Badsey Bullet

The Badsey Bullet

Wild Bill Badsey’s original Prototype is now available

Original Brochures

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The Badsey Bullet was first created in the early 1980's by Bill Badsey in California. (USA). The Production Bullet was powered by a Yamaha Venture 1200cc water-cooled V4. motorcycle engine that gave a top speed of 150 mph and a 0-60 time of under 5 seconds. This one is Bill’s actual prototype and is powered by an 82 Suzuki GS 1100 GLZ. Power was provided to the rear wheel by means of a shaft drive and the vehicle also featured inboard coil spring dampers. The body of the Badsey Bullet was made from fiberglass and was unique in that the vehicle had separate cockpits for the passenger and the driver with the engine sitting in between them. Only 8 vehicles have known to be sold in the USA and South Africa.

As you will see below, there are two stick shift in the car, giving it 20 forward gears and 5 reverse gears. The one towards the center is a 4 speed auto trans with reverse and the stick closest to the driver is a 5 speed for the motorcycle engine so you have 4 sets of 5 gears in forward. I am not sure if this is the case in the production vehicles but this was the prototype so it may be special. I believe that this vehicle is more powerful and faster all around that the limited production models that made it into the market.

You can read more about Bill Badsey at http://www.badsey.com/old/bill_badsey.html
He was an amazing inventor and designer who lost the battle to ALS in 2001. This is the reason I have decided to donate a portion of the sale of this vehicle in his name to The ALS foundation Orange County branch which supported him in his time of need.

My wife and I were passed this vehicle as we took care of Bill in his final days. We have had our fun with it and are ready to pass it along again. This is an amazing vehicle and it belongs in a museum for the world to admire.

When driving it, you feel like you are in a fish bowl with everyone looking at you.

This was Wild Bill’s intent!

It is an amazing vehicle with allot of history. I have pictures of Mario Adretti getting out of it after driving it on the race track at Indianapolis.

I have all the original sales brochures for the vehicles as well as many original photos of the manufacturing of the prototype and the few production models that were made. Unfortunately the project was scrapped before production was implemented so there are only a few of these cars in the world and this is the original prototype built by the inventor himself.