Strother MacMinn's LeMans Coupe: Presentation Portfolio

31 Back to the MacMinn LeMans Coupe. My 48-year friendship with Mac, was filled experiences in all kinds of design, travel, auto racing, publications, and especially raging car design arguments. Mac always seemed to start a design critique amongst so many of his devotees. These would devolve into enlightening discussions, some lasting way into the night. He’d invite a gang to come to my house for “burgers & cars”. Mac was the center of all the red-hot design enthusiasts in the Los Angeles area – our very own Car God Guru leader-teacher. We loved every minute at Mac’s feet. While I was maxed out at Disney, I was not able to follow in much detail all of Mac’s projects, Calty, etc. beyond the awareness of them. In those years, I hung out a lot with John and Elaine Bond. The LeMans coupe episode was scattered over quite a few years. I’d see him making drawings on it, he’d take me out to local shops to see the progress. It was not his central project, but one amid many. Now in hindsight, time has shown once again, that classic simplicity endures. Mac drilled that into me, proof today is the Icon status of the Disney Parks Monorails that I designed starting in 1959. Almost until the day of Mac’s passing, we’d get together periodically for mutual design critiques, either at his place or mine. But alas came the day in 1998 that he had returned home from a recent hospitalization. (I had helped him years earlier when he became near-paralyzed at home on a Christmas dawn, needed to get him an ambulance that early in the morning. We joked that I couldn’t find him a classic Hennesy-Packard ambulance). I visited him an evening a few days later, bringing him some home items, his nurse at his side…then Mac was gone before next day’s dawn. Assisting, along with his closest friends, with all the remaining tasks, his closest relative offered me some of Macs archives. I have dozens of his charming concept sketches. My LeMans archives include his original drawings and his scale model. In addition to the Coupe, he made designs for a street version, the LeMans Special. I also own his inherited Frank Hershey drawings going back to his design work in 1929 at Walter Murphy in Pasadena, where he taught an inquisitive 12-year Strother MacMinn the essence of design integrity. The same essence Mac passed on to me, and which I made sure that my Disneyland designs would benefit from. Rest assured Mac, your LeMans Coupe is immortal. Rest assured Mac, your LeMans Coupe is immortal Bob Gurr, June 19, 2022

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