Nick WrightJan 1, 2025
Cybertrucks are out, this year we're bringing back the 1973 Automecca Sportsvan
Show threadSir Osis of Liver 🇨🇦 🇲🇽

@nickthewright

Originally the Brubaker Box.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brubaker_Box

A really cool kit car design, but only a few dozen were ever completed. Every once in a while someone floats the idea of restarting production, but finding donor Beetles is getting more difficult.

Edit. I'm just going to add that I used to see adverts for these in the back of Popular Science and a few car magazines back in the day. I thought they looked especially neat.

When Dad eventually got a van it was an '84 Plymouth Voyager, which, as you can imagine was a huge letdown. 😆

Brubaker Box - Wikipedia

Jan 1, 2025 at 5:13pmWeb
Show threadJoe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉Jan 1, 2025
@Sir_Osis_of_Liver @nickthewright feels like there should be a new base car for kit cars. The VW bug body kit thing was just a really fun culture. My neighbor had one that looked like an Italian supercar, maybe a squatty little Ferrari, and I thought that was the coolest thing. But, cars are so complicated and they change so often, and safety equipment is so much more intrusive in the car body, not sure how you could do something like it today. The Beetle was uniquely long-lived and simple.
Show threadSir Osis of Liver 🇨🇦 🇲🇽Jan 1, 2025

@swelljoe @nickthewright

Oh, I agree.

The "cars and coffee" equivalents in the '70s and early '80s were neat because of all the strange kit cars that would turn up.

You'd get various takes on the Meyers Manx, the Porsche 907/917 knock-offs, lots of wild home-builts, and so on.

Like you're saying, cars are just so much more complicated now, and the Beetles are drying up without any good replacements for the kit car segment.