This page is intended to give you a bit of background about why I decided to build a Doon Buggy.
This page contains the following sections:
My desire to build some sort of on/off-road expedition vehicle started with seeing Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, one Friday evening, on the Jonathan Ross show talking about their motorcycle trip around the world from London to New York traveling east through Europe, Ukraine, Kazakstan, Mongolia, Siberia, Alaska, Canada and the USA.
Their appearance on the show was to promote their TV series based on this trip called 'The Long Way Round' which was to be shown on Sky Travel. Tina and I subsequently watched the series on Sky Travel, read the book and bought the DVD! If you haven't seen this series, I would highly recommend it if you have any interest in either travel, motorcycles or either of the two actors. They come across as really nice blokes pushing themselves to their limits to achieve something significant.
Anyway, having enjoyed their series, Tina and I began talking about the places we'd like to visit once we no longer have the kids to look after. Since neither of us are really into motorcycles and we'd like to travel together rather than separately, we started thinking about what sort of vehicle might be suitable for us to make journeys to remote locations with very poor or no roads.
Click here to visit another good web site about an English couple who have been motorcycling around the world since March 2003.
I started by looking at 4x4 vehicles, as I've always fancied a Mercedes Unimog and have previously owned a 1955 'Series 1' 86 inch SWB Land Rover. However, after looking at how much I'd have to spend to find a decent example of a suitable 4x4, and knowing how much time and money I poured into my Land Rover, I began to consider alternatives. Also, the fact that I would have to be able to fix absolutely anything on the 4x4, in the middle of nowhere, along with their complexity and the number of things that could go wrong with them all added to my concern.
Click here to visit a good UK web site about long distance, overland trips in a converted Mercedes Unimog.
In addition to this, my one criticism of Ewan and Charley, on their trip, was that they took far too much with them and what they did take was too heavy. When on camping trips, Tina and I travel extremely light, ensuring that we only take the absolute minimum of equipment and that what we do take is as light as it can possibly be. If we were to continue to do this, why would we need a big, heavy, complex, expensive 4x4 to transport it in?
Having 'gone off' the idea of a 4x4, I then started looking for an alternative means of transport and fairly quickly came across the US off-road scene, which mainly seems to use tubular space-framed 'sand rails', some of which are still based on VW Beetle running gear.
Since I have owned several VW Beetles, and the Beetle is the only car I would claim to know anything at all about, this sort of vehicle seemed like a good idea to me. Beetle engines, gearboxes and suspension components are simple, robust, light, reliable, cheap, readily available both new and second hand and I understand them (well, not fully, but more than any other type of car!). The space-framed sand rail type vehicle is also simple, strong, light, reliable, cheap and readily available. Excellent!
Click here to see a short (12 sec) video (1.1MB) of a sand rail in action.
After a bit of research on the Internet about sand rails I decided that the two seater Berrien Warrior was the vehicle for me and discovered that they were shortly to be imported into the UK by Darren 'BillyBob' Bowden who, it turns out, lives only an hour or two's drive down the M5 from where I live.
Click here to see a slide show of a couple of 'Berrien Warrior' rails (the red one was built by Darren).
Since the sand rail is a pretty unusual vehicle for the UK, before purchasing one, I started looking into the legality of running one on the road. It has definitely been done, as Darren had built one for the street, which had won prizes at VW events and had been featured in VolksWorld magazine. However, I became increasingly concerned that a sand rail may have to pass the government's Single Vehicle Approval (SVA) test before being able to be registered for the road and that it may not be easy to get it through the test. Also, if the registration and legality of the vehicle was in any way suspect, it may present problems when crossing borders into new countries.
Up to this point, I had also only really considered that we'd use the vehicle to visit 'hot' countries but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that we wanted to be able to visit 'cooler' ones too and that, even when visiting 'hot' countries, we'd be setting off and returning to one which can be a bit 'cool' sometimes, and is often very wet! The lack of any sort of bodywork on the sand rail and its lack of a windscreen and hood started to play on my mind.
I reasoned that although a sand rail is definitely a 'car', it could still be treated like a motorcycle, which also has no weather protection, in that it should be possible to use it in all weathers by wearing motorcycle clothing. Problem solved!
