Harry Bentley Bradley
American Automotive Design Innovator

About This Item

by Fredercik A. Sharf

Harry Bentley Bradley was born in 1936 and grew up in Waban, Massachusetts. His love for art and stylish developed at an early age. His talent was noticed, and he started taking classes at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

“What I recall most about those classes was the magic. My whole world opened up.”

At age fourteen, he contracted Polio and was soon totally paralyzed from the waist down. He spent seven months at Children’s Hospital Boston learning how to live with his paralysis. He spent most of his free-time drawing. Each day the nurses would wheel him down the hallway to a window with a street view so that he could sketch the passing automobiles.

For the first few months at home he used a wheelchair of which he was very proud. He added lots of decorations – mirrors with reflectors, squeeze-bulb horns, handgrips with red, white and blue vinyl streamers – and a fox tail hanging at the rear. It was his first customized vehicle!

Harry Bentley Bradley went on to create some of the most unique custom cars around including the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile. He also designed all of the first sixteen Hot Wheels for Mattel.

Frederic A. Sharf is a well-known collector, scholar and author. He specializes in buying archives of design drawings, which he researches and organizes for public exhibition. He has a special connection to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

64 pages.