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I was 11 years old when I first saw it. It was 1975, and I was visiting my grandparents outside Boston. My grandfather was a toolmaker. The family business made tools for making tools...dial gauges were our specialty. So a trip through the family shop back then was like living a fantasy for a tool-obsessed boy like me. And there, in the entryway to the shop, was a bright blue dune buggy kit car, covered with dust and unfinished. I was sitting in it when my grandpa came in and found me. He was smoking his pipe, and didn't even have to ask me if I wanted it. It was obvious by the ear-to-ear grin and the faked engine shifting noises spurting out of my mouth. That was the day he said I could have it, once I got my license, of course.
It was some time after I got my license that I started thinking about the buggy again. It was still sitting in the shop in Massachusettes, collecting dust, but my grandfather had died several years earlier. My uncle Bill was living on the farm and working around the shop occasionally, so I called him up and told him grandpa had given me the buggy way back when, and I wanted to come up and get it. What grandpa had failed to tell me was that it wasn't his to give away. He and my uncle had been working on it as a father-son project and had just never finished it. In fact, it turned out it wasn't the first father-son project car he gave away without consultation. I had just stepped into it and my uncle let me know it. So, I let it go...but I never forgot it.
In 2001, my uncle called me out of the blue asking if I could take a month off work and come out and finish the dune buggy, and that when we finished, I could drive it home. I had to say no, since a month off work as a staff graphic artist is likely to be a good opportunity to look for a new job, since you won't have your old one when you get back. Months turned into years, as we tried to work out a time for me to come out east and spend at least a couple of weeks working on the buggy to get it driveable. Finally, in summer of 2005, we planned for me to just come get it ready for an auto transporter to bring it out west so I can work on it a little at a time. My uncle said he would come out in the early fall to work on concepts and fabrication of a custom one-off canopy that could be removed for good weather. Design has always been his passion, and getting it in driving condition is mine.
So with the plans in motion, we began to discuss various elements of the buggy's completion. The more I learned, the more I realized there was a whole part of my uncle's life that I never knew about. The uncle I had always known was a master antique furniture refinisher and restorer, who's work had been done for various collectors and museums. Little did I know that when I was running around in silly outfits my mom used to dress me in, my uncle was designing race cars for the Formula Vee crowd. Around 1968-69, he started working as a chassis designer for a company called Autodynamics, who were turning out the some of the most advanced race cars in the country in SCCA Caldwell Formula Vees, D-9 Formula Fords and D-10 Formula Super Vees, not to mention other projects. They were the largest race car factory in the country at the time. He went on to design the chassis for the very advanced new D-13 Formula Vee, with a zero-roll stiffness rear end that allowed them to dominate their class in SCCA racing for that year and beyond. You can find out some more history of Autodynamics here: http://simplesevens.org/DSK/history/dsk05.htm My uncle, Bill Woodhead, is mentioned in the last paragraph.
There was this little dune buggy company next door called Dearborn Automobile Company, who were making the Deserter Series One and their new Deserter GT. My uncle got involved in a project for them to design a autocross race version of the buggy called the Deserter GS. This buggy would toss out the VW chassis in favor of a mild tube steel and monocoque fiberglass body that incorporated the seats right into the molding of the shell. The engine wasn't the stock VW, but a mid-engine Corvair 180 hp. A Ghia front end was mounted to the chassis and an IRS rear end. At 1300 pounds and 180 hp, this car did 0-60 mph in 4.7 seconds in 1969! It was right after completing the prototype car that my uncle decided to build one for himself. And the year after that, he began a father-son project to build a classic Deserter Series One buggy. And that brings us back to my own obsession. The picture above shows roughly where the buggy is at right now, give or take a few weeks when I take a break.
Click on the 'Getting It' link in the sidebar to see and hear about the buggy's trip from Massachusetts to California. Click on the 'Building It' link to see the build log from arrival to the present time, approximately. Click in the 'Buggy Gallery' to see some historical images of my uncle's race projects and concepts he did 30+ years ago for this buggy. And enjoy.
Mark Woodhead * 23 November, 2005
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