The Brumos story begins almost seven decades ago in 1953 when racing enthusiast Hubert Brundage acquired the rights to become the official Volkswagen importer for Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.
Originally located in Miami Springs, Florida, but later relocating to Jacksonville to be in closer proximity to the shipping port, the fast-growing dealership’s name was shortened from Brundage Motors to Brumos in the interests of increased name recognition and brevity.
On September 1, 1959 Brumos signed a contract with Porsche becoming the licensed exclusive distributor of Porsche cars for the states of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas.
With business affairs settled and support from Porsche, Brumos would subsequently establish an official Brumos racing team which started to run a limited schedule of races within a day’s drive of Jacksonville with drivers such as Herbert Linge, Edgar Barth, Briggs Cunningham, and Ken Miles piloting.
After Brundage’s untimely death the dealership would pass through racer and Southern California Porsche distributor Johnny Von Neumann before being purchased by Peter Gregg.
A Harvard-educated Naval officer and competitive racer, Gregg would further expand and burnish Brumos while its racing department would achieve notoriety worldwide, including wins with Hurley Haywood at the 1972 and 1975 24 Hours of Daytona, and further success on the track during later decades.
In 2015 Brumos was sold to the Field Automotive group who changed the name to the more generic - and certainly less memorable - Porsche Jacksonville.
Brumos, however, lives on today as a museum and in Brumos: An American Racing Icon, written by Sean Cridland. The three volume set contains 1,500 pages with over 2,000 images, many never before seen.
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