Chevy Corvair-Powered Dune Buggies Are A Thing, And This Story Might Make You Want One: COTD

The dune buggy is a wonderful category of motor vehicle. Take a chassis, give it a groovy and lightweight body with minimal weather protection, then go hit the dunes. Plenty of air-cooled VWs gave up their hearts and guts to buggies, but they weren’t alone, as similar happened with Chevy Corvairs.

Mark Tucker gave us a showdown between a 1973 Manx Clone and a 1974 Sand Rail. Elhigh has a great story:

Back in the day, my uncle (one of several uncles, to be clear) had a Corvair dune buggy. He had that, because it could be had with an automatic. He needed an automatic, because he didn’t have use of his hands. He had to drive with his feet.

So my other uncles got together and decided, hey, if Dicky wants to be helpful around the farm (and he did), then we should rig up some kind of ride so he can move stuff around. We burn a lot of daylight moving stuff around, Dicky can be the designated parts and supply runner and that works for everybody.

So they did that. Cut about a foot-and-a-half of length from the middle of the Corvair, put some taller suspension under it for added ground clearance, fake up some kind of roof – I think plywood was involved – move the steering to the floor, paint it blue and send it.

To look at, Dicky’s dune buggy looked a lot like a modern side-by-side UTV. Stubby little cargo bed, tiptoe stance, no regard whatsoever for aerodynamics. The boys were all very practical, Dick’s ride wore knobbly snow tires all year round.

And Dicky drove like those parts and supplies had been ordered from Amazon and were due yesterday. It was the 60s and 70s but you get my point. He would get air going over the driveway because driveways on farms in the Midwest are often higher than the ground around, because you want some elevation. Makes it easier to clear the snow off. And the side of the driveway makes a perfect ramp for sweet jumps when the weather is nice. And we’d go flying and somebody would get clobbered because if you don’t remember to tuck Dick’s arms down inside the seatbelt, you’d get smacked across the face in the jumps because he couldn’t stop them. “Sorry,” he’d say “…but I did warn you,” and you’d try to tuck his arms in while he was still careening across the fields.

So for the memory of my uncle and his utterly fearless tearassing across rural Minnesota, his brothers’ well-meant but perhaps ill-conceived ideas, and because I do love the bonkers fan belt routing of the Corvair, that’s my vote today.

The Manx-looking Corvair-powered whatever that thing is.

As it turns out, the Lotus Emira isn’t just living rent-free in my head, because Alanis King can’t stop thinking about them, either. Dave Larkman has a great story:

The Emira was what I was working on over Covid, and I obsessed over getting everything I did as good and as light as I could. I worked 31 days of unpaid overtime on that car in the first year, and I’m very proud of the work I did. I’ve driven a lot of them, in pretty much all specs, and they’ve all felt special. They’ve certainly ruined Porsche Caymans for me.

The engineering team also loved how it looked, which has never, ever happened to a modern Lotus product before. Dan Durrant has done an amazing job on the exterior.

One of the last jobs I did before Lotus decided it didn’t need UK powertrain designers any more was a new, lighter, stiffer gearshift bracket for the manual. It’s still waiting for someone to put it into production as far as I know.

David wrote about how he destroyed his home by turning it into a car factory. Nlpnt:

Any longtime readers impressed and a bit surprised David knows REKT and DED?

Jason wrote a Cold Start about Joe Isuzu. Username, the Movie:

You mentioned Jon Lovitz but all I see pictured above is Carlos Tavares.

Have a great evening, everyone!

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