Beyond those, a guitar shape immediately relegates you to a certain category you don’t play a Flying V in a rockabilly band. Choose from over 100's of different plain colours to make your buggy unique, or add a super high quality metal flake alternatively we can details on hte samba thread amd hte $3K price, which would be very reasonable for these bodies. 00 Local Pickup long travel sand rail $22,000. , we have it all! Take a few moments, and browse some of our selection below. Hire costs are £25 per round, but look out for the special deals where we include a buggy with your discounted round! Buggies can be booked on, tel. “The car was so elegant, nothing like it ever had been made before.” Harman went to great lengths to match the red paint worn by the original.Dune Buggy Bod圜ars. And Harman is glad that his tribute car now serves as a rolling reminder that the Meyers Manx is the original dune buggy: (Image/OnAllCylinders)Īll told, the finished Manx is a stunning testament to Bruce Meyers’ engineering and vision. As an example, the exhaust is what Harman calls a “modern interpretation of a classic Sidewinder.” But Harman also jokes that “Bruce would hate that, because he’d tell me it’s too low, that it’d get knocked off on a rock.” Instead of an air-cooled VW, Harman opted for a Porsche 912 powerplant here. Yet some parts are truly unobtanium and required a bit of ad-libbing. And that’s evident out back, where instead of a VW air-cooled engine, there sits a high performance four-cylinder pulled from a Porsche 912. Though Harman did make some strategic departures from the original Old Red recipe. Note the correct VW-sourced steering wheel, shifter, parking brake levers, and gauges. The interior was meticulously spec’d-out as well. The bumpers and roll bar Harman had fabricated by a local tube-bending shop. Fortunately, the popularity of the Beetle meant that he could source a quality reproduction one.Īnd better yet, the Meyers Manx company still exists, so Harman could get some parts direct from the factory, like an original windshield and frame. “I called some specialized wrecking yards and they all laughed,” Harman admits. Yet several aspects of the restoration were still challenging-like finding a VW Wolfsburg steering wheel for instance. Harman even recalled some insight from the man himself: “Bruce told me, point blank, that a proper Manx has the windshield parallel to the roll bar.” From the exact placement of the headlights and turn signals, to the perfect color match on the body, most everything on this build (aside from the engine) was based off the first Manx prototype. Thankfully, Harman had an exhaustive number of pictures of the real Old Red to show where things should go, which parts to use, and what color the car should be. The buggy was brought to Ohio where an extensive restoration began. “It was really rough, because it had been sitting out in the sun for many years.” And while he ultimately found what he needed, there was still a lot of work to be done. “There’s a guy in Texas who has a barn full of these things,” he laughs. Step one was finding a legit Manx to build upon, which Harman describes as pretty easy. He always looked forward, very pragmatic.”Īs a tribute, Harman decided to build a Manx inspired by the original prototype, serial number 0001-the inaugural Baja-winning Manx that Meyers himself had lovingly nicknamed “Old Red.” Steve Harman is a big Manx enthusiast and was a personal friend of Bruce Meyers before his passing earlier this year. “But only about 5,200 Manx kits were ever produced.” While thousands of fiberglass-bodied dune buggies are out there, very few can honestly wear this badge. “It’s estimated that 250,000 knockoffs were completed in a ten-year time period between 19,” Harman explains. So while it’s fairly easy to spot a dune buggy that mimics Meyers’ design, finding a real-deal Manx is quite a feat. “As soon as he made it as simple as a shell that can be bolted to a Volkswagen floor, that opened the door to all the imposters” Harman says. Problem was, copycats were looking over his shoulder. That’s because, while the construction of his early prototypes was labor intensive, Meyers soon developed a brilliant (and relatively easy) way to adapt a VW Beetle floorplan to his dune buggy design. The driving force behind his eponymous company, Bruce Meyers revolutionized the kit car hobby, yet was undone by his own ingenuity. “The whole Meyers Manx story could be a college course in industrial design, economics, and law,” says Steve Harman-the guy behind this stunning Meyers Manx tribute car we spotted at the 2021 Goodguys Summit Racing Nationals. This particular Meyers Manx was modeled after the very first dune buggy Bruce Meyers built, which he lovingly dubbed “Old Red.” (Image/OnAllCylinders)
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