Revved Up For Action.

"Speed Buggy" seemed to be a favorite of network programming chief Fred Silverman...although no new episodes were added to the 16 episodes produced for its first season run in the rerun cycle.

"Speed Buggy" premiered on CBS when Silverman was the programming chief there. Silverman's favorite animation studios to supply the cartoon shows for his network were Hanna-Barbera and Filmation.
When Silverman moved to ABC to be their programming chief in the late 1970s, "Speed Buggy" was added to the ABC Saturday schedule.
When Silverman moved to NBC to be programming chief around 1979, "Speed Buggy" was added to the NBC Saturday AM schedule.
When CBS picked up "Speed Buggy" in 1982...Silverman didn't work there. By then, Silverman started his own production company, Intermedia...and co-developed and produced with Marvel Productions, the CBS cartoon shows "Meatballs and Spaghetti" and "Pandamonium" for the 1983-1984 schedule. Silverman's company would also produce the 1980s-era Perry Mason tv films and the tv series "Matlock" and "Jake and the Fat Man".

Michael Bell's first cartoon voice role as Mark. Mark was supposed to be American Indian but his race was never mentioned in the stories.

The stories usually followed a formula...Tinker, Mark, Debbie, and Speed Buggy would participate in a race in a foreign locale...along with a villain or villains bent on world conquest. Speed Buggy and gang would usually get captured by the bad guy(s) and the Speedy team would fail in their first attempt to escape. The Speedy team would be successful in their second attempt to escape...and then defeating the villains and winning the race at the end.

Speed Buggy was always cool to me. Speed Buggy in my youth was usually found in the weekend morning slots. Sometimes in the wee hours of the night (circa 4-6 AM). That being said when CN later ditched a lot more HB programming in the 98-04 period, Speed Buggy was one of the ones i still got to see a bit during the Boomerang in the morning block (i've never gotten Boomerang as it's own channel so my only experience with it were the times it was on CN itself) I recall Speed Buggy with plenty of memories. A bunch of the episodes stayed in my mind even after years of not seeing that orange little buggy. Perhaps the more frequent seen New Scooby Movies episode helped keep his memory more in line with me.

Again when DVD time came, it was a no brainer for me to vroooom-a-zoooom-zoooom with Speedy again. The show is still pretty good. One thing i do notice more now is that i like the whole supporting cast a lot more than i realized. While before i think i was more Speedy and Tinker fans, i also really dig Debbie and Mark. Debbie herself is a fun character especially when she takes the lead. I also now notice that Mark and Debbies outfits are inverse as to imply in typical background HB style they were paired.

Speed Buggy had itself in a little more streamlined set up than say Scooby but similar to Jabberjaw and Josie in that most of his events happened because he was on a way to a race. Typically though the stories went further enough apart to not make it a bad point (side note: car racing in real life bores the muffler out of me) This show also had a bunch of fun one shot villains. The "metamorpho" guy like mentioned in the top post was indeed cool. I seriously wouldn't have minded had HB dusted off some of Speed Buggy's bad guys for the laff-a-lympics but that's another story.

The show to me brings back a lot of fun, quite frankly some of the best car related fun i know. I glad Speed Buggy zooms in my dvd player from time to time now.