This is a newly-built Funco Buggy SSII, it has a central driving position, four-wheel disc brakes, Profender shocks, and a 2.2 liter GM inline-four sending power to the rear wheels.
Buggies like this, often called sand rails or sand cars, have been one of the backbones of four-wheeled desert racing for generations. They were immortalized in the 1980s (and beyond) by Japanese R/C car company Tamiya which builds a series of scale model buggies based on the sand rail form factor.
Malcolm Smith and Bud Feldkamp teamed up to push their ISS sponsored Funco SS2 to a clean sweep of 162 car field at Barstow, California.
History Speedrun: Funco Motorsports, Inc.
SCORE (Southern California Off Road Enthusiasts) credits Funco with seven overall four-wheel wins at the Baja 500 between 1971 and 1985, and it lists Funco-VWs as the four-wheel winners of the Baja 1000 in 1973 and 1977. The company behind these cars was founded by Gilmon “Gil” George in 1968, and amazingly, it’s still building off-road cars in Rialto, California, 58 years later, with the George family running it.
George came into the off-road racing world from drag racing, he’d learned to weld building drag chassis, used the same methods to build a dune buggy for himself. His design was well-built and it proved popular, so started taking orders when other people came to him wanting one. He called the business Funco, it was short for “Fun Company.”
The first Funco model of note was the Wampuskitty. A July 1969 magazine test described its fully triangulated tube chassis, offered in either mild steel or 4130 chromoly, with single A-arm front suspension instead of the stock Volkswagen setup.
Those A-arms gave 11 inches of front wheel travel, against five for a stock VW. A race-ready car weighed between 950 and 1,025 lbs, and Funco had sold about 50 chassis by the time that test had been published. Wampuskitties also ran in the Mexican 1000, the race that later became the world-famous Baja 1000.
The single-seat Funco SS1 followed, it’s the buggy that really made Funco a household name in off-road racing circles. Scott McKenzie’s Sandmaster team built its cars around new Funco chassis and hired Bobby Ferro to drive them.
Through the 1970s Ferro took 25 overall four-wheel wins and the 1974 SCORE championship. He won the Baja 500 overall in a Funco in 1971. In 1973 he and Johnny Johnson won the Baja 1000 outright in 16:50:25, that was faster than the quickest motorcycle. SCORE records Ferro’s 1972 and 1974 Baja 500 wins under the Sandmaster name rather than Funco’s, but they were running Funco chassis.
This is a newly-built Funco Buggy SSII, it has a central driving position, four-wheel disc brakes, Profender shocks, and a 2.2 liter GM inline-four sending power to the rear wheels.
The best-known Funco of the decade was the blue Bel-Ray Bullet driven by Malcolm Smith and Bud Feldkamp. According to the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame, it had a longer wheelbase than earlier Funcos and finned Bilstein shocks at all four corners for cooling.
It was also among the first buggies with a fully-independent rear suspension set up, which used a Volkswagen Type II transaxle and CV joints for more wheel travel. With McKenzie overseeing the car, Smith and Feldkamp were the fastest four-wheel entry at the 1977 Baja 1000 in 15:10:42 – they then won the Baja 500 in 1978 and again in 1979.
SCORE’s list of Funco winners at the Baja 500 also includes Ivan Stewart in 1975, Stewart and Ferro together in 1976, Larry Ragland in 1982, and Ron Gardner and Feldkamp in 1985.
Funco buggies also reached people who had never even seen a desert race – Tamiya’s 1979 Rough Rider radio-controlled buggy was modeled closely on an orange Funco SS II run by Bob Maynard Racing, with the name changed to “Rob Mitchell Racing” on the decals. Its alternative blue livery was based on the Bel-Ray Bullet.
The Hall of Fame credits Funco with a series of buggy innovations including long-travel rear suspension, disc brakes, and a Char-Lynn power steering system. It also puts Funco’s tally of SCORE Chassis Manufacturer of the Year titles at five (although SCORE’s official list puts it at four, in 1974, 1979, 1980 and 1981).
In the early 1990s George and his son Grant designed the Big 5, which moved Funco’s focus from desert racing toward sand cars (sand rails), and this remains its core business today. The flagship F9 debuted in 2016, it’s rear-wheel drive, and it has over 1,000 bhp. In December 2017, the Red Bull Torque event in the United Arab Emirates used the F9 as its series car.
George was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007 and died in October of 2019, today at least eight members of the George family still work in the shop.
The Funco Buggy SSII Shown Here
This Funco Buggy SSII is a freshly completed custom build by TSM Motorsports, combining old-school sand rail looks with much newer mechanical underpinnings. It’s finished in gold with a centrally mounted driving position and a red-and-black leatherette seat, it’s covered just 10 kms (6.2 miles) according to the odometer.
Behind the driver’s seat you’ll find a rebuilt 2.2 liter GM inline-four controlled by a Haltech 550 ECU, sending power to the rear wheels through a 4-speed Kombi 1800 manual gearbox. It’s also fitted with Profender shocks, four-wheel disc brakes, a turning brake, power steering, and 15-inch Centreline alloy wheels.
Buggies like this, often called sand rails or sand cars, have been one of the backbones of four-wheeled desert racing for generations. They were immortalized in the 1980s (and beyond) by Japanese R/C car company Tamiya which builds a series of scale model buggies based on the sand rail form factor.
The cockpit has been kept simple and functional, with a quick-release Velo steering wheel, Proforce harness, VDO tachometer, custom toggle switches, push-button start, a kill switch, aluminum controls, and LED lighting.
It’s now being offered for sale out of Belair in South Australia with build documentation, you can find the listing here on Collecting Cars.
Images courtesy of Collecting Cars
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
