Volkswagen Beetles can be hit or miss with some people, Baja bugs on the other hand are pretty much universally kick-ass. By seemingly divine intervention, people managed to turn these generally boring and not very fun to drive little Beetles into sand spraying, fire breathing rocket ships with a few key mods.
These highly modified dune buggies have so little to do with their VW Beetle parent cars they might as well be unrelated. All that remains is a basic silhouette, inside of which sits hours of custom fabrication and thousands and thousands of dollars invested. So let's take a look at two custom Baja bugs with loads of classic charm but the hardware to back up the image out on the dunes.
Get ready to catch some gnarly air, we're taking a look at two of the coolest Baja Bugs out there.
V-Tec V6 + Baja Bug Chassis=Winning
If only more people were aware of what an absolute gem the Honda J series of V6 engines are. Because they tend to get put in boring Odyssey minivans and things of that nature, they usually fly under the radar of people looking for powerful engines at reasonable prices.
That said, it looks like someone in the know agrees with us here, because this J35A4 swapped Beetle chassis with the 3.5-liter engine from the mid-2000's Honda Pilot looks ready to win a rally championship. Only the shell of the original Beetle remains on this buggy, which makes the prospects of buying the car with a salvaged title a little bit less of a gamble in this case.
275 horsepower is easily achievable with a J-series V6 without doing anything to the internals of the engine. Provided one can shove the engine into whatever engine bay they have in mind, which this owner did a fantastic job of doing in a clean fashion, the J series can be a capable and adaptable power plant. Since this particular J35 has so little weight to lug around, safe to assume this Baja bug is one tough customer.
Kicking Butt In Rally Races Since Before Any Of Us Were Born
Baja bugs have their genesis in the Southern California modding scene of the late 60's and early 70's. Most early Baja bugs were just fun toys for baby boomers who were just about to become the wealthiest generation in the history of the world.
A handful was used for more serious purposes, like racing in legitimate off-road rallies. That fiery crucible of racing is the world that this Lucas Oil-sponsored little pocket rocket was born into. What started out as a normal 1971 VW Bug spent the last 30 years competing in races like the Mint 400 Course from the Las Vegas strip through the barren and scorching Nevada desert among countless others in the last three decades.
After a generation of getting down and dirty in races across America, this street-legal bug got a fresh lease on life in the form of a brand new 1.8-liter four-cylinder race-tuned engine, all-new bucket seats, revised LED lighting, and a full interior and exterior detail. The car sold on classiccars.com last June, whoever bought it is lucky enough to own the cleanest classic Baja bug most of us have ever seen
A Modern Baja Bug
It's customary to refer to modified mid to late 60s Volkswagen Beetles as Baja bugs, but as we see here, it's more of an aesthetical philosophy. One that looks great even on the original Beetle's modern decendant.
This modern interpritation of a Baja Bug has all the bells and whistles of its ancestors but with the addes benefit of modern traction control, anti-lock brakes and air conditioning. The build started off as a standard 2003 Beetle. It took months of mechanical work and custom fabrication to get the car back into running and driving condition, then even more labor to fit the car with chunky BF Goodrich tires, a custom bull bar and skid plate and all finished off with a color matching orange bull-bar.
Some hardliners will swear up and down that a Baja bug has to have a shell from a 60s Beetle. But let's be real, no one likes those kinds of people. The same passion and philosiphy is imbued into this modern version. It just happans to have been build 50 or so years after the first.
Less A Type Of Car, More Of A Philosiphy
In the off road Baja bug community, there's lots of different ways of building machines that are meant to only do one thing, go off roading in sand and dirt at very high speeds. In our opinion, any of these modified bugs are cooler than normal Beetles. That that that's very hard to do, wathing paint try is more entertaining than one of those.
Sources: Gunxian, Classiccars.com, Deadclutch.com