We expand the family of participants in the next Spring/Winter 2020 with the incorporation of Dune Buggies; classic cars modified for sand and dunes.

The Maroc Challenge is always open to new proposals that remain faithful to the spirit of the event and for this reason we have decided to expand horizons, this time with the incorporation of this new category, which consists of attractive, fun and very popular vehicles in the European Aircooled VW Community, mainly in France and England.

Dune Buggies are cars that began to be modified in the 60s and basically, consist in a shortened chassis to make them more compact and a fiberglass body. The mechanics stay just about the same woth the standard rear-wheel drive.

The spirit is to take a classic car and transform it into a buggy so that it can run over sand. The original bodywork is replaced by a lighter, more agile fiberglass structure. Most of them sport original 1.2 H4 to 1.6 H4 engines on the Volkswagen Beetle base, though later on some were also modified. These vehicles perform very well in sand, having practically no surplus weight and usually very wide rear wheels.

“I find it a very interesting vehicle to get around in in Morocco and I have always liked them. In addition to its features, especially its performance on sand, we are going to establish a specific route for these vehicles following the same, shorter route the cars take  but incorporating the sand stretches of the Adventure and Raid categories, taking into account that sand is their natural habitat”, explained Rui Cabaço, the Maroc Challenge briefingman, regarding their incorporation.

Care must be taken not to confuse this category of buggies, whose base is a transformed car chassis, with current SSV or tubular chassis Sport buggies. The latter, for the time being, are not included in the event, though there is an ongoing debate on hosting vehicles of this type of characteristics in the near future.