However, this would significantly increase the amount of gear we'd have to take and would mean that we'd be isolated from each other whilst traveling by our crash helmets: I used to drive my Land Rover around with the windscreen folded flat, which was great fun, except when trucks decided to hurl rocks at my head or a large Bumble Bee decided to play 'chicken' with me. Those things hurt! I, therefore, considered a crash helmet to be an unwelcome necessity in a sand rail.
So, the dubious road legality, and lack of weather protection of a sand rail, slowly started to turn me off the idea but as this was happening, I realised that the classic VW Beetle based beach buggy, designed by Bruce Meyers in California in 1964, had been conceived and built for a very similar purpose to the one I had in mind, i.e. so that he could travel effectively and cheaply off-road.
So 'Plan C' was born: Essentially, the same sort of idea as 'Plan B' but utilising a classic VW Beetle based beach buggy, rather than a 'rail'. This would give me a vehicle with much more of a proper body to it and the possibility of fitting a reasonable hood to keep out the worst of the weather.
There have been many different types of beach buggy made over the years, with each country having its own variations, but the original Meyers Manx is, arguably, one of the best looking and remains one of the most popular and most often copied designs. If you imagine what a beach buggy looks like, chances are that it's a Meyers Manx, or close derivative, that you're thinking about.
The Manx uses a shortened VW Beetle chassis to give a wheelbase of about 80 inches, which is ideal for off-road use, giving good maneuverability and protection against grounding.
Click here to visit a good web site about a long distance trip from Sweden to the Cape of Good Hope, and back, in a Meyers Manx beach buggy.
Manx beach buggy kits are still made in 2005 in the UK by 'East Coast Manx' and there are plenty of places around still, which can carry out the required chassis shortening, e.g. Flatlands Engineering.
However, there is still a feature of the Manx which I think may cause some difficulty in getting through the SVA test, namely the raw fibreglass edge to the body/wings. The Manx also has relatively narrow wheel arches compared to some of the other beach buggy models. In addition to this, both of the companies above are located on the east coast of England, which is a hell of a long drive away from where I live.
I, therefore, started to look at other UK beach buggy designs.
Plan 'D' followed on pretty quickly from Plan 'C', once I discovered the Doon Buggy.
The Doon is still a short wheelbase VW Beetle based beach buggy but it has been designed from scratch by a couple of UK beach buggy enthusiasts to overcome many of the niggles and design flaws of earlier buggy types. Since it's a new design, it has also been built with the SVA test in mind (although I don't think any of them have actually been put through it yet) and so has new features that will help with the SVA like return edges on the wings, which aren't found on any other beach buggy designs, to my knowledge.
I am, therefore, more confident (notice that I didn't say completely confident!) that the Doon could pass the SVA test if this proves to be required for my buggy.
Other features which I like about the Doon are that it has: Windscreen recessed into the body to prevent leaks; Return edges all round to give the wings and body shell additional stiffness; Opening bonnet to house petrol tank, battery, fuses and brake fluid reservoir; Longitudinal tubes glassed in under the wings to run the wiring in and to add stiffness; Rain lip all the way round the passenger compartment to keep the weather out; Ridges moulded into the body shape to add stiffness; Cut-away for a roll cage behind the windscreen; Moulded dashboard to enable switches and instruments to be recessed (for SVA); Wide wheel arches to legally cover large wheels and finally, a rear deck designed to cover single or dual carburettor installations, without modification, whilst giving maximum weather protection. Oh, I almost forgot, I think it looks pretty cool too :-)
Apart from the above list of desirable technical features, the things that finalised the decision, in favour of the Doon, were that the guys at Doon (and VolksMagic, who they are associated with) were extremely friendly, enthusiastic and helpful and that they're located in Oldbury (south Birmingham) which is only about an hour's drive up the M5 from where I live.
Click here to see a slide show of Doon's own completed short wheelbase buggy which I took whilst at VolksMagic.
So, Plan 'D' is THE plan! I have bought a short wheelbase Doon, in lovely Turquoise, for delivery at the beginning of September 2005.
There is no Plan 'E'! If Plan 'D' doesn't get finished, then Tina and I will be hitch hiking to Mongolia or wherever we end up going to :-(