20 Funniest Classic Beach Cars

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 Funniest Classic Beach Cars

#1. Fiat 500 Jolly (1957)

On paper, Ghia's mission sounded impossible. It planned to transform the Fiat 500, one of the cheapest vehicles in Italy, into a luxury car and sell it to some of the world's wealthiest motorists. It is the funniest beach car

Fiat 500 Jolly (1957)

It achieved this goal by chopping off the 500's top, removing its doors, and adding a canvas roof shaped like a beach umbrella. Wicker seats were part of the package too. The end result was an economy car that socialists were more than happy to be seen in, especially because it fitted neatly on a yacht.

while the 500 Jolly wasn't the first beach car (called Spiaggia in Italian), it had a lasting influence on the segment and it's one of the best-known models. Ghia also made a jolly version of the bigger 600.

#2. Renault 4CV Jolly (1960)

Few realize the Renault 4cv also received the jolly treatment, complete with an umbrella-like top and wicker seats.it is the luxury funniest beach car.

Auction house RM Sotheby's notes 50 units of the 4 CV Jolly were built by Ghia in the early 1960s, and only about 20 are known to remain. Many were sold on the American Market.

The standard 4CV was bigger and correspondingly more spacious than the Fiat 600, which might explain why it ended up jolly-field, but what's odd is that the conversion came extremely late in the car's production cycle.

#3. Meyers Manx (1964)

Meyers Manx (1964)

One of the best-known beach cars is also one of the few successfully sold in the United States. It is the super funniest brach car.

Artist and boat builder Bruce Meyers (1926-2021) built the first Manx in 1964 as a dune racer using Volkswagen parts, including a Beetle-sourced air-cooled flat-four. It was successful in off-road racing and immensely popular in sunny parts of the country, like California and Florida.

On a secondary level, The Manx spawned hundreds of imitation models built in America and abroad with varying degrees of authenticity.

#4. Mini Moke (1964)

Mini Moke (1964)

Sir Alec Issigonis (1906-1988) originally designed the Mini-based Moke for the British Army. It is the superb funniest beach car.

It wasn't capable enough to serve in the armed forces, and its ground clearance was notably too low, so Issigonis recycled his idea into a leisure vehicle positioned at the intersection of the city cars and beach buggies.

Small, simple, and fun to drive, the Moke was an instant hit in the planet's warm regions. It benefited from many of the updates made to the standard Mini over the years, and it retired in 1993.

#5. Daf Kini (1966)

Daf Kini (1966)

Most Beach cars were tailor-made for the mild Mediterranean climate. One notable exception to this rule was the one-off _a kind DAF Alessio, an open-top four-seater with a futuristic design penned by Michelotti and underpinnings sourced from the 33 (including a flat twin engine and a continuously variable transmission).

Unveiled in 1966, it was given to the Dutch Royal family after Prince Willem Alexander was born in 1967 and renamed Kini.

Instead of exploring the North's sea's cost, the royal family shipped the Kini to Porto Ercole, a town on Italy's Tuscan coast, where it spent many holidays.

#6. Fiat Shellette (1968)

Fiat Shellete (1968)

Italian coachbuilder Michelotti positioned the Shellette on the same branch of the Fiat family tree as Ghia's jolly badges variants of the 500 and the 600.

It joined forces with Yatch designer Phillip Schell to create an 850_based beach car that offered a more contemporary exterior design, space for four passengers surrounded by a copious amount of wicker, and proven mechanical bits.

Most historians agree that approximately 80 units of the shellette were built from the late 1960s to the early 1970s.

#7. Renault 4 plein Air (1968)

Renault 4 plein Air (1968)

Renault unveiled the 4 plein Air exactly a day before Citroen presented the Mehari. On paper, these two open-top beach cars were direct rivals.

Renaults were based on the 4 like the name clearly implied, but it wore a specific body with no doors and a folding soft top. Citroen's was an evolution of the 2CV with a model-specific body. One formula worked: the other flopped.

Most historians believe fewer than 600 units of the 4 Plein Air were built between 1968 and 1970. In hindsight, it was too expensive (it cost about 15% more than the Mehari) and too similar to the 4 it was based on.

