The Dune Buggy Is Back

Jun 06, 2023

While I would love to roll into a Walmart in the Can-Am X3, I'm in Baja, Mexico, doing 87 mph in a vehicle with no windshield.

On specs alone, the new Can-Am Maverick X3 X RS is a car: a turbocharged and intercooled 154-hp engine, zero to 60 in less than five seconds, a base price of $26,699. The 102-inch wheelbase is the same as a Chevy Bolt's. And it's six feet wide—slightly broader than a BMW 3 Series. The only thing un-car-like about it is the suspension travel, which tops out at 24 inches, about twice what you get on a 2016 Ford Raptor. That's the spec that defines how much permission you have to try to catch air off a sand dune.

Over the years, ATVs have mutated from four-wheeled dirt bikes into increasingly outrageous utility task vehicles (UTVs, a.k.a. side-by-sides), machines that are closer to a modern pickup than the single-cylinder Kawasaki Mojave I grew up riding. Laws are changing to reflect this evolution, with at least 20 states allowing you to drive them on the street. In Utah, for example, you can drive a properly equipped UTV—horn, turn signals, and rearview mirror—on any two-lane road outside Salt Lake County.

And while I would love to roll into a suburban Walmart in the X3, I'm in Baja, Mexico, doing 87 mph in a vehicle with no windshield on a surface with no pavement.

That's when the electronic limiter steps in, compensating for my heavy foot. Just as well. The lack of contrast out in the desert can obscure obstacles that you don't want to hit at 80-plus—cows, boulders, gullies six feet deep. One moment you're trying to blink the sand out of your eyes, the next you're dropping into a river bed at highway speeds and bracing for impact.

It's dangerous out here. At one point, I stop to let the dust clear and find myself at a small memorial for Kurt Caselli, a motorcycle racer. He died three years ago when he hit some kind of large animal during the Baja 1000. I'm suddenly thankful for the optional anti-­intrusion bars bolted across the windshield area of my X3. They're designed to protect you from that particular brand of off-road peril.

I thought my group's plan to reach Mike's Sky Ranch, an off-the-grid hotel where they kill the generator a half hour after last call, before sunset was mildly insane. Ten of these machines, driven by a bunch of testosterone-crazed lunatics, were setting out to cover 250 miles at high speed across a moonscape of razor-edged rocks, deep silt, and blind hills. The first day, on a flat, empty beach that would've been crowded by mansions were it a couple hundred miles north, two of our posse flipped their X3s. (Lesson: When you want to spin a donut, put it in two-wheel drive so that you don't have too much grip.) But the vehicles and drivers were unscathed. We heaved the vehicles right-side up and kept going.

Despite the worries of my passenger, who happened to be the traveling mechanic, the beach mishaps ended up being the worst that happened. "I normally have an 18-wheeler full of spare parts," he said. "Out here, if we break, we're walking." At one point, lacking a jack, we changed a flat by lifting the corner of the X3 off the ground. Other than a smattering of tire swaps and two broken drivebelts, the vehicles survived two long days of severe abuse. Nobody ended up walking.

The belt breakage was inevitable. The X3's CVT transmission was developed for the low-traction, low-­ambient-temperature world of snowmobiles, not for four-wheel-drive turbo desert buggies. There's just too much power, too much traction, too much weight, and too much heat. Yes, it's an easy part to replace out on the trail, but the mechanic had hoped it wouldn't be a problem. Yamaha, by contrast, has both manual and paddle-shift gearboxes in its X3 competitor, the YXZ (see below), further obscuring the delineation between UTV and civilian automobile.

A few years ago, I drove a lap in the Mint 400 desert race behind the wheel of a 200-hp custom buggy. My co-driver that day, an experienced racer, derisively referred to the side-by-sides as golf carts. As in, "Hurry up and pass this golf cart. We're losing time." Now? A Maverick X3 X RS, floating on its daddy-longlegs suspension and riding a wave of turbo torque, is decisively quicker point-to-point than that Mint race buggy. Which means that, strangely, these $20,000 playthings are a good value. That would be a lot of money for a golf cart, but it's a pretty sweet deal for a race car that you could drive to Walmart.

*This story originally appeared in the December 2016/January 2017 issue of Popular Mechanics.

Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He's now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.

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