Fifty-two years after Steve McQueen raced the original Baja Boot in the gruelling Baja 1000, the new version of the Baja Boot will return to the event for 2019. Race car and supercar manufacturers SCG (Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus) have confirmed that it will make five of the modern day Baja Boot during 2019, and enter at least two of them into the famous off-road race along the coast of Mexico. The company has now submitted full engineering studies for type approval for road use in the USA and UK, and formalised agreements with manufacturers for the major components needed–that’s a 5-litre V8, automatic transmission, switchable two- and four-wheel-drive, suspension that gives a full 20in of travel, and heating and air-con systems. It will be available in three- and five-seater versions, with a central driving position. The two-door Boot is expected to start at $250,000, while a four-door will be $275,000.
When SCG first revealed the plans for the SCG Boot in 2018, it challenged other manufacturers to take part in an ambitious drive west from New York to Paris, saying, “We would like to extend a formal invitation to Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bentley, Land Rover, Volvo, Jaguar, Ford, GM, Dodge, Audi, Porsche, Alfa, Maserati, Jeep, Mercedes and any and all other manufacturers of SUVs to join us with their offerings, driving West from NY, amphibiously across the Bering Sea, down the Road of Bones, across the Trans Siberian Highway through Beijing, Moscow, St Petersburg and then on to Paris for a nice dinner on us.” The company also plans a world altitude driving record up the Ojos del Salado volcano in Chile with the Expedition version of the SCG Boot.
Car collector Jim Glickenhaus is behind this, and has already proven SCG’s ability to do actually what it says it will do with its race cars, which have finished first in class in the Nürburgring 24 Hours in 2012, 2015, 2017 and 2018. He says that in 2019 SCG will build five examples of the 003S and three of the 004, two of which will be roadgoing, the other a GT3 to race in the 2020 Nürburgring 24 Hours. It will also build a prototype 007, the race car intended to compete in the new-for-2020 24 Hours of Le Mans hypercar class. In 2020 the plan is for 20 Boots, 25 004S models, 12 of the 003S and two of the 007, as well as making the Boot, 004S and 006 fully road legal worldwide.
As for the original Baja Boot, the story began in the GM skunkworks department during the mid-1960s, spearheaded by off-road guru and inventor Vic Hickey, before GM management banned it due to GM’s no-racing policy. The prototype was quickly moved to the workshops of performance parts specialist Hurst and finished in time for the inaugural 1967 Baja 1000, an off-road race 1000-miles along the coast of Mexico. It was powered by a Chevy V8 placed directly behind the driver, driving through a GM 400 Hydramatic transmission and using Corvette differentials with Positraction, a Dana 18 transfer case, close-ratio power steering and torsion bar suspension. It used huge Goodyear Baja Special tires, 36 inches in diameter, and disc brakes all round. Most off-road dune racers of the time used the VW Beetle as a base, so the Baja Boot was a huge step forward. Two were made: one is in the Louwman Museum and Jim Glickenhaus bought the other in 2010…
Images and renderings courtesy of SCG
