What a year!
A lot of Bugeyes have passed through our building this year, and it has been a wonderful ride for us. We are inching up on 300 Bugeyes sold, with two more sold this week. Thank you Bud in California (“Denim”) and Charles in New Jersey (“Kelly”) for propelling us toward the 300 car milestone (now 285)! Here’s our latest custom production, just coming out of the paint booth. We’ll be building this one up in the Fall.
Who would have thought we could build a thriving business based upon what was designed as a cheap sportscar that was never imagined to last 60+ years… through pandemics, fires and floods, no less!
And I continue to marvel at the fact that Bugeyes were made for just three years… and that 1960 was the last time anyone could purchase a new one. And yet the market is stronger than ever, with record numbers being realized for Bugeyes at auction in recent months.
This has been a big year for Bugeye Sprites.
Weather disruptions this month reminded me it hasn’t always been easy… a microburst/tornado passed through our area this week, knocked out power for the entire town of Branford and made a big mess of everything. Here you can see a few pictures from my route between the shop and our home. The last photo shows our backyard, after three large trees came down from three different directions, and wiped out many of our bushes and smaller trees. It took three guys all day today to cut and chip all the limbs that came down in our small yard.
In spite of the fact that this is our second multi-day power outage this month, we push onward, and hope these weather events are just temporary. Fortunately, the shop escaped damage.
More challenging is the daily innovation required given limited parts supply due to pandemic supply chain disruption and a slowly descending quality standard for aftermarket parts. It seems like everything we take out of the box these days needs some fabrication to make it fit or work properly, and this has become somewhat routine, particularly as we try to push the envelope on quality and reliability.
Alas, we’ll be back next week, when the power is back on, the gas generators go quiet, and we continue our march to 300 and beyond!
Thank you for your ongoing support!
