As of this moment, I’m about an hour away from hitting the road to go to the Autopian readers’ meetup in Detroit, so I’m kind of in a hurry to write this. To expedite things, I just opened up Facebook Marketplace and grabbed the first two $2,500 cars it showed me – and they were both unfinished dune buggies. The algorithm seems to confuse RC buggies (which I search for all the time) with full-size ones (which I don’t). But what the hell; we’ll roll with it.
Yesterday was a tough one for anyone on a diet, because it was all about carbs. It’s a little earlier than I usually call the vote, but the Dodge Ram 50 has such a commanding lead at this point that there’s no point in letting it run any longer. The plain-jane little Tercel will find its audience, I have no doubt, but it isn’t you lot.
I’m with you. I love little two-door hatchbacks, but if I were going to get another one, I think I’d rather have almost anything than a Tercel. It’s an almost impressively dull car, even with a manual. Not that an automatic Ram 50 is exciting, but it’s a truck, and I can always find use for a truck.
Who doesn’t like a dune buggy? (Put your hand down; we’ll do something different tomorrow.) The idea of stripping a VW Beetle down to its bare essence, sticking a roll cage or a fiberglass tub body on it, and blasting across a beach just sounds like a hoot. And surprisingly, you can still find half-finished or worn-out dune buggy projects for fairly cheap, even here in Michigan. Are they worth it? Let’s check them out and see.
1973 Volkswagen-based dune buggy – $2,500
Engine/drivetrain: 2.4- or 2.7-liter OHV flat 6, four-speed manual, RWD
Location: Mulliken, MI
Odometer reading: Does it matter?
Operational status: No idea
Bruce Meyers captured lightning in a bottle when he created the original Meyers Manx in 1963. It just simply couldn’t be improved upon, so nobody tried. They just copied it. Lots of other companies offered fiberglass dune buggy bodies for Volkswagens, and I couldn’t tell you which company made this one. It’s not a Manx, and it’s not an EMPI Imp, which was another popular one. If someone in the comments recognizes it, please enlighten us.
What I can tell you is that it’s a bit spicier than most VW-based dune buggies. In place of the VW flat four, this one has a Corvair flat six. You don’t need a lot of power in a car like this, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be more fun with a little more oomph. I don’t know how well, or even if, it runs; all the seller says is that it “needs love.” It does have plates on it, but the tags expired in either 2012 or 2022; I can’t tell which.
The rest of the car is a bit of a shambles, but it can all be fixed. It looks like just about everything is there except seats. I’m sure you’d find other things missing when you dug into it, and of course you’d want new tires before you actually tried to drive it. But nothing about it looks insurmountable.
1974 Volkswagen-based sand rail – $2,500
Engine/drivetrain: 1.3- or 1.6-liter OHV flat 4, four-speed manual, RWD
Location: Hillsdale, MI
Odometer reading: Doesn’t have one
Operational status: Runs and drives, but needs work
After the Beetle-based dune buggies like the Manx came the sandrails, purpose-built tube-frame buggies that still use good old VW suspension and drivetrain components. From the sound of it, this one has just been built, and isn’t quite finished yet. The seller says it doesn’t have a title “yet,” which I assume means that was the intent. Jump through enough hoops, and you can probably get license plates for this and drive it on the street. Or, you could keep it as-is, get a trailer, and just tow it to the dunes when you want to play.
The seller says the engine and gearbox donor was a ’74 Beetle, and I assume the suspension came from the same car. I know you can buy sandrail frames, but I don’t know if this one was bought or made. You’d have to ask the seller. It’s finished to the point of running and driving, but it still needs some “fine tuning,” according to the seller.
If you like your vehicles bare-bones, you’ll love this thing. All it has is a steering wheel, a shifter, pedals, and a bank of toggle switches which I assume are for the ignition and lights. There’s no speedometer; who cares how fast you’re going over the sand? If you’re laughing, it’s fast enough.
I can’t think of a less practical vehicle than these, but practicality isn’t everything. And if you live in a beach community, then maybe I’m wrong; you could roll up to the Kroger in one of these, I suppose. You’ll have to do some work before you get to that point, though. Which one looks like a better starting point?
Will it whelie?
A little more tail than a Manx with that Corvair engine, but even without Faye Dunaway it looks like fun.
Thank you, Hugh. I realized that (The Thomas Crown Affair) was one of many classics I had never watched before. I remedied that tonight. After getting past the 1999 remake.
All those multi-windowed effects must have made that a bitch of a film to edit pre-Avid.
I edited 16mm TV news film in 1980 (guillotine, splice and glue), but I really have no idea how they did that in 1968.
What I really want to know is who is/was that gorgeous redhead who picked him up after landing the glider. I will find the answer somewhere on the internet.
But again, thanks for the nudge.
Oh you are in for a treat!
That’s all done by hand by Pablo Ferro with optical printers, cut paper, and a grease pencil, probably on a Moviola.
As if Haskel Wexler’s filming and Hal Ashby’s editing weren’t enough.
Pablo Fero did all the cool titles for everything in the 1960s and 1970s on into the 2010s
Ever wonder why Dr Strangelove, Stop Making Sense, and the Men in Black movies look vaguely familiar? Along with about a hundred other great movies?
First, he did it all by hand, then they invented computer software to do what he did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Ferro
I watched others do that stuff with an Oxberry and Disney multiplane camera setup at CalArts, which was Disney’s feeder school, and a lot of the Disney animators taught there. Each element is filmed separately, with its own moves, then they have to film a matte that combines all of them.
