Ask the Editors: Does This Buggy Look Familiar?
The mystery machine.
Well we have some good news and some bad news. Good first. Desert Fox was indeed a player in the buggy game back in the mid to late 1960s known for a couple of popular models such as The Spoiler and Scorpion.
Now the bad – the machine in your picture looks like nothing they ever produced, leading us to believe the stickers were added sometime after for cache’.
Worse still, while we like to think dune buggies and sand rails were created the way the auto industry makes cars or the off-road industry does SxSs, the truth of the matter couldn’t be more different. A majority of the buggies that have existed throughout the years have been one-offs, custom projects and kit cars. It wasn’t uncommon to run a VW pan with Corvair rear end, to drop air-cooled auto motors into golf cart chassis, slice up a VW Beetle and install a fiberglass kit and on and on.
As such, simply looking at a fiberglass shell (or tub) isn’t going to tell you much of anything – Any attempts at identifying what this vehicle may have begun life as will be more fruitful in trying to identify a frame or engine stamped VIN.
If we were absolutely forced to guess based on nothing but the body style alone, it almost looks like a part of the early 70s Rupp Ruppster family of mini buggies:
