![]() ![]() Proving its competitiveness, a pair of Manx Buggies 39 out of 41 slalom races. It handled better than any other all terrain vehicle and was fun to drive too. The rear mounted engine and rear wheel drive setup performed very well, especially in Off Road conditions. It simple design based around a Volkswagen drivetrain led to terrific performance, even without 4 wheel drive. Meyers Manx became an instand icon of the automobile culture, being quickly recognized as „the dune buggy“ Even Hot Rod Magazine picked Old Red to grace the cover of tis August 1966 issue. But the market reactions beyond his wildest dreams. Though he felt the Manx was good looking and fairly priced, he wasn’t sure anyone else would share the same feeling about his creation. In July 1964, as the body took shape, Bruce came to realize that the short rear end resembled the bobtail of a certain animal, the Manx Cat: hence the name of his buggy – Manx incidentally, the Mayers Manx logo prominently features a Manx Cat. In truth he remained unsure about his project… Would It function as expected? But whenever people walked into his shop, they would comment:“ What a need looking toy!“ With such encouraging words, he pursued his vision and made it a reality. He seen 1 1/2 years in his spare time to create a unique buggy. He thereby sketched out a sleek little roadster shell, knowing that he had the skills to morph it into a full scale model indeed, he had already learned shaping techniques to build fiberglass boat bodies.īruce decided to go with an air-cooled VW engine and beetle chassis, shortened by 14-1/4 inches. They were just ugly with no design involved.Īs Bruce studied and thought art, he envisioned a lightweight version of the buggy that would be fun at the beach or the Baja California wilderness. Bruce loved the concept of this buggies, but he didn’t like their design. No shell covered the structure seats were bolted in the back of the frame above the rear axle, while the heavy water pumper V8 sat in the front. ![]() These crude vehicles featured frames either hand built or modified from old cars/trucks, which often came from junkyards. It all started in the early 60ties in Pismo Beach, California, where Bruce first saw sand rail buggies. It impacted the auto industry all over the world and became a unique American Icon The imitators went on, though, and today-although you've surely seen plenty of Manx-like cars in movies or in cartoons, bouncing along beaches, or maybe even tucked under tarps in your neighborhood-you might have never seen a real one.Created in 1964, Bruce Meyers greatest contribution to the automobile world, the Meyers Manx Dune Buggy, combined a VW Beetle drivetrain with a custom designed fibreglass shell. auctioned off the leftovers and was out of the buggy business. In 1970, tired of lawsuits and bills, Meyers left the company, and in 1971, Meyers and Co. ![]() Of the close-to 250,000 buggies that hit the road, maybe 5,000 are real Manxes. ![]() There were court cases and attempts to waylay the Manx-forgers through increasingly complex moldmaking designs like the all-off-road Tow'd and the radical, scissor-doored Manx SR, but the court cases went against Meyers, and the Tow'd and the SR did not have the mass appeal, nor ease of assembly, that made the original Manx so appealing. Meyers was cranking them out and had dealers all over the country, but his process was labor intensive, and several companies, some with less stringent quality control, began marketing their own version of the fiberglass dune buggy, often straight-up copies of Meyers' design. Costing about $600 plus a wrecked VW, the Meyers Manx was a good deal, maybe too good. ![]()
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