It pretty much never rains here at the bottom of the Baja peninsula, so we decided to get something without doors, windows, or even a real roof — as it turns out, there have been a number of freak rainstorms, leaving us sitting on piles of towels to minimize wet-ass, but it's worth it.

El Buggi is your standard short-wheelbase VW Beetle-based Manx-style dunebuggy, and was built from scratch (with a body splashed off a friend's buggy) here in La Paz, Mexico. It's very zippy, handles and drives great, although some of the rattling can be a little disconcerting — you're never quite sure if it's going to rip itself to shreds on some dangerous mountain road.