John P. Shibles collected the rarest of cars in his Sea Girt garage-museum-man cave. Each has a story. This is the story of “Buttercup”, the 1952 Muntz Jet and its creator, Madman Muntz.
Shibles’ 1952 Muntz Jet Buttercup is #30 of 198 known cars produced
Curator John Estell restores Shible’s cars to the highest standards. The Shibles’ cars have won many awards over the years. Three of the cars in the garage have won first-place awards at The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the world’s premier celebration of the automobile since 1950.
John passed away in July 2023. John’s widow Jill Shibles continued the tradition of showing their cars this past fall in Palm Beach Florida at the Ann Norton Sculture Garden. Shible’s Buttercup Yellow 1952 Muntz Jet was a winner in two categories.
The sports car is #30 of only 198 made by Muntz Auto in 1951-1954.
There is a cartoon character on the steering wheel. The man in red longjohns and a Napoleon cap was the manufacturer’s CEO. He was the self-described, “Madman Muntz.”
Earl Muntz was a larger-than-life character and marketer extraordinaire.
The interior of Buttercup includes a Muntz radio, and a liquor cabinet
Born in Elgin Illinois in 1914, Earl’s father left him. He dropped out of school, and worked in his uncle’s hardware store, fixing radios, and tinkering. His uncle was trying to keep him away from some of his troublesome friends, but it did not work. Earl got his first speeding ticket at 14, and was scamming radio repairs. As a teenager, during prohibition, it’s likely he sold alcohol. A friend was arrested for breaking into his apartment to take a half gallon and five pints of whiskey, six months before the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1933. His first wife Edith Parsons divorced him shortly after. The teen bride was just the first of his seven wives.
When alcohol was made legal again, Muntz was looking for a new business. He tried pinball, but the Chicago racketeers moved in and shut him down so he started putting radios in cars. Then he entered auto sales. He married Mareta “Mickey” Stickel and bought her a 1936 convertible. They broke up before the car was delivered.
In a few years, he was married to teacher Marjiorie Brown and owned the Elgin Auto Sales lot. It was one of the top Studebaker dealers. The continued Depression dampened new auto sales. Many people could not afford new cars, and desperate sellers could be lowballed. Used cars became more profitable than new. Muntz opened a second lot and guaranteed satisfaction with heavy newspaper advertising and borrowed money.
As the Second World War began, Muntz visited his in-laws in California with their new baby James Earl, and he realized that used cars in California sold for even more money. He started paying soldiers $50 on their way to serving in the Pacific to drive cars he bought in Chicago out to Los Angeles.
He moved out to LA, and in 1943 bought an old bus terminal lot on Figueroa Street. Given the crowded market, he needed to be recognized. The used car market was filled with people pushing a stable and reliable image.
Public relations expert Mike Shore worked with celebrities. Muntz gave Mike free reign to create the Madman image, to stand out from the rest. Shore paid a Warner Cartoonist to design a logo, advertised over 150 times per day on the radio as “Madman Muntz” “I buy retail and sell wholesale!” Muntz did not have the money for any of the advertising. Mike Shore’s agency was on the hook for it all. But in a few months people flocked to Muntz’s lot. He paid high prices for used and sold inventory low. Over 175 Southern California billboards sent people to his lots.
A typical Muntz billboard
Given his level of advertising, comedians on the radio often used Muntz as a punchline. Bob Hope joked about him almost weekly and Earl was in costume, on billboards, and in the newspapers with the Napoleon hat black boots red long johns, and Madman tagline.
“I would give them away, but my wife will not let me! She’s crazy” His wife Marjorie never took to being in the limelight and filed for a divorce in 1945, and took their son Jim Earl.
With the war over and California booming, the auto business saw demand for new sports cars. Earl jumped in and was one of the top sellers of Kaiser-Frasier autos, an upstart Michigan manufacturer that made sedans, convertibles, a fiberglass sports car, and a line of low-priced compact cars.
Marjorie got a new Frasier and their North Hollywood home in the divorce. Actor Bert Lahrs (the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of OZ) got his car before Marjiorie’s. Muntz sold $72 million in Frasiers in one year.
He began to advertise on live television, with a “Special of the Day” promising if the car did not sell, he would smash it with a sledgehammer on camera. Bus tours of celebrity homes stopped at Muntz’s lot for pictures under one of his billboards.
He also started a new business. He tinkered and then launched Muntz Electronics, which sold the hottest consumer item, televisions. He mailed Muntz television knobs to people’s homes, and told them, “Just call, we will send you the rest of the set.” His sets were simpler with fewer tubes and priced at $99. He initially sold a ten-inch model with only one picture knob when the leading Philco was only seven inches with four adjustment knobs.
Billboards screamed, “Stop staring at your radio.” He advertised in skywriting by purchasing eight military surplus planes, but “Muntz Television” was too long. He shortened it to “Muntz TV”, and took credit for popularizing the now universal shorthand.
