The Little Buggy That Ate Baja

The first Mexican 1000 was won outright by a car built for driving on the sand at Malibu. Vic Wilson and Ted Mangels covered 849 miles of the Baja peninsula in the red No. 10 Meyers Manx in 27 hours, 38 minutes — first overall in a field of 68 starters, of which 31 finished. The quickest motorcycle, J.N. Roberts and Malcolm Smith, came in at 28:48.

A Manx was a shortened Volkswagen floorpan under a fiberglass tub. No doors, no roof, an air-cooled four hanging off the back, and a shape designed to look like a good time. On paper it should have been the least serious entry in the race.

Old Red set the target first

Six months before the race there was no race — there was a record. On April 20, 1967, Bruce Meyers and Ted Mangels ran Old Red, the original hand-built Manx prototype, from Tijuana to La Paz against the clock. NORRA’s own account puts that run at the head of the whole story: a beach buggy, born out of VW parts and surf-culture fiberglass work, proving the length of the peninsula was drivable at speed.

Worth keeping the two cars straight. Old Red set the record. Old Red did not win the race. The car that won in October was a different Manx, and Mangels was the connective tissue between the two — the man who already knew what the country did to a machine.

A three-car sales pitch

Meyers entered the inaugural Mexican 1000 with three cars, which tells you what he thought was at stake. He drove one himself with Wheelo Anderson. Bob Haddock and Jimmy Smith took another. The red No. 10 went to Vic Wilson and Mangels.

Meyers had entered three cars in a race that could put his buggy in front of a much bigger audience. Wilson and Mangels supplied the result: the No. 10 finished ahead of every other entry.

What the result actually proved

Over a distance like that, attrition does much of the work: 37 of 68 entries did not make the finish. The Manx kept moving, and the margin over the fastest motorcycle was seventy minutes across more than a full day of racing.

It is still one of the great results in the sport’s first chapter, and it is a good argument for finishing: a car nobody would have picked was the one at La Paz first.

NORRA came out of that October with a winner, a time, and a story: Wilson and Mangels, the red No. 10, seventy minutes clear of the quickest bike.