Meyers Manx - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Manx-type cars have appeared in several movies, including Elvis Presley films and the 1968 The Thomas Crown Affair, which contains a lengthy beach-driving scene where a heavily modified Meyers Manx equipped with a Chevrolet Corvair flat-six engine is launched over several dunes.

The Manx-style dune buggy was introduced to a younger generation in the late 1970s, in the form of Wonderbug", a segment of the first two seasons (1976–1978) of the American Sunday-morning children's television program The Krofft Supershow on the ABC network. The series of live-action episodic shorts centered on an sentient car named Schlepcar, made up of rusty old dune buggy and Jeep parts, who could magically transform into the superhero Wonderbug, a fancy, talking Manx-like dune buggy with movable dual front bumpers for a mouth and movable headlights for eyes. Ironically, the actual car used for Wonderbug was a Dune Runner knock-off, not a genuine Meyers Manx.

The Barbie doll accessory collection long featured a pink and white Manx-like dune buggy toy. Matchbox toy cars come in several Manx-inspired dune buggy models (e.g. the #47b Beach Hopper in 1974, up to the #59 Baja Bandit and its variants still released as recently as 2011).