on to design dune buggies of all shapes and sizes.
17:33In fact, there were so many, you couldn't possibly list them all.
17:37There was never too much Manx for Winnie, or it seems, enough Myers, because she was by Bruce's side until
17:44the end.
17:44Bruce was 19 years older than me.
17:47When he turned 90, he maybe started to slow down.
17:51But this time, Bruce would do it with his head held high.
17:54In 2020, he sold Myers-Manks to Truesdale Ventures.
17:58In 2021, Myers-Manks was developing the Manx 2.0, its first fully electric dune buggy.
18:05His involvement gave our direction meaning and brought the spirit into the modern era.
18:11But Bruce would never see it completed.
18:14Bruce Myers passed away on February 19, 2021.
18:19Thinking of Bruce, he was at my house for dinner the week before he died.
18:24And he stood up and said, all you guys sitting here at the table, friends, buggy people, ones I love.
18:32And it's the love that kept us going.
18:35And it's the love that brought it back.
18:40All of our lives have changed.
18:43Because of this man, the club to us, is like a family.
18:49So yeah, even though we knew it was inevitable, um, it hurt.
18:57Sorry.
18:59There is so much love with these people.
19:02It has to be that little car.
19:08When you hit the dirt or the sand, you know Bruce made something special.
19:14You cannot drive this thing and not laugh.
19:22I mean, it does not get much, much more fun than this.
19:32I want people to have an adventure in life.
19:35My life has been full of adventures.
19:37It's a way of dreaming into the reality.
19:41Dreaming is where something starts.
19:42Your hands make it become real.
19:44And then you go do it.
19:46And if you fail, so what?
19:48Don't go to your grave without an adventure of some kind.
19:53He hopefully went to his grave realizing that people really did appreciate what he did.
20:02Car enthusiasts and off-roaders alike owe Bruce Myers a huge debt of gratitude.
20:08Because man, oh man, is this car iconic and just plain fun.
20:15Everything else is a copy.
20:18Thank him for that.
20:19Thanks, Bruce.
20:39I kill you!
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