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The story behind the Bruce Meyers racecar bed

It must have been quite a spectacle to watch as a full-size vehicle trailer pulled up in front of the Schorrs' suburban house and delivered a garish French Racing Blue sports car. But it might not have been all that odd. "My world was the car world, and my dad was the car guy," Stuart Schorr, now Jaguar Land Rover communications chief, recalls of his youth. His father Marty was the editor in chief of high performance car magazines during the muscle-car era of the '60s and '70s. "I was the only kid who had a Plymouth Superbird parked in the driveway, who got driven to school in a hot-rodded Corvette." Yet this vehicle was extraordinary, even by Schorr standards. Made of thick fiberglass, with four-spoke mags and racing slicks, it looked like a McLaren M6 Can-Am racer – wide, voluptuous, and impossibly low. But in place of niceties like the front intake, cockpit, and engine, it had a broad cutout the size and shape of a coffin. Also, it unbolted in the middle lengthwise. Workers hauled it into the house, one piece at a time, through the window, and bolted it together in Stuart's bedroom, finishing with a full-size twin mattress. "When Stuart came home from school, he found the McLaren bed in his room," Marty Schorr says. "I'm pretty sure he slept in that bed until he went away to college." (This may have been the most unusually effective form of teen birth control. "No female ever saw that bed," Stuart confesses.) One of the great mysteries of the bed was its provenance. "If you looked under the plastic tires, it had these stickers that said B.F. Meyers & Company." This was the imprint of Bruce Meyers, creator of the Meyers Manx: the flippant fiberglass wonder that ushered in – and was then summarily ushered out of – the Volkswagen dune buggy conversion market. Did Bruce Meyers build a kids' bed? And, if so, why? Bruce Meyers grew up near the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, surfing and diving illegally off the piers. "That's the kind of life I led as a boy," he says during an extensive interview. "It was one with a lot of intolerance for rules." A thorough iconoclast, he attended art school. He spent time sailing. He lived on a coral atoll in the South Seas and ran a pearl trading post. And then he returned to Southern California and worked in a shipyard. "Boat building at that time was moving over from wooden to fiberglass construction.

Seat hatches hot little Ibiza Cupra Concept in Beijing [w/video]

Just about every brand under the Volkswagen Group umbrella has its own performance line these days. Marques like Lamborghini, Bugatti and Porsche may not need them, but Volkswagen has the R line, Audi has the RS range, Skoda offers the vRS models, and Seat badges its under the Cupra name.
It's a nameplate that's become synonymous with Latin-flavored hot hatches in markets around the world, and one of those vital markets is China. Little wonder, then, that Seat chose the Beijing Motor Show to launch its latest Cupra model.
Technically billed as a "concept," even Seat admits the vehicle you see here is pretty darn close to the production model that is scheduled to debut later this year. It starts out with the latest Ibiza hatchback (which itself shares its underpinnings with the Volkswagen Polo) and upgrades it with VW's celebrated 1.4 TSI engine that packs a turbocharger, supercharger and direct injection to produce a solid 180 horsepower. All that juice is driven to the front wheels through an electronic differential and seven-speed dual-clutch transmission.

Rowan Atkinson selling his McLaren F1 for $12M

Likely most associated in the US with his portrayal as the bumbling Mr. Bean, British comedian Rowan Atkinson has been quite an auto fanatic for years, making several appearances and at least one crash at the Goodwood Revival. When not racing or acting, he's known for driving a dark purple McLaren F1, but the supercar is now up for sale. Atkinson isn't just giving it away, though, with an asking price of 8 million pounds ($12 million). Atkinson bought the iconic McLaren new in 1997 but has crashed it at least twice since then. The first was a low-speed hit with an Austin Metro in 1999, but a shunt in 2011 did much more harm. McLaren Special Operations reportedly estimated the cost to rebuild the F1 at 910,000 pounds, and Atkinson's insurance company paid to have it done, according to the Western Daily Press in the UK. Now, the McLaren is up for sale by broker Taylor and Crawley with 41,000 miles on it, though it's not pictured on the company's website, as of this writing. "Apart from the accidents, I think Rowan has enjoyed every minute with the F1 and I think he will have withdrawal when it is gone," said David Clark, owner of Taylor and Crawley, to the Western Daily Press. The price of Atkinson's F1 is certainly eye watering. One sold in the UK for about $5.6 million in 2012 and a GTR version went for $5.28 million in 2014. Gooding and Company even estimated one at $12-$14 million during the Monterey Car Week.