Aircooled VW South Africa

So there seems to be this "Genuine Manx" trend as of recent on the buggy scene and I find it pretty F-ing sad. You know what I'm talking about here, the "Mine's a REAL MANX and yours is just a lowly clone..." crap. Does it really matter? Does a real Manx body stop bullets, cure cancer or make the panties fly off the twenty something year old girls? I'm at a loss here.

I totally get it that Bruce (who I have met and is a SUPER NICE GUY) CREATED the FIBERGLASS buggy craze then loads of people proceeded to copy his design and steal from his potential profits. Then to make matters worse the court system didn't do a damn thing about it.

So decades later it seems like these clones are the red-headed step children and a genuine Manx is the rightful heir to the throne or something. Last time I checked these are all just cheap-ass plastic bodies bolted onto hacked on old VW frames with 1930's suspension technology.

For those that are so worried about having a genuine Manx let me share a few points with you.

1) The casual observer who sees your buggy on the street or at a show really doesn't care if it's "real" or not.
2) Driving a real Manx is no more enjoyable then driving a clone.
3) A real Manx will drip just as much oil as a clone.
4) A real Manx is just as likely to leave you stranded as a clone if you don't take care of it.
5) At an "all make/years" type car show a clone will get just as much attention as a real Manx.
6) At that same car show, the clone will piss off the guy next to you with the $100,000 street rod just as much as a real Manx. Why? Because a nice looking dune buggy just pulls a crowd and puts smiles on faces.

The analogy I make is the classic "Porsche Douche Bag". These are the guys who buy the Porsche as status symbol or to compensate for genetic "short comings". Granted some of these folks will take the symbol to track days, PCA and vintage races and so on depending on what it is. But what makes some of these guys douche bags is the mind set they have about their brand. They seem to think that Stuttgart crest shaves something off a lap time or makes another 50hp or something. What's the funniest is when these guys are getting out-performed on the track by cars they'd never consider owning. The parallels are striking.

From what I can tell, only buggy enthusiasts make a distinction between a real Manx or a clone. From this population of people only a handful really make a big issue of it and the rest of us find it silly or somewhat annoying. My advice to this handful of people is to get over yourselves. These are all just recycled cars built from the remains of crashed, rusted and unloved old economy cars. It's the build that matters, not the badge.

Soapbox now vacated. Next.
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