Okinawa. After saving a crew member, giving him his life vest, he also saved a burned pilot downed in the water, and though the ship was severely damaged, Bruce was one of the volunteer skeleton crew who went back aboard the smoking acrid, flesh-smelling hulk limping back to port.
After the war he sailed on a square-rigged schooner to the South Seas to build a trading post in the Cook Islands for a very wealthy man. After six months on this coral atoll, Penrhyn Island, Bruce completed the trading post amidst a tapestry of child-like people, pearl trading and a steady diet of fish. He then spent six months in Tahiti before returning to the US. It was his love of sailing and the Polynesian life-style that later moved him to build his 42' catamaran, which he intended to sail back to the South Seas. The allure of Tahiti was not to be, however, and so Bruce went on to build tooling of the first fiberglass sailboats for the Cal-boat line of Jensen Marine designed by world famous Bill Lapworth.
It was at Pismo Beach, CA that Bruce first became acquainted with "dune buggies". These "water pumpers" were crude and heavy so Bruce took it upon himself to design a lightweight version that would be fun on the beach or in the wilds of Baja. After modifying a VW Kombi bus with wide rims (called "Little Red Riding Bus"), Bruce used his expertise in boat building to design the first fiberglass-bodied dune buggy, the Meyers Manx.
The first 12 cars produced were all-fiberglass, monocoque bodies that had a steel structural frame within the fiberglass that attached to the VW suspension and running gear ("Old Red" — #1 now resides with Phillip Sarofim). These cars were expensive (for their time) and redundant in that so much of the VW was thrown away. Bruce redesigned the body to fit on a shortened VW floorpan, which ultimately reduced the price as well. As a result, the Meyers Manx took off. It took the country by storm when magazines like Hot Rod, Car & Driver, and Hot VW’s featured the fiberglass car on their covers. This caused a rash of over 300 orders. Not able to immediately fill these orders with one mold, other manufacturers sprang up overnight and ended up producing over 250,000 look-a-likes and near look-a-likes. Eventually over 300 companies, worldwide, copied the Manx in one form or another — even the copiers copied each other.
Bruce tried to stop the floodgate of imitations with patent infringement laws but failed to convince the judge that he had produced anything worth a patent, thus his existing patent was removed. In subsequent years B.F. Meyers & Co. built 5,280 Meyers Manx kits, several hundred Manx 2's, about 1,000 Meyers Tow'ds, a couple of hundred Manx SR's and 75 Resorters — a total of nearly 7,000 kits.
The performance of the Meyers Manx was amazing, especially off-road! It handled better than any other off-road vehicle and was much more fun to drive due to its supple suspension and light weight. A pair of Meyers Manx's won 39 out of 41 slalom races and won its class in the Pike's Peak Hill Climb beating Corvettes, Cobras, and most open wheel sprint cars!
The roots of off-road racing were the old motorcycle elapsed-time records. The very first Meyers Manx, "Old Red" (driven by Bruce and Ted Mangels), beat these bikes by over five hours culminating in the first Baja off-road races, NORRA – National Off-Road Racing Association. Meyers Manx's came in first overall and second in their class in the first official race, the NORRA Mexican 1000 — 1967. This started the off-road revolution and eventually the Score's Baja 1,000 off-road race.
The Meyers Tow'd was originally produced for off-road use only. It was an effort to diversify and expand the B. F. Meyers & Co. product base. Eventually the Towdster evolved adorned with hood, fenders and engine cover — even a soft-top for weather protection. Bruce raced a Tow'd in the second Baja 1,000 and ended by crashing and breaking both legs. He was reminded daily by a worn-out stainless-steel ankle today, which was detected by his slight limp.
The next product of the company was the Manx SR (Street Roadster). This car was an attempt to short circuit the Manx copycats. Penned by Stewart Reed, a student fresh out of Art Center College of Design, it was intended for the street only and possessed a sleek aerodynamic shape that is still contemporary today.
In 1970, with the burden of fighting the cheap imitations of the copiers, cross-country shipping difficulties, the loss of the patent infringement case, and an impending divorce, Bruce left B.F. Meyers & Co. for a less stressful life. Under the direction of John Blick, B.F. Meyers & Co. closed its doors in 1971. A public auction equivocated Bruce's dream at less than ten cents on the dollar.
Not allowing this to become the fate of the Meyers Manx, Bruce and his wife Winnie started the Manx Club in 1994. Twenty-eight years later in 1999, Bruce and the Meyers Manx Inc. came back — opening with the Signature Series, limited edition of 100. In 2002 came the new Manxter 2+2 and the Manxter DualSport, street-legal fiberglass dune buggies dreamed, designed, and brought to reality by the man who started it all. In 2009 he designed the Kick-Out Traditional and the Kick-Out SS (Strictly Street). In 2016 as the copiers started creeping in once more, Bruce brought back the “New Classic Manx” to regain his hold on his most famous design. But the war against cancer finally took its toll and he succumbed to it in February of 2021 at age 94.
Updated by Winnie Meyers in 2026