I was browsing car classifieds and auctions as usual, pretending to have more money than I do, when I stumbled upon one of the most unusual cars I’ve ever seen. This 2013 Reboot Buggy that’s for sale on Cars and Bids is a fascinating take on automotive minimalism and looks like a blast to drive. I want it.
The Reboot Buggy was designed by Joey Ruiter, who’s designed everything from cars to boats, to furniture. This hyper-minimal look seems to be his thing. When designing the Reboot Buggy, Ruiter had no previous experience in car design, and building one from scratch was a learning experience. With it, he wanted to go back to a place where car design was about the drive itself, and nothing else. He must have caught many eyes a decade ago because the Reboot Buggy was even featured in the Petersen Automotive Museum at one point.
Ruiter also provided quite possibly my favorite automotive quote of all time: “The horse is just a horse, it isn’t designed for humans to ride. We did that to the horse. What if the car was just a car? What would it want? How would it be designed?” Amazing.
So what is the Reboot Buggy? Well, it’s supposed to be a car designed without the driver in mind … but also without any self-driving or even self-parking. So who’s supposed to drive the dang thing? Despite that, it has seating for two and is left-hand drive. Those two passengers sit in a small box that seemingly sits on a box steel chassis, with a small-block 6.3-liter Chevy V8 in front of them and a small flatbed behind them. It looks more like a V8-powered skateboard that humans can sit in than any conventional automobile. If I had to draw a car comparison, it’d be the Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust.
To give it proper off-roading, dune buggy credentials, it has King Shocks coilovers, 18-inch XD wheels wrapped in 40-inch Yokohama Geolander mud-terrain tires, and a Warn winch. It’s rear-wheel drive but, with those massive tires and pretty much nonexistent approach and departure angles, that likely won’t matter in the sand and mud. And Ruiter wasn’t kidding when he said he wasn’t thinking of the driver because if he was he wouldn’t have given it GM’s Turbo-Hydromatic three-speed automatic transmission. This thing is craving a manual.
Few cars have ever intrigued me as much as the Reboot Buggy. It’s decidedly unique looking and seems like so much fun to drive. The car you’re looking at is the only one ever made and it’s somehow legally titled for road use in Michigan. It only has 1,400 miles on it and the current bid (at the time of writing this) is $20,000. There’s only one day left on the auction, so if you want this funny buggy, you’ll have to act fast. I’m just hoping I can resist making a foolish financial decision within the next 24 hours.
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