While the term kit car is sometimes used in a derogatory manner, the freedom afforded to young designers by cheap fiberglass and affordable chassis led to a lot of creativity in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. Few vehicles were as wild as the Brubaker Box, a rare example of which is now offered for sale.
The van was the dream of one Curtis Brubaker, who spent some time designing for Cadillac and GM before moving to California to create his own vehicle. Like Bruce Meyer, he took inspiration from the state’s surf culture, and created a completely unique van called the Brubaker Box.
With a plan to buy bare chassis from Volkswagen, Brubaker didn’t want to sell his Box as a kit car, but instead as a fully completed vehicle. Unfortunately, VW pulled out at the last minute, citing liability issues, leading Brubaker to call it quits after trying to buy complete Beetles and tearing them down.
He only ever built three, but one of his investors, Mike Hansen, thought that the model could work as a kit, trading on the popularity of vans in the ’70s. They are officially known as the Automecca Roamer SportsVans, and appeared in TV shows like Ark II and movies like Soylent Green, but everyone continued to call them Brubaker Boxes.
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Although this is one of those later Roamer SportsVans, it remains quite rare. Attempts to account for how many of these models were built vary, but according to some, just a few dozen ever made it out of the factory.
This particular example was found as a bare, sun-cooked body in the California desert, per the sellers, and has since undergone a full restoration, likely making it one of the freshest examples on the road today.
Repainted in the original Jungle Green Metallic, it has a period-correct green shag carpet inside, brown vinyl lounge seating, an 8 track player, an Empi steering wheel, a barefoot throttle pedal, period-correct US Indy 4 lug slot mags, and more. Moreover, it is the only known example to have the optional in-dash ice chest/storage box.
At the rear, the SportsVan is powered by a new 1600 cc dual port flat-four engine with a new AS-41 engine case, a single-barrel carb, and a used (but renewed) four-speed manual transmission. One of a very small number of these in existence, it is riding a wave of renewed interest as, in 2019, a couple of entrepreneurs were looking to put these back into limited production (though their Indiegogo campaign failed to reach its funding goal).
This, then, is your opportunity to surf that wave of interest with an original example. For sale in California, you can track the restoration process on the Carcheology YouTube channel. The auction, hosted on eBay, ends on Saturday, July 1.