#8. Citroen Mehari (1968)

citroen Mehari (1968)

Most beach cars were obscure and built in strictly limited numbers; the Citroen Mehari is one of the few that broke into the mainstream.

Released in 1968, it was essentially a 2CV frame topped with plastic body panels attached to a tubular metal structure.

It's associated with coastal regions in 2021, and it's often seen parked next to Mrecedes-Benz and Porsche SUVs in front of posh restaurants, but it wasn't created for the sea or for the rich. It was initially developed as a do it _all workhorse, which partially explains why thousands of units enlisted in the French army during the model's long production run.

The final Citroen Mehari left the factory in 1987; around 145,000 were built.

#9. Volkswagen Thing (1968)

Volkswagen Thing (1968)

Known as the Type 181 internally, Volkswagen's Beetle-derived Thing wasn't initially designed for California beaches.

It was created to temporarily replace the DKW Munga in the West German Army and released internationally almost as an afterthought.

America was one of its largest markets until safety regulations ended its career in 1975, but production was discontinued in Mexico Until 1980.

#10. Renault Rodeo 4 (1970)

Renault Rodeo 4 1970

Like the Mehari, the Rodeo wasn't developed by the car maker whose emblem it wore.

It was designed by a French firm called Ateliers de Construction du Livradois (ACL) which was inspired by Mehari's success and believed it could do better by starting with Renault's underpinnings.

Launched in 1970, the original Rodeo used a frame from a 4 van (later called F4, when a long _wheelbase model joined the range) and an 845cc four-cylinder engine borrowed from the 6. Plastic body panels kept rust at bay.

#11. Moretti Midimaxi 127 (1971)

Moretti Midimaxi 127 (1971)

Moretti steered clear of the beach car segment in the 1960s, partly because it preferred making coupes and convertibles designed with a clear focus on performance.

It backpedaled and briefly experimented with a Flat 500_based model named Minimaxi before turning the 127 into the  MidiMaxi.

Introduced in 1971, the model was closer in form and spirit to the Renault Rodeo than to Ghia's well-known Fiat 500 Jolly in the sense that it was equally at home on the beach and in the countryside.

The Midimaxi received many of the same visual and mechanical updates as the standard 127 during its production run, including different front-end designs.

#12. Reanult Rodeo 6 (1972)

Reanault Rodeo 6 (1972)

ACL (which changed its name to Telihol in 1978) originally designed the Rode 6 for the French army. Its new look design hid a frame and a 1.1_litre four-cylinder engine provided by the Renault 6.

It was marketed as a slightly bigger and more powerful alternative to the Rodeo 4 throughout the 1970s, and the 1979 update brought rectangular headlights from the 14 and a 1.3_litre 'four from the 5 GTL.

#13. Moretti Minimaxi 126 (1973)

Moretti Minimaxi 126 (1973)

Moretti's first beach car, the Fiat 500_based Minimaxi, is little more than a footnote in the segment's history. With the 126 on the horizon, the coachbuilder saw an opportunity to make up for lost time by using Fiat's newest city car as a foundation.

It redesigned the front end by replacing the round lights with square units and it powered the Minimaxi with the 126's flat_twin engine.

Users could remove the top, unhinge the doors, and fold down the windshield . In hindsight, however, the Minimaxi was overshadowed by the Midimaxi (two slides earlier). Only a few hundred units were built between 1973 to 1980.

#14.Citroen Mehari 4x4 (1979)

Citroen Mehari 4x4 (1979)

Citroen released a four-wheel drive variant of the Mahari in 1979 to counter the Sinpar-converted version of the Renault Rodeo.

Unlike the 2CV Sahara, which used a pair of flat twin engines, the Mehari 4x4 received a transfer case and a rear axle. It was reasonably capable but users complained it was underpowered and it lacked rigidity in off-road driving conditions.

It cost about twice as much as a front-wheel drive Mehari and its shockingly high price ended its career _1213 units were built until 1983.

