Meyers Manx cars for sale

Overview

The Meyers Manx is the original dune buggy — a fibreglass shell on a shortened Volkswagen Beetle floorpan — and one of the most copied vehicle designs in history. Roughly 250,000 clones exist worldwide against about 6,000 genuine kits.

History

Bruce Meyers, a Californian engineer, artist, boat builder and surfer, built the first prototype, "Old Red", in his Newport Beach garage between late 1963 and May 1964. He combined the high fenders and short wheelbase of the VW Schwimmwagen, the stand-up headlamps of the Kübelwagen, and the open simplicity of European beach cars. A Manx won the inaugural Mexican 1000 in 1967 outright, beating motorcycles and trucks.

The patent was the undoing: a judge ruled the design unpatentable and rescinded it, and the copies followed. B.F. Meyers & Co. closed in 1971 after building about 6,000 kits. Meyers founded a new company in 2000, and Trousdale Ventures acquired it in November 2020, adding an electric Manx to the line.