Growing up, I had a friend Tim who was my age and lived across the street. Hi father’s name was Bud and he was a machinist for Boeing.  Bud had a magical lathe and valuable skills that created a few of the valuable pieces I needed for putting together my first jeep. Bud also told me one day, near the end of building that first jeep, how he was talking to my Dad and how proud Dad was that I had built the jeep.  Of course, when Bud told me this, I just stared back, as Dad only told me what I was doing wrong … aahh, father and sons.

Anyway, one of Bud’s projects was a beautiful red, sparkly Dune Buggy he built (not the one to the right, but similar).  It was pretty much just a road machine toy.  For those who knew the Renton, Washington, area back in the 70s, Bud would drive his dune buggy down to the middle of the out door retail mall downtown (the one anchored by Sears on one end and QFC on the other) and park it in the middle of the mall (no there were no parking spots there), because he could do it and people loved to check out his Dune Buggy.

One day I was trying to find the body style (it was a flat fenderish hybrid buggy) and I ran across this amazing website called the dunebuggyarchives.com.  It includes a BODY ID Section that is very useful; there are SO many different buggy designs that the person managing this website built a database to help people navigate all the different kinds of buggys.  It also includes a history section that’s interesting.

Of course, there was even the flat fender dune buggy based on the M-38 and I have featured some of them for sale on ewillys.