#15. Renault Rodeo 5 (1981)

Reanault Rodeo 5 (1981)

The final evolution of Renault's entry into the Beach car segment arrived in 1981 with more compact dimensions, an updated exterior design, and an innovative tubular structure.

Still based on the 4, and still developed by Teilhol, it was powered by a 1.1-liter four-cylinder engine that made it reasonably usable on longer trips. The final Rodeo replaced the aforementioned Rodeo 4 and Rodeo 6 models in the Renault range.

It should have cast a shadow on Mehari's career, it was a better car overall, but it remained little more than a rounding error on Renault's annual sales chart.

Production ended in 1986.

#16. Renault jp4 (1981)

Renault jp4 (1981)

Many found Renaut's inability to capture a significant slice of the beach car market puzzling. Broadly speaking, they assumed the company had the right ingredients, but it was following the wrong recipe.

Brittany-based Car Systeme threw its hat into the ring when it presented the Renault 4_based jp4nin 1981. It chopped nearly eight inches from a donor car's chassis, cut off the top, and removed the doors to create a jeeplike soft roader(hence the name), developed purely for leisure.

The end result was far less utilitarian than the Rodeo, and the jp4 received a warm welcome, yet the car Systeme filed for bankruptcy several times during the 80's before landing a supply deal with Renault and homologating the model in several European markets.

#17. Teilhol Tangara (1987)

Teilhol Tangara (1987)

Citroen and Renault both exited the beach car segment n the second half of the 1980s. Teilhol firmly believed it was too early to write the body style's obituary, and its survival heavily depended on the contract to build the Rodeo, so it teamed up with Citroen to make a replacement for the Mehari.

First shown in 1987, the Tangara was built on a 2CV frame and initially fitted with an air-cooled flat twin, though a 1.1_litre 'four' sourced from the AX powered a handful of later Models.

Teilhol filed for bankruptcy in 1990 after building around 1100 of the two_cylinder_powered Tangara and fewer than 70 with an AX engine. When it closed, it was ramping up production of a more modern, AX-based model called Theva that could have kept the segment alive through the90ss. It is generally thought that fewer than 100 examples of the Theva were manufactured.

#18. Renault Super 5 Belle lle (1989)

Renault Super 5 Belle lle (1989)

Car Systeme designed the Super 5 belle lle as a replacement for the jp4 and as a way to fill the void left by the Rodeo in the Renault Range.

Starting with a Super 5, it replaced the rear part of the roof with a soft top and added a plastic roof panel above the front passengers. The Belle lle couldn't go completely topless, and the B_Pillars were not removable, but this layout made it relatively easy to build.

Renault gave the project its blessing but Car Systeme collapsed before it began manufacturing the Belle lle, In an odd twist of fate, French coachbuilder Gruau purchased the firm, its tools and its intellectual property, and began filling belle lle orders. Fewer than 700 units were delivered before someone at Gruau sounded the alarm: the Belle lle wasn't profitable. The car was cancelled without a successor in 1991.

#19. Renault Twingo De Plage (1990s)

Renault Twingo De Plage (1990s)

Coachbuilders created the beach car segment and later passed the baton to car manufacturers. As major firms left the segment one at a time, Vernagallo believed the task of keeping it alive fell back to coachbuilders.

It started with the original Renault Twingo and substantially modified the upper part of the car to turn it into a buggy_  machine with a soft top and no doors. It reinforced the body and offered buyers a custom-designed interior with marine-grade upholstery as an option.

#20. Citroen C3 Pluriel (2023)

Citroen c3 pluriel (2023)

One of the last Beach cars made by major car company is the Citroen C3 Pluriel.

Built from 2023 to 2010, it arrived as an extremely modular evolution of the C3 that could be configured with a closed cabin, with an open roof, or wit no roof; folding down the rear bench even turned it into a pick-up.

While specific details are lost to history, at least a handful of Twingo DE Plage models were built during the 90s.

#21. The Beach Car in the 21st Century

Regulations and a drop in demand joined to banish the beach car to the pantheon of automotive history in the 1990s.

Fast forward to 2023, and there's nothing resembling a Renault Rodeo or a Mini Moke available new from a major car manufacturer.