Beach Buggy J&S Kalita

“third incarnation of the same basic buggy only this time with a LWB and square headlights. I recall seeing that buggy parked outside the Parramatta Rd Workshop back in the mid 80s.
The thing I recall most about it was the rear mounted gas tank. Here is another Kalita AKA a Playmate I think it was made in central Qld”

“the KARLITA was the second design to come out of the J&S (Jeff Simmons) factory in the 70s. Initially only in SWB form, then the moulds were sold off to a qld company who engthened the car to go on a lwb pan... and probably did that evil light stuff too.”

“But it is for its beach buggy that J & S is best remembered. Beach buggies are open fibreglass bodies sitting on shortened VW Beetle chassis, as pioneered by Bruce Meyers in the US with his famous Manx buggy. A number of local companies made copies of the Manx, in varying levels of quality, but not J & S. They designed their own. In the late ’60s the firm made its first beach buggy design with a new model dubbed the Fun Buggy. It became one of the most successful cars of its kind in Australia. Owing not a single line of its body to the Meyers Manx model that sparked off the whole buggy rage, the Fun Buggy belonged to the same school with simple, functional and pleasantly attractive lines. It had the usual door-less buggy entry and exit problem of course, especially with a soft-top or hardtop aboard, but it must have had something going for it. Fun Buggy sales passed the 190 mark before most States outlawed shortened VW chassis in the early 1970s, effectively killing off the buggy market. A few years before the registration restrictions came into force J & S introduced another version which was probably one of the best looking, and certainly one of the best designed buggies ever. Known as the Trail Buggy, the car used the same VW running gear and shortened chassis that had become the standard specification for virtually all street buggies. The Trail Buggy’s body, however, was anything but standard. With swoopy guards, deep windscreen, integral roll-over bar, soft ‘Targa’ top and no doors, the body style was a cross between buggy and sports car. The Trail Buggy differed from usual buggy practice in a few other ways, too. The shortened chassis was reinforced by the V-braced roll bar and by a large tube running the length of each side from front to rear. Apart from precluding any possibility of the shortened chassis being structurally suspect, the reinforcement in fact improved side impact protection. Unlike ordinary buggies, the Trail model didn’t retain the Volkswagen front-mounted fuel tank but instead relocated the tank on the passenger’s side of the chassis, next to and above the forward-facing transaxle. While optimising tank protection in event of a bingle, the revised location meant that instead of a full-width rear bench, the Trail Buggy’s cockpit had a bulge on the nearside (covering the tank) and only oneand-a-half-seater space behind the driver’s bucket; enough for two kids or perhaps a supple adult, or some luggage. J & S sold almost 40 Trail Buggy body kits before the registration problems closed in. Another firm took over the moulds with a view to re-introducing the Trail model but it too found the registration requirements too tough, as did yet another hopeful who pirated the body (took moulds from a J & S body) and modified it slightly with the aim of producing it under a different name. The demise of the Trail Buggy marked the virtual end of J & S’s long-held interest in the specialist car field. However the J & S name continues on in other fibreglassrelated fields, especially boat-building and nautical hardware.”