Siegfried Rudolf, a bloke who owns Australian custom car shop Carmaxx Classics, was coming out of the ‘dunny’ one afternoon, when he noticed an old Volkswagen Beetle parked next to a Porsche Boxster. He thought to himself, “Crikey, that Boxster looks a lot like a bloody squashed bug”, and thus the Bugster was born.
Using the chassis and shell of a 1973 Volkswagen Beetle, Rudolph fitted it with a 3.2-litre flat six pulled from a 2000 Porsche Boxster S. Next went in a six-speed transmission from the Boxster, followed by its steering gear, ABS brake system, stability control, adjustable suspension, and 18-inch alloys. A custom exhaust was later fitted to the bug, along with airbags and a custom ECU tune that manages somewhere around 200 kW.
Rudolf claims the car will do 0 – 100 km/h in less than 5-seconds, which sounds about right for a chassis that just barely tips the scales at 1 100 kgs. While this car was originally put together as a goof, the idea has since caught on and Rudolf plans on creating a few more of these for any interested customers (a.k.a. bloke’s and sheilah’s). One alteration he’d like to make for a future Bugster is swap in the running gear from a Porsche 911 GT3!
September 1st, 2011 at 11:33 am
Suddenly I love my 1973 1600 soooooooooo much more.
This is a fantastic post.
I was thinking of turning it into a hard top convertible, but this….
Hell yes please!
Who is up for a project?