Buggy is generally used to refer to any lightweight

automobile A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with Wheel, wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, pe ...

with off road capabilities and sparse bodywork. Most are built either as a

kit car A kit car is an automobile available as a set of parts that a manufacturer sells and the buyer then assembles into a functioning car. Usually, many of the major mechanical systems such as the engine and transmission are sourced from donor ve ...

or from scratch.

History

Originally used to describe very lightweight horse-drawn vehicles for one or two persons, the term was extended to lightweight

automobiles A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods. The year 1886 is regarded as ...

as they became popular. As automobiles became increasingly sophisticated, the term briefly dropped out of use before being revived to describe more specialised off road vehicles.

Types

* Bennett buggy, a Canadian, depression era term for an automobile pulled by a horse * Dune buggy, designed for use on sand dunes * Baja Bug, a modified

Volkswagen Beetle The Volkswagen Beetle—officially the Volkswagen Type 1, informally in German (meaning "beetle"), in parts of the English-speaking world the Bug, and known by many other nicknames in other languages—is a two-door, rear-engine economy car, ...

* Moon buggy, nickname for the Lunar Roving Vehicle used on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

during the Apollo program's

Apollo 15 Apollo 15 (July 26August 7, 1971) was the ninth crewed mission in the United States' Apollo program and the fourth to Moon landing, land on the Moon. It was the first List of Apollo missions#Alphabetical mission types, J mission, with a ...

Apollo 16 Apollo 16 (April 1627, 1972) was the tenth crewed mission in the United States Apollo space program, administered by NASA, and the fifth and penultimate to land on the Moon. It was the second of Apollo's " J missions", with an extended sta ...

, and

Apollo 17 Apollo 17 (December 7–19, 1972) was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon or traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on ...

missions *

Sandrail A sandrail, also called a sand rail, rail, or sand car, is a lightweight off-road motor vehicle specifically built for traveling in sandy terrain. Similar in some respects and often mistakenly referred to as a dune buggy or sand car, a sandrail ...

, a variant of the dune buggy *

Swamp buggy A swamp buggy, also known as a marsh buggy, is a motor vehicle used to traverse boggy swamp terrain. Swamp buggies may be purpose-built buggies or vehicles modified to traverse swamp terrain. Swamp buggies are capable of traveling through or over ...

, designed for use in

swamp A swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...

s * Rock buggy, designed for use in low-speed rock-crawling applications * Rock bouncer, similar to rock buggy but custom built to handle obstacles more aggressively

References

{{Set index article, cars Car body styles Off-road vehicles

History

Types

See also

References