Instrumented Test
From the March 2014 issue
“I don’t know what I was thinking or why I was thinking it when I did it,” Bruce Meyers exhales while standing next to his Manx Kick-Out S.S. “But here it is. And here I am.”
What it is, is a dune buggy—a swoopy lump of fiberglass atop an old VW Beetle’s chopped-down floorpan that is the most iconic shape ever crafted in California. Elvis drove one in Live a Little, Love a Little. Steve McQueen used one to seduce Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair. It was Speed Buggy on the Saturday morning cartoon block. It is sunshine and SoCal rendered in composites. A vapor trail of bikinis and beach volleyball games follows behind it. The Meyers Manx should be powered by Coppertone.
And it’s a shape—constantly copied, cloned, and ripped off—that’s been around since 1964. But it’s still around and, more surprisingly, so is Bruce Meyers.
Top right: The Kick-Out S.S. looks like a cross between a Lotus Elise and, well, a Meyers Manx. But it drives just like a Manx. Bottom right: Distended Subaru engine. Left: Bruce Meyers.
Now 88, Meyers survived kamikaze attacks while serving on the USS Bunker Hill in 1944, competed in the first Baja 1000-mile race in 1967 with a jerrycan of gas clamped between his legs, and is currently working on marriage No. 6. “I’ve got a lot of stories,” he says. Bouncing around the five-acre spread in rural eastern San Diego County where he lives, Meyers is still doting on his one great contribution to American culture, coming up with new variations and shipping out fiberglass bodies starting at $4700. The Kick-Out S.S. kit starts at $5700; this one cost $7755.
Approaching the Manx with a fresh eye isn’t easy. After all, one was on the cover of Car and Driver’s April 1967 issue (“You Can Build This Fun Car For $635!”). Back in 2006, this magazine profiled Bruce Meyers and drove the larger Manxter 2+2 he had designed as a follow-up. It’s easy to dismiss the Manx as an artifact of a bygone moment. Sorting out its relevance in the 21st century is tougher.
His latest yellow screamer, pictured here, is powered by a water-cooled Subaru 2.5-liter four. Despite the Subie power, however, the basic chassis is still vintage VW, in this case a 1970 Beetle with the preferred later-model trailing-arm rear suspension. Meyers says he has “about $35,000” into this one and will raffle it off this July to someone who buys a ticket through the MeyersManx.com website.
“The ‘kick-out’ is the maneuver a surfer makes at the end of riding a wave,” Meyers says. “S.S. is for ‘Strictly Street.’”
So this Manx rides low over 15-inch, five-spoke wheels inside BFGoodrich Radial T/A all-season tires with ridiculously skinny 155/80R-15s in front and relatively enormous 275/60R-15s in back. “Where did we get these wheels?” Meyers asks his sole shop employee, Miguel. “I don’t know,” is the answer; “eBay?”
The street-oriented character of this Kick-Out is also apparent in the Griffin aluminum radiator hanging vulnerably low under the nose. Also the fiberglass pods that fill in the bottoms of each side and feature a duct to nowhere. Could radiators be fitted behind those side pods? “Sure,” Meyers shrugs. “You can do whatever you want.” With its color-impregnated finish, nose-down stance, creased fenders, nerf bars, twin roll-bar hoops, and a curved Super Beetle windshield, the Kick-Out is both unmistakably a Manx and gorgeous.
