This is a sand rail-style Baja Buggy that was built by Mickey Thompson in-period, then given to Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame (ORMHOF) member Dick Landfield in the 1980s.
It’s now being offered for sale out of Vista California with the proceeds going to Warfighter Made, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Temecula, California. This charity was founded to improve the mental health of military service members, veterans, and their families through recreational therapy, camaraderie therapy, and S.T.E.M. educational youth programs.
Marion Lee “Mickey” Thompson was a pioneering American race car driver, designer, and land speed record setter who left a deep mark on American motorsports. Image courtesy of Motorbooks.
Who Was Mickey Thompson?
Marion Lee “Mickey” Thompson was a pioneering American race car driver, designer, and land speed record setter who left a deep mark on American motorsports. He was born in Alhambra, California in 1928, and grew up near Los Angeles – developing an early interest in both cars and mechanical engineering.
After working as a pressman at the Los Angeles Times, he funneled his wages and spare time into drag racing, hot rodding, and land speed record pursuits. These were common hobbies for young men in California at the time, but Thompson had a natural ability both as a driver and race car constructor that would see him become a household name.
Thompson’s name first rose to national prominence in the 1950s, when he built and drove custom dragsters and experimental vehicles with some significant success. His most famous creation from this period was the Challenger 1, a four-engined streamliner that in 1960 became the first American car to break the 400 mph barrier at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. Though mechanical issues prevented an official record that year, the attempt established his reputation as one of the fastest men in America.
Throughout the 1960s Mickey Thompson began to experiment with other forms of racing. He founded Mickey Thompson Tires, which produced high-performance tires for drag racing, off-road, and street use – this company is still in operation today.
In 1963, he fielded a radical rear-engine Indy 500 car – years before it became the norm. Though this entry didn’t win, it was a great example of both his engineering ability and his technical foresight – with just a few years all Indy cars would follow this formula, and today it’s the standard.
Above Video: This short film narrated by Mickey’s son Danny Thompson does an excellent job of explaining just how important Mickey Thompson’s contributions were to motorsport.
Thompson also helped develop off-road racing into a popular, mainstream American motorsport discipline. He founded the SCORE International off-road series in the 1970s and launched the Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group, which brought off-road stadium racing to major urban venues around the county. This helped increase interest in off-road racing significantly, as it brought it right into people’s cities and hometowns.
Tragically, Thompson and his wife Trudy were murdered outside their California home in 1988 in a crime that would remain unsolved for years. In 2007, a former business associate, Michael Goodwin, was convicted of arranging the killings.
Mickey Thompson’s name and legacy lives on today through his innumerable contributions to racing engineering and technology, as well as his tire company, and the off-road events that now draw in millions of viewers annually.
The Mickey Thompson-Built Baja Buggy Shown Here
The Baja Buggy you see here was reportedly built by Mickey Thompson in-period. It’s based around a Hi-Jumper frame made from blue 1.5″ steel tubing, and an unpainted aluminum roof panel and floors, an aluminum front and fiberglass side panels, a tubular front bumper, and both headlights and taillights.
The buggy has independent front and rear suspension provided by a Volkswagen, a relatively standard arrangement for sand rail-type buggies like this. Power is provided by a 1,835cc dual-port Volkswagen Type 1 flat-four with a Zenith 32NDIX carburetor and dual K&N air filters.
This is a sand rail-style Baja Buggy that was built by Mickey Thompson in-period, then given to Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame (ORMHOF) member Dick Landfield in the 1980s.
Power is sent through a 4-speed manual transaxle to the rear wheels, also VW sourced, and interestingly it is also fitted with Porsche 930-style CV joints. Inside you’ll find two front bucket seats, and fittingly, it rides on staggered-diameter polished wheels mounted with 265/75R15 front and 315/75R16 rear Mickey Thompson Baja Legend EXP tires.
It’s now being offered for sale out of Vista, California with the proceeds going to the Warfighter Made 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Bring a Trailer
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.