Dowbrigade

Here’s
something else the Dowbrigade has always had a hankering to try…

It’s called swamp buggy racing, a fuel-powered homage to the days when
hunters prepared for the start of the fall season by showing off their
latest buggies, motorized contraptions with balloon tires and elevated
suspensions built to maneuver into the most remote recesses of the
Everglades.

Seventy years later, southwest Florida hunters continue to explore
what remains of the once-endless River of Grass with swamp buggies.
Since 1949,
those pioneers and their descendants — along with a few northern interlopers
— have carried on the tradition with state-of-the-art racing buggies that
can cost more than $60,000.

"The motors in some of these buggies cost as much as a Mercedes-Benz," said
Darryl Massey, 42, a former racer who plots his comeback in a machine shop
behind his home each night after work. Racers in seven classes, from four-cylinder
jeeps to modified high-performance monsters with 1,000-horsepower engines
and names such as "High-Tech Redneck," encircle a bog known as
the Mile of Mud, leaving behind 30-foot wakes of white foam as thick as
smoke. Top performers can exceed 90 miles per hour.

from the Boston Globe