It looks like the original dune buggy is due a comeback.
A few more details about future models have started to filter out of Meyers Manx, the company founded in California by Bruce Meyers in 1964 and famous for making simple, Volkswagen-based, glassfibre-shelled, open-top off-roaders.
You might know the Manx buggy best from the 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair but it competed in Baja rallies, too, and spawned dozens of similar buggies.
The basics were the same: the Volkswagen Beetle’s floorplan and running gear are largely flat and thus ripe for sticking a body on top of them.
Running the show as something of a passion, Meyers was still operating Meyers Manx in 2020 when, aged 94, he sold it to a company called Trousdale Ventures. Even then he stayed on as an ambassador until his death a year later.
Trousdale appointed Freeman Thomas as CEO. A native Californian automotive designer, he had spent time with Volkswagen, Porsche, Daimler-Chrysler and Ford. On his CV is the concept that became the new Volkswagen Beetle, the original Audi TT, a Jeep Willys concept and other cool things.
“I grew up on the beaches of Southern California. As I became an automotive designer, the philosophy of Bruce Meyers became a huge inspiration,” said Thomas at the time. He gets it, in other words.
You could still buy a glassfibre shell and kits from Meyers Manx in 2020. You can’t now, and companies can’t live on T-shirt sales alone (except T-shirt companies, obviously), which is where another of Trousdale’s companies, Coreshell Technologies, comes in.
Coreshell makes coatings for battery anodes and cathodes, the idea being to prevent batteries from corroding from within to improve both usable capacity and the life of the lithium ion cells that underpin modern electric cars.
Anyway, you can probably see where this is going: Coreshell technology in a battery pack underneath a new Meyers Manx dune buggy.
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Yes, I'd like to see the Beach Buggy return as an affordable kit car. There must be loads of slighly damaged Nissan Leafs whose parts could be used again in a simple, light easy-to-build kit. Or has legislation, laziness and safety obsession killed off the idea of self-build cars?
I can remember when beach buggies were all the rage and there was even at least one magazine devoted exclusively to them. I was too young to drive then and could only dream about them. I think it would be far too difficult and probably dangerous to try and build an electric one from a recycled Leaf or Tesla: extricating the batteries and mounting them properly and connecting all those high voltage orange cables. It would probably be a disaster just waiting to happen.