Introduction
Bob Gurr joins us again in 2024!
Imagineer Bob Gurr has always been a man on the move. And for nearly 40 years, he’s helped move many a happy Disney theme park guests aboard vehicles and ride conveyances of his own design.
As he has often quipped, “If it moves on wheels at Disneyland, I probably designed it.”And he certainly has… developing more than 100 designs for attractions ranging from Autopia to the Matterhorn Bobsleds to the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Monorails, and more.
Born in Los Angeles, young Bob was fascinated with tools, mechanical devices, and cars. He often crawled through a hole in the fence of nearby Grand Central Air Terminal in Glendale to sneak into the cockpits of transport airplanes, while at school he decorated his test papers with sketches of automobiles.Later, he attended Art Center College of Design, then in Los Angeles, on a General Motors scholarship, where he studied industrial design. Upon graduation in 1952, he was hired by the Ford Motor Company, but soon purchased a rubber stamp marked “R.H. Gurr Industrial Design” and went into business for himself.
Soon after, WED (Walter Elias Disney) Enterprises, today known as Walt Disney Imagineering, hired Bob to consult on design of the mini cars for Autopia. Walt Disney was so impressed with Bob’s knowledge and skill that he invited him to join his Imagineering family, which then was solely dedicated to the design and construction of Disneyland.
Over the next nearly five decades, Bob worked transportation magic developing the Disneyland Monorail Trains, the memorable Flying Saucers attraction in Tomorrowland, as well as the antique cars and double-decker buses of Main Street, Ford Motor Company’s Magic Skyway, which premiered at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair, and more. Bob also designed the mechanical workings of Disney’s first Audio-Animatronics figure – Abraham Lincoln featured in Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.
In 1981, Bob retired early from Imagineering to launch GurrDesign, Inc., and three years later, joined creative forces with two former Imagineers to form Sequoia Creative, Inc. The firm, which specialized in “leisure-time spectaculars” and “fantastical beasts,” developed King Kong and Conan’s serpent featured at Universal Studios, Hollywood.
Among his other mechanical feats, Bob was instrumental in creating the mysterious UFO that soared over the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. He also consulted on the T-Rex animated figure featured in Steven Spielberg’s motion picture Jurassic Park.
In 1999, he was honored with the Themed Entertainment Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award (THEA). And The Walt Disney Company honored him in 2004 as a Disney Legend, again honored in 2008 with a Disneyland Window on Main Street. Bob Gurr practices a favorite life philosophy as quoted in the words of Malcolm Forbes: “While alive, live!”