It was enough to Convince Him
Midget Motors Supply was the original company name, but that was later changed to the more apt Midget Motors Manufacturing Company. Planned as simple transportation for any person handy with tools, the cars were initially sold as kits consisting of chassis parts that could be assembled by the home hobbyist. Included were plans for making the body, although no body parts themselves were available. By late 1946, Dale Orcutt and Claude Dry were ready to go into production with a tiny car of their own design, which they called the King Midget. This was a single-seater, styled like a quarter midget race car, with scooped door openings — but no doors or top.
King Midget fell on hard times in 1969-1970. As one King Midget worker recalls, one day in 1969 they counted up the unsold cars in factory stock. Demand for the current King Midget seemed to be on the wane, however, so Eads decided to develop a new model. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service soon padlocked the plant. Production manager Vernon Eads ended up buying King Midget’s remains and made an attempt to revive the company. King Midget was bankrupt. There were 125! With all that money tied up in unsold inventory, other bills began to go unpaid, including — according to this same source — taxes. He formed Barthman Corporation (his wife’s maiden name), with plans to get back into production.
Surprisingly, most of the leftover King Midget parts have survived over the years. But the King Midget’s biggest fan must be Dave Stults, who over the years has bought out all the parts stock from the old K-M and Barthman operations and the Florida and Canadian ventures — some 14 tons in total — as well as the rights to the King Midget name. The “Series Five” 1995 King Midget proposed here assumes that at least one other major design generation had appeared between the Series Three last built in 1970 and this all-new “1995” model. In 1980, one enthusiast, John Weitlauf, assembled three new chassis from leftover parts, and it may be that they later received bodies from their owners.
Down the same rough Alaskan road he was traveling came a pair of King Midgets. They weren’t there for any special testing; they were the daily transportation of two locals. Stehlin later flew out to the factory to take an investigative look at the company and its product, talking to dozens of K-M owners and reading hundreds of fan letters that buyers had written over the years. The enthusiastic owners impressed Stehlin with tales of the rugged yet parsimonious manner of their cars. It was enough to convince him.
