Alan Fine and his passenger, Tanner Maas, 9, prepare to take a test drive in a dune buggy March 8. The buggy is on display at Fine’s Coldwater shop.

Coldwater ? Andrea Girk settled into the driver’s seat of her new purple dune buggy, snapped the removable steering wheel into place and called herself a happy woman.

A scrub tech at Western Plains Regional Medical Center in Dodge City and May 2008 graduate of Hutchinson Community College, Girk is on her second buggy.

She spotted the 3.8 liter, super-charged GM V-6 model parked in the front of dune buggy builder Alan Fine’s Coldwater shop and had to have it.

“I like it a lot,” Girk said. “It’s the season, but I’ll buy the insurance before I take it out.”

In the meantime, she was just keeping the seat warm, she said.

Longtime attraction

Fine said he can pretty much guarantee he’ll have visitors — locals or folks traveling through town on U.S. 183 — whenever he opens the doors to his shop.

That said, he stepped outside to greet the Jeff Ragoscake family who piled out of a pickup to check out his newest machine with its bright-yellow roll bars.

As they admired the custom paint job featuring a checkered flag with flames, Fine offered a passenger test ride. Tanner Maas, 9, of Lakin, jumped at the chance before his mother, Sheila Maas, could say no.

The duo crawled into the machine and fastened their seat belts. Fine revved the 305-horsepower motor, slammed it into gear and they took off, spitting gravel along the lane that runs beside the shop.

The front wheels lifted high into the air and they headed toward the end of the test strip lane.

At the far end, Fine U-turned, moved through the dust cloud he’d just made and held a wheelie all the way back to the shop.

‘Like a roller coaster’

His buggies generally hit 60 mph, but he’s seen some top 100 mph. That makes it a big-boy toy and not for the timid of heart.

“When I give rides to people who’ve never ridden in one, they can’t believe it,” he said. “It’s about like a roller coaster. It gets your adrenaline going.”

Fine started building dune buggies four years ago after he spotted an old one buried in the weeds at an abandoned farmstead and bought it. He makes them two at a time, one for himself and one for his wife, Ralene, using parts he buys and fabricates. They keep each buggy and ride it until it sells. The yellow one on display is the sixth he’s built.

People don’t realize the money that goes into building a dune buggy, and he’s not making much on the ones he sells, Fine said.

If he figured in his time, he might be losing money. A top performance engine can cost upward of $15,000, and he’s asking $20,000 for the yellow buggy.

Safety concerns

Back in the shop, Fine’s son, Josh, 12, knows he’s too young to drive a dune buggy. In the meantime, he’s hoping for a four-wheeler that he’s probably not going to get.

His dad agreed.

They’ve seen some pretty bad wrecks involving ATV riders and motorcyclists airlifted to hospitals from the Little Sahara Sand Dunes in Waynoka, Okla., where they ride dune buggies.

As a testament to the safety of the buggies, he’s seen wrecks that flipped the vehicle hard and the driver wound up bruised but seldom are drivers hurt badly enough to go to the hospital, Fine said.

Dune-buggy season at the Little Sahara opens the first Sunday after Easter. That means the Fines will watch a lineup of weekend drivers pulling trailers filled with dune buggies, four-wheelers and motorcycles from central Kansas on the road past their place. He’s not sure he wants to ride his yellow machine there and take a chance on it getting hit.

As promised, Girk returned the next day with insurance in hand, loaded up her new purchase and hauled it to her garage, awaiting a break in the weather so she can “go play.”

With 280 horsepower and weighing in at 1,600 pounds, it’s a “pretty good” balance, and even if she’s running on some pretty soft sand she’ll be able to stay on top instead of digging in and sinking, Fine said.

In the break between building dune buggies, Fine gathers material and writes down ideas for the next one — things he can do to make it look or perform better.

Because he puts in so much time in the planning, it’s hard to sell what he creates. But at the same time, he likes the challenge of making each one different. The designs evolve from trial and error.

“It’s a lot of fun,” he said.