Libre Special: The Libre Special is the freestyle/beginners buggy in the Libre range. Smaller and more portable than its more widely used siblings the Special is ideal for starting out in Buggying. The whole thing fits in the boot of a small hatchback with only a couple of bolts removed, and all the parts are interchangable with the bigger race buggies should you want to upgrade it.

Agile yes, stable - well once you hit 40mph and are on two wheels you might think a bigger buggy is a good idea (I did - Barney) but for fun this is a great buggy. Stronger than pretty much everything else out there in its class the Special is a good allround buggy.

Libre V-Max: Only just got this, so comments are limited: Its heavy- I mean really, really heavy, compared to the flexi’s. All powder coated mild steel construction. The back axle is huge, the side rails are huge, the front fork assembly is huge. And did I mention it’s heavy? The seat is better than the ones in my house. You even get a little platform bit at the back to strap on all of your other kites – goodbye soggy rucksack. These babies are built for comfort and speed but I suspect cost of ownership may end up higher than for a flexi (mainly due to steel construction and the ability to upgrade pretty much all the bits). It takes a bit more effort to get going (20kg v’s about 7kg for a flexi), but once underway its incredibly stable and exceptionally
resistant to sideslip. C/g is almost perfect - you can just scream into
turns and know that it will skid predictably, not something I would recommend on a flexi.

Set up for my height there is still a suspiciously large amount of distance left to extend the fork assembly – you’d probably need to be about 8’ to have this all the way out. There are huge padded bits on all of the frame just to give you that extra feeling of invincibility – personally I think you’d have to be either incredibly unlucky or a world class contortionist to ever hits some of them, but it’s certainly reassuring. The only problem I’ve had so far is that the stability and high rails encourage you to loft bigger and bigger kites, and that’s how you end up flipping the whole thing! Do not over tighten the foot straps on one of these- if it flips and hits you whilst your foot is still trapped you will know about it, and so will the local A&E. (I really thought I’d broken my leg when I did this). And another thing – if you own one of these AND a smaller buggy, make damn sure you remember which one you are in. I left a few square inches of skin at St Andrews recently as I piled into a turn way too fast on my flexi [insert cartwheel].

If you take the wheels off it fits easily in the back of a Volvo estate (with room to spare) without folding down anything – where’s me flat cap... I have noticed that the huge nuts on the inside of the wheels can loosen off a bit, so taking them off after each day out might be a good thing. Having to carry about the huge spanner (it’s about 40mm!) to tighten them is not something to recommend. Just for the record, the back axle bolts on with 4 x M8 25mm (13mm hex heads) stainless bolts with 21mm washers. You only need to know this if you manage to lose them :-(

Comfort, speed, predictability- need I say more?