A Tape for the Road

The latest thing for your car is a built-in tape recorder. The Beverly Hills are already full of them--transistorized, chrome, four-speaker, stereophonic cartridge models, activated by the car battery. Frank Sinatra's Riviera has one. So have such clan wagons as Dean Martin's Corvette and Peter Lawford's Ghia. Tape recorders also make a sound like Muzak in James Garner's Jaguar, Red Skelton's Rolls and Lawrence Welk's Dodge convertible.

All are 12-volt Autostereo models, priced from $129 up, made and distributed in 14 states by former Used-Car Tycoon Earl "Mad Man" Muntz of Los Angeles. Designed only for playback with special tape cartridges, they take any prerecorded material from the Muntz Music Library. Senator Barry Goldwater bought one from his son Mike, who holds the Phoenix franchise. Comedian Jerry Lewis has cartridge copies made of scripts, learns his lines by Autostereo on the way to work. Sales have reached epidemic proportions, claims a Muntz spokesman. "We started selling to Continentals. Then we went to Cadillacs, Buicks, Fords and Chevrolets."

A Dallas firm called Diamond Electronics has contracts with Detroit automakers to get its stereophonic set installed in demonstrator models. When a prospective buyer goes out for a road test, a tape-recorded pitch begins softly: "You are now driving a masterpiece of precision engineering . . ." Besides the standard rock 'n' roll, folk music, show albums and symphonies, Diamond offers complete foreign language courses on tape. "People can learn a language as they drive along," says Company President Don Gilmore. Other Diamond specialties include children's stories "to keep the kid quiet during trips," go-getting lectures for traveling salesmen, and "mood music" to be played in funeral limousines.

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