This Ocean Spray Meyers Manx Dune Buggy Shows Why the Original Kit Car Never Goes Out of Style

A glittering Ocean Spray Metallic Meyers Manx dune buggy is currently up for auction on Cars & Bids, built on a 1962 Volkswagen Beetle pan and dressed with fresh professional paint, a quick-release steering wheel, and both a soft top and a removable fiberglass hardtop. Photo credit: Cars & Bids.

Located in Northridge, California, the buggy carries a clean California title, which should make registration straightforward for the next owner. Bidding currently sits at $10,000 across four bids, with several days left on the clock and a lively comment section debating everything from the wrap over the paint to the merits of an air-cooled engine that still leaks a little oil, as most old Volkswagens do.

The Manx name traces back to Bruce Meyers, a boatbuilder who applied fiberglass hull-molding tricks to a shortened Volkswagen Beetle floorpan in the early 1960s. The result was cheap, nearly indestructible, and shockingly capable in sand, spawning hundreds of copycat "buggies" and effectively inventing the dune buggy as a category. Meyers'' company still sells the real thing as a factory-built kit today, which is part of why the design has never really faded from popularity.

This particular buggy runs a 1.9-liter air-cooled flat-four fed by dual Weber 44 IDF carburetors through a sidewinder exhaust, backed by a four-speed manual sending power to the rear wheels. The seller says the engine has roughly 4,000 miles on a recent rebuild and just came out of the shop after carb and valve work, while the odometer shows 800 miles. Underneath sits a king-pin front end and independent rear suspension on KYB Excel-G shocks, with disc brakes at all four corners and new FlatOut Customs floor pans imported from the UK. Other recent additions include a fresh wiring harness, a quick-release steering wheel, new Mobelwagen wheels wrapped in General Grabber tires, a new alternator, and a new Odyssey battery.

Meyers Manx buggies are custom enough that Hagerty Valuation Tools does not track them as a standalone model, but the donor chassis underneath tells its own story about where this market sits. Hagerty's price guide for a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle convertible, the closest cousin to this Manx's 1962 pan, pegs a #3 (Good) condition example at roughly $22,100, a figure that has actually cooled off lately, down about 13 percent quarterly and nearly 20 percent over the past year as air-cooled Volkswagen values settle after a hot run. Auction results for the model swing wildly, from under $5,000 for tired sedans to well over $100,000 for exceptional cabriolets, which suggests buggies built on these pans can vary just as dramatically depending on quality of build, provenance, and how well they were preserved.

Cars & Bids has become a magnet for exactly this kind of fun, driver-focused build. It's the same platform where a Bronco restomod recently pulled strong money, a reminder that the market rewards character and thoughtful mechanical work over outright originality. More broadly, Hagerty's data on modified vehicles shows they are behaving differently than the rest of the collector market right now, a trend also visible in a supercharged Chevelle restomod that crossed the block on Bring a Trailer.

Bidding on this Manx closes September 8 at 3:03 p.m. EDT. For anyone looking for a simple, air-cooled toy that's just as happy on the sand as it is cruising the coast, this Ocean Spray buggy is worth a look before the gavel falls.