When I was a kid, growing up in a medium-sized Southeastern city in America, there were, at any given time, at least one to three people in any given decent-sized neighborhood working on a Volkswagen Beetle-based kit car. This figure, of course, is pulled deeply ex recto, because I sure as hell didn’t do any formal studies or anything like that. But what I did see were a steady number of Meyers Manxes (well, let’s be honest: Meyers Manx knockoffs and bootlegs), fake MG TDs, Beetles with Rolls-Royce grilles and Continental rears, the whole dazzling spectrum of kit car and Beetle-based specials.
The Petersen Museum is one of the few automotive museums to give these (usually) backyard-built machines some respect and recognition, and they are currently showing two of the most iconic Beetle-based kit and custom cars: the Meyers Manx and the Brubaker Box.
The museum also put out this great walk-around video of the two cars, featuring my favorite Associate Curator, Jonee Eisen:
Jonee gives a really great and detailed rundown of both cars and goes into their histories a bit, both of which are fascinating.
Jonee brings up some of the victories the early Meyers Manxes achived, like winning the very first Baja 1000 – that’s a huge deal! The Manx wasn’t just a cosmetic kit to make a little open roadster out of an old Beetle, it was a transformative re-casting of the little ubiquitous economy car into a fierce and effective off-road racer.
Sadly, real Manx kits weren’t cheap, and knockoffs came quickly and relentlessly, even from mainstream companies like Sears getting in on the action:
Eventually, all the knockoffs and copies put Meyers Manx out of business. It’s deeply unfair, but it doesn’t tarnish the legacy of this amazing car.
The other car shown in the video, the Brubaker Box, is a bit different, in that while it was also built on a VW Beetle chassis, it wasn’t exactly a kit car, being built by Brubaker’s own company. Well, at least for the first dozen or so – then the company was sold and another 25 or so were made.
The Box was designed to be a sort of cooler VW Bus, a surfer’s van with a more sporty style and flair. Oh, and to answer Jonee’s question, those taillights are from a 1971 or 1972 Datsun 521 pickup truck.
We actually had Curtis Brubaker, designer of the Brubaker Box, on our podcast, and he’s a genuinely fascinating guy, and tells the whole story of the box here:
The box, I think, is a legitimate design icon, sleek and strange and useful, with one sliding door and an L-shaped, lounge-like rear seat, and a semi-exposed air-cooled flat four. There’s really nothing quite like it, and I’m delighted to see a museum with the reputation of the Petersen is giving these iconic vehicles the attention they deserve.
A Brubaker Box was featured briefly in the film Soylent Green. Outside of the photo montage in the intro of the film, it was the only functional passenger vehicle shown in this movie’s world(presumably functional at least, since you never actually see it driven), presumably owned by governor Santini. You’d have to count the scoop trucks to claim otherwise. The rest of the cars in this film were inoperable, usually in a state of abandonment or used as a dwelling space.
Love how the video shows shots of it, but doesn’t actually address it:
As in, Ark II!
Amazing the subject matter and quality of kids’ shows back then. All the episodes are on YouTube if anyone’s interested.
So much fun to watch this. Tough to imagine another such ubiquitous platform emerging for home builders. But then, I think about that faux Corvette body on the I3 platform and I wonder if a cottage industry comparable to the Manx and Brubaker Box kits will spring up around these new backbones and if they’ll enjoy the same cult following. I hope so.
I was friends for a while with a guy who not only had a Brubaker, but he possessed the body molds. Unfortunately they were lost in a divorce and a move. And by lost I mean destroyed. At least that’s the last I heard about it a decade or two ago.
Ah yes, the Governor of New York’s official limousine in the far-off future year of 2022.