Legendary Disney Imagineer Returns to the Pebble Beach Concours to Discuss Dream Cars of the 1950s<\/h2>\n
\nBob Gurr\u2019s love of cars has driven his iconic career and connects him to other automotive dreamers.<\/h3>\n
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif.\u00a0<\/strong>(August 4, 2023) \u2014\u00a0Bob Gurr attended the very first Pebble Beach Concours d\u2019Elegance in 1950. At the time, he and fellow ArtCenter College of Design pupils couldn\u2019t afford a hotel and slept in their car before attending the Concours the next morning. Seventy-three years and a dream-come-true career with Disney later, Bob reflects on what it means to be back at the Pebble Beach Concours to speak about Dream Cars of the 1950s.<\/p>\n Bob Gurr\u2019s career began at ArtCenter, where he met a professor who would become a lifelong friend, Strother MacMinn, whom he affectionately refers to as \u201cMac.\u201d Bob initially disliked MacMinn\u2019s strict teaching style: \u201cHe was making us write script lettering with an airbrush\u2014which is very difficult\u2014and one day I asked him, \u2018Do you even like cars?\u2019\u201d The two laughed and a friendship began.<\/p>\n Strother MacMinn\u2019s legendary Le Mans coupe will be on display at the 2023 Pebble Beach Concours d\u2019Elegance as a part of the featured class \u201cAmerican Dream Cars of the 1950s,\u201d which celebrates the skill and innovation of individual auto lovers who designed and built their own unique vehicles. Additional Dream Cars in that class range from the 1948 Kurtis-Omohundro Comet and the 1951 Manta Ray to a 1959 Scimitar Convertible Coupe, and also include creations by Sterling Edwards, Phillip Egan, Ray Fageol, H. Sterling \u201cSmoke\u201d Gladwin, Bob Sorrell, and Norman Timbs.\u00a0Bob Gurr, who watched the Le Mans car come to life, will be a panelist on a Pebble Beach Classic Car Forum focused on those \u201cDream Rides.\u201d That Forum session, sponsored by Alliant Private Client and moderated by Ken Gross, will take place on Thursday, August 17 at 3:30 p.m. in Concours Village.<\/p>\n \u201cMac was all excited about the Le Mans coupe design,\u201d Gurr says. \u201cHe showed me the drawings he was making to build the car, and he did a lot of the lofting for it. Mac asked me several times to go up to the shop with him to see the progress on the car body buck that they were building.\u201d When Strother MacMinn, who was the first Chief Honorary Judge at the Pebble Beach Concours, passed away in 1998, Bob received Mac\u2019s Le Mans archives, including Mac\u2019s original drawings and a scale model of the car.<\/p>\n Strother MacMinn (\u201cMac\u201d) with his Le Mans coupe. Image provided by Ken Gross.\u00a0<\/p>\n After graduating from ArtCenter, Bob moved to Michigan in pursuit of his own \u201cDetroit dream\u201d of designing cars for General Motors, then was scouted by Ford Styling. Disheartened by designing hubcaps, Bob was back in Los Angeles after just one year and one day. Upon his return, Bob accepted a request from Walt Disney to meet, not knowing his career would completely shift gears.<\/p>\n Bob was first assigned by Walt to design the Autopia series of cars. As Bob was given project after project\u2014designing the monorail, a submarine, the antique cars on Main Street, and the Matterhorn ride\u2014he incorporated Strother\u2019s careful teachings in his designs: \u201cMac taught about surface development; you\u2019re actually designing a mirror that\u2019s going to reflect an environment. You do not want that mirror to be distorted like a fun house, you want those surfaces to be technically correct\u2026If you look at the Autopia Mark I, the first car that I did for Autopia, it used those surface development techniques and that\u2019s what made the car look so good.\u201d With \u201c100% creative freedom\u201d at Disney, Bob\u2019s imagination could accelerate.<\/p>\n And as Bob points out, \u201cThe joke was, I designed far more vehicles completely by myself working for a Disney studio than I ever would have at Ford Motor Company.\u201d Even more ironically, Bob ended up closely collaborating with Ford on its Magic Skyway for the 1964 New York World\u2019s Fair and with GM\u2019s Bill Mitchell when designing EPCOT.\u00a0<\/p>\n As he puts it, through a \u201cstroke of luck,\u201d Bob Gurr was able to translate his auto dreams into a lifetime of legendary designs. Bob, who is not your typical 91-year-old, is still very active; this month, he officially launched The Bob Gurr Show, a talk show reminiscing on his spectacular career.<\/p>\n Bob test drives an Autopia Mark I Car in 1955. Image provided by Bob Gurr.<\/p>\n![\"Pic+3+](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/corvettenewsforum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/pic3-stothermacminnwithhislemanscoupe-pic3-1675282074414.png?resize=640%2C259&ssl=1\")
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