Movie titles are a lost art.
My 20+ years with Avid Technology were for a subsidiary product that was not the sexy (originally porn-fueled) video editing side. I put in and/or upgraded newsroom computer systems at sites ranging from CNN, NBC, ABC, Fox News in the States, the CBC up north, TV Azteca and Telavisa in Mexico, and Globo in Brazil down south and little stations in Bismark SD, Casper WY and everything in between.
I had to go with the Manx clone. For the price of either, I’d plan on rebuilding the engine on the rail and probably going through just about everything before doing much of anything with it (dealt with entirely too many broken-down rails in the middle of the dunes, it sucks exponentially worse than on road or even all but the most extreme offroading breakdowns), same with the buggy (probably just engine swap back to a VW). Given the time and effort for either, I’d rather put it into something with some character instead of something that’s basically a less capable 15 year old side by side…
I had one very similar to the sandrail when I lived in NY. It popped up on craiglist as a “know nothing about it, want it gone” sort of thing and think I got it for $500.
I was never able to find any sort of ID tag or engraving or anything to identify who made the frame, but it did appear to have been factory made. Beetle front end that clamped in and designed to take a Beetle engine/transaxle. I discovered it had a ’71 1.6 “single port” engine and a ’68 transaxle. Carb clean, points had it running and actually seemed like a fairly healthy engine.
It was cool, but in rural NY kind of useless. It would have been virtually impossible to get it street legal in NY, it was too big/wide for trails, an open rear axle and like zero weight on the front end made it pretty terrible on the forest/muddy terrain around here, so there really wasn’t anywhere to use it. Ended up selling it for a tidy profit and that was that. I recall the power being pretty zippy, at least for bombing around fields or tractor-roads and stuff. You could easily just mat the gas and drift it all over the place in fields or gravel in 2nd, despite the engine supposedly only being 60ish HP. The air cooling was also problematic since the generator fan would suck up all sorts of grass and chaff and crap and clog up the blades and the fins in the cylinders, which would cause it to diesel for like 5-10 seconds after turning the key off.
After moving to Texas I kinda got the itch to have one again, since I’d occasionally see one plated and on the road here, but they seem to still be a legal gray area. “Technically” vehicles with aftermarket frames (specifically tube frames are mentioned) are not highway legal, but people seem to just register it as the original donor Beetle or whatever and send it. Make sure it has all the usual equipment, lighting, a windshield, seatbelt, ect and you probably won’t have any issues. I’ve heard people said they’ve been doing this for years and never had any issue, others get pulled over immediately and have then had all sorts of red tape to deal with. They’re very unique so tend to catch attention for better or worse. The now reversed Kei vehicle ban in Texas was also seen as the nail in the coffin for sandrails/buggies as well, since they also “don’t comply with NHTSA”, but now that was overturned, it’s still as muddy as ever.
Sand rail! It’s stick, it’s blue, it’s already almost ready to go and I really like that engine. It’s a play toy, so will just trailer it and get title eventually if I feel like it.
The Meyers Manx are iconic and I like the shape for the most part besides looking only a little weird.
I’ve actually never driven or ridden in a dune buggy, but always thought it looked like such a blast. Damn, I could play in the desert all day!
Manx-ish “Operational status: no idea” oh, I think we have a pretty good idea. Either of these would just get parked at the back of the driveway until the wife made me unload it.
I voted sand rail, but with all those holes drilled in the tubing above the windshield, you don’t want to roll this thing.
Manx clone, it’s extra weird. Not sure what I would do if the engine is done. Maybe a small diesel.
Manx clone. Sell the engine. Find a Citroen Visa with a rusted out body. Install Visa engine, gauge cluster, and wheel in the Manx. Paint candy-coat metal-flake French Blue.
Rail buggy for me
I built a Berrian short back from a kit in the 70’s.
Bare bones, no gauges, expanded metal floor, original exhaust cut off short (quad pipes)
Never saw a sand dune, just tooled around the SW Michigan back roads and trails.
Drive thru a swamp and just hose if off when done.
Fun fact, if you flip the stock wheels backward so they offset out, perfect fit on the rail road tracks. Closest thing to self driving I will ever own.
I was gonna go with the 1974 sand rail, but in that video in the ad, it’s clear something isn’t right with the rear driver’s side wheel.
So I’m gonna go with the Corvair powered Manx clone.
Count me as the person who didn’t raise their hand. My dumb-ass stepfather build a dune buggy as I was growing up, and it was unfortunately done enough to drive about when I got my driver’s license. That was my car for most of high school. Having one to drive around in occasionally is probably OK, but having to rely on one for basic transportation sucks.
Sand rail because I can fool myself into thinking that I could actually do something with it.
During the “falling in love” montage in the original Thomas Crown Affair, Steve McQueen drives Faye Dunaway around on the beach in a proper dune buggy. My instinct tells me she’s not getting into a “rail.” So dune buggy, but you have fix it up and make nice like Steve’s.
What’s the lifespan for fiberglass if it is just sitting in heat?
I don’t know what type of fiberglass is involved, but it’s used a lot for playground equipment that sits in the sun and gets hammered on by gremlins.
Heat is less of an issue than UV and weather degrading the resin. As long as it’s been indoors, which it appears to be, it’s probably fine.