Off Road Buggies

This site is dedicated to off road buggies, beach buggies, dune buggies or whatever you want to call them. It includes a build diary of The Freestyle which I started last year, resources for buggy builders, kit car builders and mini enthusiasts, and also other general car type stuff.

I'd have loved to have included a photo of a buggy doing a mad jump off a cliff or something but I don't have any. So here's my build pretty much as it is at the moment.

If you have a buggy picture for this spot then contact me!

The Freestyle Buggy

The Freestyle is the buggy I am building. Here's some more info.

The Freestyle buggy is a kit car manufactured by Westholme Aviation. It used to be made by ABS. (The ABS Freestyle is the same thing.) It's a simple kit which makes an off road buggy which is also able to pass the SVA test so it can driven on the road.

The kit uses an Austin/Rover Mini as a donor, which I have 3 of, in various states of decay. I'll be using the most rotten of the 3, which was once a rather nice K-reg Italian job with a 1275 carb engine.

The engine is mounted on the front subframe as in the Mini, however, the subframe is then positioned behind the seats and in front of/over the rear wheels. The engine powers the rear wheels which are locked so they don't steer. This means that the completed buggy is a mid-engined rear wheel drive car, quite different to the mini. In theory it should be faster as it is lighter and because it is rear wheel drive (on acceleration weight transfers to the back giving the rear wheels more traction whereas in a front wheel drive car is transfers weight away from the driving wheels reducing traction.) The chassis is a steel space frame with integral roll bars in case the worst should happen. It has 2 seats.