For the past 10 years a movement has sprouted amongst off-road enthusiasts building extremely purpose-built 4x4s. Rock buggies, tube cars, trail rails-whatever you want to call them. This trend uses little or no production-vehicle body or frame parts and is designed from the start to work better off road than anything from an OEM. This trend has really taken the sport by storm, but where did it all begin?
Before we go much further maybe we need to determine what exactly a rock buggy is because we've seen a ton of custom rigs on the trail and they're not all just running in the rocks. After much arguing amongst staff, we decided that a rock buggy is a vehicle with no factory frame and instead a fully fabricated monocoque chassis that supports the four-wheel-drive drivetrain and running gear, protects the occupant, and allows for suspension geometry tailored to rockcrawling and bouldering. Of course that's just the base definition we came up with and over the years it has become quite watered down to the point where just about any vehicle with a lot of tubing and some scars from actual trail use has fallen into this category. However, in March 1997, then Editor David Freiburger had this on his editorial list of products we'd like to see:
"Tube Chassis Kits: Every dedicated-purpose performance vehicle I can think of uses a fabricated tube chassis. So why not an ultimate trail cruiser? The design could eliminate all the drawbacks of a production vehicle. The frame and body could be made not to interfere with an ultimate-articulating suspension, mounting all the components would be much easier, and the light weight would reduce parts breakage."
Was this request the start of the rock-buggy trend? Definitely not, because more than two years prior to that editorial there were some guys in a shop in Arizona building what we consider the first built-from-scratch trail rig with a design that was perfect for attempting gnarly rock obstacles. And though we're sure there were other built-from-scratch 4x4s prior to this little gold Jeep, none were more seminal in spawning a trend that would take our recreation by storm. But one vehicle doesn't make a trend. No, a trend is when someone has a cool idea and it spreads like wildfire with hundreds and thousands of other folks modifying that original idea to best suit their needs. In fact nowadays the line between rock buggy and hyper-modified production vehicle has so blurred that some would say the rock-buggy thing has boomed and burned out, but we don't think so. In fact, rock buggies have simply become a pillar of our sport like all the rest. Rock buggies are right there with mud trucks, desert racers, prerunners, Jeeps, trail rigs, camping trucks, expedition rigs, swamp buggies, pulling trucks, and monster trucks. This trend has also spawned subcategories of rock buggies, such as trail buggies, comp buggies, moon buggies, rock rods, and even the truggies (part truck, part buggy). They're not going away, they're just finding their niche in the family, and along the way they are crossbreeding with other trends to grow into even wilder trail machines.
We can't wait to see the next prodigy our sport will spawn, so if you're working on some crazy contraptions to take off road that you think will take four-wheeling in a whole new direction, be sure to let us know.
In the mid '90s Petersen's 4-Wheel & Off-Road began emphasizing less the show-rig craze of the '80s and more the real-world 4x4s that were actually running trails and getting dirty and dented. This is the frame of mind we are still pushing here at Petersen's and one that also helped us first start recognizing the rock-buggy craze. Back in 1996 Shannon Campbell had one of the first rigs that helped spawn the rock-buggy craze. Built completely from scratch, Shannon's Jeep had a square-tube frame, a homemade body similar to a Jeep flatfender but longer and wider, and a round-tube rollcage. The drivetrain was all Chevy parts from a 1/2-ton truck and was built to go trail riding and hunting. The project began when Shannon (with some influence from his father) realized the original Jeeps he was starting with had issues and building from scratch wasn't really that hard. Plus did you know the gold color was actually Coors beer gold? Shannon's dad worked at a shop where many of Coors' trucks were repaired and they had the gold color in stock. Though maybe not the full-tube one-piece chassis we often see today, this Jeep was definitely the jumping-off point from starting with a Jeep to starting with a pile of steel tubing. To this day Shannon Campbell and his family build some of the top rockcrawling machines out of their shop in Gilbert, Arizona, under the name Campbell Enterprise. Coincidently the Campbell Enterprise fridge is no longer stocked with Coors beer; now it's full of Monster energy drink, Shannon's title sponsor for all his rockcrawling vehicles.
Shortly after Shannon's Jeep was up and running, his good friend Randy Ellis began work on his own tube-frame Jeep. Randy and Shannon had grown up wheeling together in old Jeep CJ-5s and both decided they could build something better than stock. Randy's tubular terror took hints from desert race trucks and applied them to a vehicle built for all-around fun-a giant toy. Randy had built many Jeeps in the past, but the only Jeep parts on this project were some body skins. Designed with front and rear four-link suspensions and coilover race shocks, Randy's Tube-Jeep also helped bridge the gap between old body-on-frame trail Jeeps-desert-racing-style suspension being used for rockcrawling trails-and the start of a complete chassis designed for maximum off-road performance. Built from a ton of round tube with some trick steering that followed, front four-link bars, and a strong but light drivetrain, this Jeep was and still is cutting edge in many ways. Randy Ellis still fabricates and has a full line of lightbars from his shop, Randy Ellis Designs in Phoenix.