This is the Original

Bruce Meyer has the garage that car collectors collect.

by Phil Berg

Bruce Meyer is a man eager to share. He let a toy company make a miniature copy of his 13-car garage, to use as the packaging for a set of expensive toy versions of four of America’s most famous cars, which Meyer owns.

His garage started as a modest California two-car structure behind a charming 1920s bungalow. Then it grew. “The previous owner stretched it to a four car garage in 1975,” Meyer recalls. “He put an apartment on top of it, too.” To fit another car inside, Meyer stretched out another space behind the four-car garage in 1981. Seven years later this fifth single-car space became a corridor to a large, steel-beam supported 8-car structure with a row of sky windows in a peaked ceiling.

Meyer cannot remember not loving cars. “My mother had this baby book, and she wrote in the column ‘Bruce loves anything with wheels.’”

There are only two double-size doors for the garage; one that leads to a driveway past the house and one that leads to the alley behind the house. “I move the cars around a lot,” he explains. “Every Friday I take a car and drive it about 100 miles. There’s always something here that I can drive. The most fun I’ve had is in the last car I’ve had out.”

“I keep about 12 or 13 cars here. The space would be a problem if I had a lot of big cars,” Meyer explains, “but I like little cars.” He does have a few big cars, including a Deusenberg, a Packard, and a Mercedes convertible that Clark Gable used to own. “I love driving the Clark Gable car around town because it’s pretty comfy.”

In the past week he’s driven his black Gull Wing Mercedes and his chopped ’32 hot rod. “Baseball, jazz and hot rods are the pure American.” A clean Porsche 356 coupe sits next to a dark blue Cobra. “I just drove this Porsche 870 miles last weekend. It rained the whole time, and the Porsche is good in the rain.”

Meyer’s collection isn’t limited to hot rods and European sports cars. “I have a top fuel dragster that was Don Prudhomme’s first car,” he says. “From Dragsters to Deusenbergs, I just love ‘em all.” He owns a few more cars than will fit in the garage, including the famous Pierson Brothers coupe. He keeps some of his cars on display at the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles.