From the Haunted Mansion omnimovers to the monorails, Bob Gurr was responsible for the design and construction of countless vehicles in the Disney parks. For the Main Street Horseless Carriage, Bob recalls, “Their idea was that they would go and buy some antique cars and sort of refurbish them in order to have some vehicles on Main Street. Roger (Broggie) and I went out to a place in San Bernardino where there was a crazy old guy in a black suit…and he had maybe 150 old cars, all kinds, a lot of them in very poor condition. He was trying to make a deal with Walt that he would sell him some of those cars and the studio would find somebody to overhaul them and then use them as ride vehicles.” It didn’t take long for Bob to decide it would be more beneficial to build their own antique cars from scratch. “By that time I had picked up just enough knowledge to know how to find parts, how to source parts, how we can marry stuff together, so very quickly we came up with the idea of what we then called the ’03 antique car, the red car at Disneyland.” That car made its debut at Disneyland on this day in 1956.
