Confessions of a Drugstore Car Guy

I went to Carlisle the other day, to the Import & Kit Car event, and got a chance to have a chat with honest-to-goodness Car Guy Icon Bruce Meyers. I went to see the latest in Dune Buggies and met the guy who invented them! How neat is that! Although Dune Buggies today occupy a pretty small niche in the specialty car world, once-upon-a-time they were the “coolest and cutest” way to have fun on four wheels.

According to the official history of the Manx, as Meyers called his Dune Buggy, “Bruce took it upon himself to design a lightweight version that would be fun on the beach or in the wilds of Baja...Bruce redesigned the body to fit on a shortened VW floorpan, which ultimately reduced the price as well. As a result, the Meyers Manx took off. It took the country by storm when magazines like Hot Rod and Car & Driver featured the fiberglass car on their covers. This caused a rash of over 300 orders. Not able to immediately fill these orders, other manufacturers sprang up overnight and ended up producing over 250,000 look-a-likes and near look-a-likes. Eventually over 300 companies, worldwide, copied the Manx in one form or another – even the copiers copied each other.”  For more Manx history, see: http://www.manxclub.com/history.htm.

Wikipedia says: The Meyers Manx dune buggy was designed by Californian engineer, artist, boat builder and surfer Bruce Meyers. It was produced by his company between 1964 and 1971. The car featured a fiberglass bodyshell coupled with the Volkswagen Beetle frame and engine. It is a small car, with a wheelbase 14 1/4 inches (36.2 cm) shorter than a Beetle for lightness and better maneuverability. For this reason, the car is capable of very quick acceleration and good off-road performance. The Meyers Manx received widespread recognition when it won the inaugural Mexican 1000 race, the predecessor of the Baja 1000 beating motorcycles, cars and trucks in the process.
Manx-type cars have appeared in several movies, including Elvis Presley films and the 1968 The Thomas Crown Affair, which contains a lengthy beach-driving scene where a heavily modified Meyers Manx equipped with a Chevrolet Corvair flat-six engine is launched over several dunes.

Approximately 6,000 of the original Meyers Manx dune buggies were produced, but when the design became popular many copies (estimated at a quarter of a million worldwide) were made by other companies. Although already patented, Meyers lost in court to the copiers, the judge rescinding his patent as unpatentable opening the floodgates to the Industry Meyers started. Since then countless buggies continue to be produced today.

The thing that attracted, still attracts, me to Dune Buggies is their simplicity and how well they do what they do. Basically, a Dune Buggy is a vaguely car-looking fiberglass tub sitting on a VW chassis. While they have everything needed to go just about anywhere, they’re usually pretty short on extraneous stuff like windows and doors. While Meyers used them in desert racing, cross-country marathons like the Baja 1000, in their heyday they battled “Woodies” for the surfing crowds’ ride of choice.

I used to drive Volkswagens and have always appreciated their utility and toughness. My last VW, a 1970 Beetle I traded Elayne’s ’69 Camaro for, led a double life. It was both the family grocery-getter and my off-roader. With a little luck, some bun-clenching and breath-holding, that V-dub would (and did) go darn near anywhere! In the days before SUVs and nearly universal 4-wheel or All-wheel drive, the rear-engined VW had relatively high ground clearance and a smooth, flat bottom. It’s is that simple utilitarian toughness that works so well as the basis for the Dune Buggy.

The latest in Manx-style dune buggies are quite a bit fancier, though not necessarily more complex, than their Sixties counterparts. Meyers Manx still offers Dune Buggy kits with five or six models available. For enough money they can even be purchased “turn-key.” There are several other choices out there, too. Check out:
www.banditbuggy.com, www.kitcar.com/York/home.html, www.texasbuggys.com, and
www.funbodies.com

I’m just saying; here’s an option for a Car Guy who’d like the wind-in-his-face opportunity offered by a traditional open Hot Rod without a lot of the complexity. I think they’re neat!