When you think about the 1960s, it’s hard not to ruminate on Beatlemania, the Vietnam War and the moon landing. In car culture, the United States was making heavy contributions that decade with the advent of pony cars and the first golden age of muscle cars. With the help of Germany, America also introduced the world to the dune buggy.
Using ‘roided-out versions of the Volkswagen Beetle’s little engine that could, as well as some people’s car chassis bits, American builders ended up with maniacal machines capable of scoring bragging rights at legendary battlegrounds like Glamis sand dunes’ Competition Hill.
Those tires are huge, but they could stand to add some paddles to really rip through the sand.
Volkswagen
Well, the dune buggy may have been born in the US, but it’s being reinvented in Switzerland at this year’s International Motor Show in Geneva. Volkswagen just released a teaser of an all-electric dune buggy concept the automaker plans to reveal at the big Swiss show.
Based on Volkswagen’s modular electric drive matrix (MEB) platform, the electric dune buggy, free of a roof and doors, pays homage to early dune buggies of the ’60s and ’70s. It’s highly unlikely this would ever become a production model, but Volkswagen is using this concept to demonstrate that its MEB architecture could be used for a new wave of electric dune buggies with which the aftermarket could let loose.
In fact, from the ’60s to the ’80s, Volkswagen says about 250,000 one-offs or low-volume specialty vehicles were produced globally by builders the world over.
That’s all we know so far about Volkswagen’s electric dune buggy concept, but we’ll have much more information as soon as the car is revealed March 5 at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show.