By MURRAY HUBBARD

With apologies to anyone who may happen to own one of these vehicles, could this be the ugliest car to be given birth in an Australian factory?

A car that only its designer could love!

If that were the case there would be no Australian Country Buggies left. The reality is there are still quite a few of the original 887 VW Country Buggy vehicles still haunting our roads.

Beauty, as we know, is in the eye of the beholder. We may joke about the Country Buggy, but were are not the first. That was left to its manufacturer, Volkswagen Australia. Newspaper advertisements from 1967 provide some insight into VW's marketing of this Aussie-designed farm-intended Beetle spin-off.

“If you think the Beetle is ugly ... take a look at this one.

“VW Country Buggy. The uglier Volkswagen built for rugged dirty work.”

While VW joked about the Country Buggy, so did the jokes fly.

The Country Buggy, as its name suggests was intended for soft duties on Aussie farms.

It did not compete with 4WDs, but with good clearance, a light body, low centre of gravity, wide track and the weight over the rear wheels, it could go far beyond where a `normal' two wheel drive was capable.

The Australian Country Buggy was designed and built at VW's Clayton plant in suburban Melbourne with the first prototype hitting the testing phase in 1965, ahead of release in 1967.

More than 50,000 kms of testing took place. VW were starting from a position of strength with the Country Buggy. The Beetle was in its own right a highly competitive off-road vehicle. As we talk about in another article on this site, the Beach Buggy is also VW based and is perhaps to this day one of the most competent vehicles on sand, including many four wheel drives.

The Beetle also notched up significant success in tough trials winning a Redex around Australia Trial, three Mobilgas Trials and an Ampol Trial, and took out most of the top places. This was at a time when Australia's Highway Number One was not much more than a goat track with more than 100 river crossings.

So, for a farm-based runabout, the Country Buggy had superb DNA.

It's heritage probably stems to some extent from the Volkswagen Kubelwagen, a military-style Beetle used by both the Wehrmacht and the SS.

The Australian vehicle was smaller, but the lines are similar.

The Country Buggy was powered by VW's proven 1285cc (1300) `flat' four cylinder, air cooled engine, although a 1192 cc (1200) was an option.

Luxury is wasn't. Options included the smaller engine, a soft top, and side curtains and winter tread tyres. There was no standard or optional heater, no doubt discarded as most were expected to be open sided. The first commercial buggy made its public appearance at the 1967 Melbourne Motor Show. The price of the basic Country Buggy was $1598, but with all options it blew out to a massive $1708.

Unfortunately, the Country Buggy's release coincided with hard times for Volkswagen Australia as a manufacturer.

It was on the market for just eight months before the project was pulled.

VW sales were on the decline and there was a push by Japanese makers introducing small, conventional cars to Australian shores.

History shows us 1967 was the year Toyota's Corolla hit the market.

So this ugly duckling had a brief, but interesting, life span in Australian motoring history.

We found these examples of the Aussie Buggy at a recent Gold Coast VW display.