The Czech connection between the former king of Saudi Arabia, British soccer icon David Beckham and American film star Eddie Murphy has nothing to do with oil, soccer or movies.

The connection is a little company on the outskirts of Prague that got its start in a garage during communism.

The former Saudi king, Beckham and Murphy are all customers of Havel Buggy, a local company that makes recreational gas-powered racing buggies for ages 4 to (as one of its brochures jokes) 99.

The company sells 200 buggies a year, brings in 10 million Kč ($421,763) in annual revenue and counts among its customers some of the world's most prominent figures — like the Sultan of Brunei, who owns five Havel buggies. The former Saudi king also bought five.

The company's notoriety belies its simple beginning, when a group of friends living in communist Czechoslovakia started it as little more than a hobby in 1988.

"I have to laugh when I look back at how we began," Milan Havel, the company's owner and founder, says with an easy smile after offering a drink of slivovice in his Prague 6 office.

The garage was too small

That year Havel was a technical and design specialist at Metalex, a Czech automotive manufacturer founded in 1969 that specialized in racing.

Though not into automotive racing himself, Havel was immersed in that world, and he noticed there was almost no chance for children younger than 15 to get involved in the sport. The demand was there, Havel believed, just not the opportunity.

Havel and a colleague from Metalex, Václav Král, a respected designer who died late last year, set out to make a buggy for children. Král started sketching designs, but Havel didn't think they were right; they looked too much like miniature versions of adult buggies.

Havel wanted a design children would like — and he ended up finding it on Král's dining room table. On a visit to Král's house, Havel noticed a little toy car belonging to one of Král's children and thought it would make a perfect model for their buggy.

Král came up with a design quickly and Havel, with the help of his father, began building the first buggy after work and during weekends.

They had no outside capital, so Havel had to scrape together the components for the prototype as he could afford them. By the end of 1988 the prototype was complete and in 1989 it was sold, as a present for a friend's grandson, for 25,000 Kč.

Havel made five more buggies in 1990, sold every one and turned a 40,000 Kč profit. When the company sold 20 buggies in 1991, he decided it was time to move out of the garage. Havel rented space in a Prague 6 factory, where the company has its offices to this day.

"The garage was too small for what we wanted to do," Havel says.

Today, the company makes four lines of buggies. All run on gasoline, and the fastest model reaches a speed of 150 kilometers (93 miles) an hour. Technically, the buggies aren't toys — they have racing seats, shoulder harnesses and roll bars and some models can squeeze in an adult — so they undergo safety evaluations similar to cars, including barrier testing. They're not street legal and can only be driven on a track, but there's no age restriction or license requirement.

The least expensive model costs 60,000 Kč, and the company, which has eight employees, can design buggies to customer specifications. Havel Buggy only sells around five in total each year in the Czech Republic, so it finds most of its customers through international expositions. The company has dealers in five European countries and in North America that sell its buggies.

Driving through a puddle

Havel Buggy's toughest competition comes from China, where similar products are manufactured for half the price. Other Czech companies in the recreational vehicle business, most notably Blata, a motorbike manufacturer, are also facing stiff competition from China.

"They're so cheap that we couldn't even buy the material for what they're selling for," says Pavel Blata, the owner of the company. "It's almost a mystery how cheap the Chinese can sell for."

The Chinese manufacturers have cut into Havel's business, but he dismisses their products as low quality. "If you drive the Chinese car into a puddle, it gets all wet," he says.

Havel Buggy is actively involved in youth racing in the Czech Republic and participated in the country's first race, the Championship of the Czech Republic in 1992. In the future, the company wants to expand its production line, intensifying its focus on utility vehicles for hard terrain.

Havel Buggy has already started producing these vehicles, and even bought a plot of land in Chýně, central Bohemia, to expand production. The town has prevented him from building a factory there, however, and the land has sat for 10 years.

Havel is hoping it won't sit unused for much longer. He's currently in negotiations with the town to make the land the location of a new home for senior citizens.