This $1,500 Homebuilt Volkswagen Beetle Hot Rod Says You Don’t Have To Be Rich To Go Fast

In the current automotive marketplace speed is a very expensive commodity. The average 0-to-60 time of the vehicle lineup available to new car consumers in 2025 is lower than ever, and even hyper-efficient economy cars seem to be capable of running the quarter-mile in 15 seconds or so. The problem with new cars is that they’re hilariously expensive. If you want to go fast but don’t have any money, you have to have a reserve of scrappiness, skill, and ingenuity. It seems that Derek Penner, the builder of this turbocharged Miata-powered tube-frame Beetle, has all of those in spades, because he just won Grassroots Motorsports’ $2,000 Challenge with it. 

Penner was inspired to build this monster over a decade ago when he saw a Miata-based Exocet skeleton car and was impressed by the car’s light weight and capability. “Now, I don’t like the way those look–like sharks jumping out of the water to me–but I knew I wanted the weight and the trackability of those cars,” he explained to GRM. “I also really like rat rods–I love patina–and nobody was doing a fat-tired car on all four corners back then. So, I wanted to mix those two ideas. I wanted to make a rat rod that could turn instead of just going straight.”

Derek started with a wrecked Miata, his own, which donated the suspension and steering. The Beetle shell came up for sale locally to Derek and he bought it for just $100. Between cheap parts, fabrication, and scrounging, Derek had a running and driving car for just a few hundred dollars. The real expense of this car came when he wanted to go faster and a friend offered his turbo Miata engine, including everything to make it run, for just $800. 

If you aren’t familiar with the Grassroots Motorsports $2,000 Challenge Presented By Tire Rack and Powered By AutoBidMaster, you’re missing out. With an all-in build budget of just $2,000 hot rodders from around the country travel to Florida every year to prove they have what it takes to win. There are three separate challenges to the, er, Challenge. Quarter-mile drag, autocross, and concours points determine your finishing final order. By winning the Autocross with this ultra-lightweight Beetle and fat Hoosier slicks, coming second in the quarter mile bit with a 13.3-second run, and placing second in the concours (largely for the ingenuity of the incredible matching center-pivot trailer and the gorgeous hand-assembled mahogany trim), this little home-built machine won while running over $500 under budget!

Events like this prove that car enthusiasm doesn’t have to be exclusively for or by multi-millionaires. If you take the time to learn a few fabrication and welding skills and scrape the Craigslist barrel for some cheap stuff, you can have a car that wins trophies and races well. Don’t say you can’t afford it, get out there and bust your ass for the scene. You’ll have fun doing it.