Madman Muntz logo
Newly divorced and star-struck by Hollywood, Muntz was engaged to actresses Jane Greer and Joan Barton before marrying model Diane Garrett in 1948. That marriage lasted less than a year before he eloped with a newly divorced Barton in 1950. It was the third marriage for her and the fifth for Muntz. They named their daughter, born in 1952 Tee Vee Muntz. Earl was at the height of his fame, and did over $50 million in $129 20-inch television sales, and had showrooms in most big cities.
He owned homes in Chicago, LA and Florida, a yacht called Namdam (Madman backwards), and jet setted at the drop of a hat.
Detroit was slow to move from military production and to fill the demand for sporty cars. Muntz built his own luxury models. Frank Kurtis was an Indy car designer, and he made a two-seater. Earl bought his operation and modified their two-seater design to make the country’s first luxury sport sedan convertible, the Muntz Jet.
He put an ice chest and liquor cabinet in the rear seats and used airplane-like instrumentation in the car. It was the peak of mid-century modern. He offered colors like Elephant pink, Blue Boy, Lipstick red, Orchid purple, and Buttercup yellow.
With his wife they convinced Hollywood friends Clara Bow, Mickey Rooney, Vic Damone, Mrs. Clark Gable (Josephine Dillon) and Grace Kelly to order Jets. He lost money on every $6,500 car he sold. After 29 cars were made in LA he moved production to Evanston Il to save money and ramp up production.
But in early 1953 David Sarnoff at RCA announced that color TV would be available by Christmas. People limited purchases of black and white models waiting for the color sets. 72 Muntz stores needed the rent paid. He also lost Joan Barton and Tee Vee around this time. Joan filed for divorce and returned to acting. She changed her daughter’s name to Teena Vale. The trouble in the TV business caused him to close the auto manufacturing business with only 198 cars finished.
The Muntz sets were only really useful in cities with strong signals. Developing color sets was more complicated. Muntz eventually lost $1.5 million in TVs. He put Muntz TV into bankruptcy and was sued by the FTC for falsely advertising the size of his screens and calling his dealer stores Factory Outlets. The board ousted him. Muntz TV would continue without Muntz until the late 1960s.
Earle quickly recovered by moving back to Chicago and marrying modeling school owner Patricia Stevens in 1955, bankrolling the heavily advertised school, and developing a 4-track stereo tape deck add-ins for cars.
Patricia filed for divorce in 1958, and in 1959 was found dead in his apartment, shortly after they had reconciled. He sold her modeling school quietly in 1961 and resettled in California. His Stereo-Pak took off and he sold them using, “well-proportioned models” as sales girls, Muntz claimed, “The girls make more money than if they had worked at the Playboy Club.” He gained exclusives with recording artists like Frank Sinatra for the 4-tracks. He made his money selling the music, “It’s like selling razor blades or film for cameras.” He started selling tape of the month via subscription. He got the price down from $99 to $29.95.
He bragged that Californians spent double the time in the car than on the East Coast, and they needed stereo to listen to good music. AM radios had poor-quality sound and commercials. Tapes played 2.5 hours of continuous music and did not need rewinding.
Sales grew to $18 million in 1966. He had a Japanese factory to make the stereos and Muntz tapes were sold in 25,000 locations. His latest wife Virginia filed for divorce in 1968. After she was awarded a handsome settlement, the business struggled.
Bill Lear was an early pioneer of car radio. His 8-track system was offered as an option in new Fords in 1966. FM radio and tape bootlegging ate into Muntz’s sales, and Muntz sold the stereo business in 1970.
He went into rental aluminum vacation homes, “Mobile Mansions” and a motorcycle park, and then invented a Home Theater Television in 1974 using a custom model Sony TV and mirrors to cast the image onto a 50-inch screen. Working with his son Jim, they found a market for the large screen units. Sony eventually offered him millions for the company, but he declined and eventually lost the market.
In 1981 he started making and shipping the first home Satellite Dishes which he sold for $9,000 a piece to give people free access to unscrambled satellite feeds as an alternative to cable. He sold early phones for cars, and car security systems.
In 1984 he bragged of dating Phyllis Diller and had developed a small video player that could fit into a car and a video recorder that could re-record and upscale poorly recorded tapes. “I’m the oldest living name in video”. He drove his Muntz Jet in the Hollywood Christmas parade that year and predicted that cellular phones would be under $99 and $15 per month in a few years.
In 1987, at 74 he turned Muntz Electronics over to Jim and Tee Vee, and Madman Muntz died that June of lung cancer. Dick Clark, Angie Dickinson, and a star-studded memorial spoke fondly of Earl. He got along famously with all of his ex-wives and befriended his “Husbands-in-law”. Muntzwas memorialized in a 2005 movie “Madman Muntz: Amercian Maverick” https://www.madmanmuntzmovie.com/
The legacy of ingenuity, brash salesmanship, and quirkiness of Earl Muntz makes the 50 restored Muntz Jets some of the most sought-after cars of the mid-century. The Shibles car was purchased by the Pillsbury family and was #30, the first Jet produced in Evansville. It was the last Jet produced with a Cadillac engine. General Motors did not want to sell to the upstart Muntz, so he switched to a Lincoln engine. We are lucky to have this automotive history in Sea Girt.
One of Jill’s trophies for the Muntz