Buggy fever
04/17/2014
The idea was born in the early sixties. Bruce Meyers put a simple plastic body on a shortened Beetle chassis and the buggy was born. Meyers commercialized his design and created the Meyers-Manx Buggy, the model for a new class of vehicle. Other manufacturers such as Apal (Belgium), GP (England) and Albar (Switzerland) followed suit.
The recipe was usually the same. The chassis and engine were taken from an old VW Beetle and a primitive and usually colorful plastic body was put over it, barely covering the front and rear, but not the crew. Talented DIY enthusiasts were able to assemble their own buggies and thus obtain a customized leisure vehicle for less than CHF/DM 10,000. To a certain extent, each buggy was unique, as there were virtually no limits to the builder's creativity.
The buggy business boomed in the early 1970s, with films such as "The Thomas Crown Affair", in which Steve McQueen drives a six-cylinder-powered Dune Buggy, or "Two like pitch and brimstone" with Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill contributing to the euphoria.
Buggy manufacturers and importers also took up significant space at motor shows and the fun vehicles were also widely reported on in the press. Even serious magazines such as Automobil Revue published test reports on buggies such as the Swiss-Buggy Froggy 1300 and noted: "The Swiss-Buggy Froggy takes us back to the pioneering years of leather-clad, daring motorists, without tormenting us with the breakdowns that were once the order of the day".
The fair-weather vehicles became ever wider and more extreme, and with hardtops and even gullwing doors, they even became weatherproof.
Nevertheless, the eighties were the end of the road, because on the one hand there was a lack of supply of Beetle chassis, but stricter licensing regulations were even more of a problem for hobby carmakers. In addition, the new generation of drivers wanted more luxurious and faster vehicles.
But the buggies have remained fun to this day and on warm spring days they are taken out of the garage again. And they are even welcome guests at classic car shows.
The ride in the 1976 Apal Buggy (pictured below), which was built on a 1956 (!) Beetle chassis, is still a lot of fun today ... In the historical driving report with the Autodynamics Deserter you can read what it felt like back then.
A collection of pictures on the subject of buggies can be found in our picture magic series. And, we are definitely planning to take a closer look at buggies this summer.
