Now you can have music in your car!!!!

[Greg Cutshaw]

[Barry Blackwood]

Wow! Precursor to the iPod. ( Also, check out the push button drive just above the car keys.)

[Jerry Overstreet]

Wow! Don't remember those, but wonder how the thing worked. Talk about your Skip, Hop and Wobble! Musta been mounted on a gyro, super springs or magic cushioning.

Seriously, anybody know?

[Keith Currie]

I had one and used it in a 63 Chevy, it worked good as long as it was installed right.
It had no amp and it played through the car radio.
Nice for the time.

[Keith Currie]

It had a lot of spring inside. You pushed the records up on to the spindle, and the arm played the bottom of the record and then dropped it down in to a basket at the bottom, as the picture shows you open the door to load and remove the records.

[Jerry Overstreet]

Thanks Keith!

[Keith Currie]

Got to thinking about those days just now and I realized that I still have that thing along with the

reverb system, might be worth something to some folks.

Had that with two rear speakers sure sounded good for that time.

[Roger Rettig]

I had one back in the UK in 1967 - it was the first option for choosing one's own music in the car. Mine was a Phillips unit called the Auto-Mignon - like this one it used the car's radio as an amp.

I don't recall the records skipping or jumping much but mine was in a big Jaguar Mark IX saloon so the ride was very smooth.

The downside? Two, really - one was that you couldn't change the stylus so your records got progressively more worn and scratchy (much more so that they would at home!) and, two: you were required to remove the centres of the 45s permanently.

Oh, yes: and if you forgot and left discs scattered around the car in the hot sun they weren't much good for anything except flower-pots afterwards...

Here's a picture of one (fitted in Lennon's Mercedes 600):

[Clyde Mattocks]

I had one. It didn't handle crossing railroad tracks too well, but it was the first step in choosing your own drive time music.

[Alvin Blaine]

And from 1956 to 1959 Chrysler had the Highway Hi-Fi available in Chrysler and DeSoto automobiles. It was invented by Peter Goldmark, the man who developed the 33 1⁄3 rpm record, and he developed the 16 2/3 rpm record just for the Highway Hi-Fi so you could play 45 minutes of music without having to change the record.
It didn't work very good, so in 1960 they came out with the one that used standard 45 rpm record. I don't think it worked any better, and you had to pull over and changed the record every 2 minutes and 28 seconds.

[Roger Rettig]

The Phillips unit was simple to use - one became adept pushing the 'eject' button, extracting the disc, then pushing in the next one; all with one hand (in Britain it was the left hand!) and, of course, all while still driving...



Then I heard an 8-track in a friend's car (1969?) and I had to have 'stereo'! At that time only two suppliers in the London area sold and fitted car stereos and the one I went to warned me not to bother with 8-track but, instead, to have a standard cassette player. He foresaw (at an early stage) the impending demise of the bulky 8-track and he was spot-on. Although the 8-track ran at 3.5" per second and, at twice the speed of a cassette (1.75"), had a theoretically better sound the improvement was inaudible against a background of road and traffic noise.

I left very happy with my new Sony TC-20 complete with four mounted speakers and it's own stereo amp - I still recall driving home with the Beach Boys' 'Sunflower' album blasting away...

[Doug Beaumier]

I too had an 8-track in my car back in the late 60s. The most annoying thing was when songs were split into two parts... the song would fade out, "click" of the tape head moving to the next track, and then fade in, the song resumes! And always during an instrumental break.

[Keith Currie]

Alvin the one I had looked like the one in Gregs post and was an RCA played 10 records at each load, and did work very well, much better then I thought it wood. I still have some of the old Hank Snow and Marty Robins records that were in it most of the time.

[Brint Hannay]

The downside? Two, really...two: you were required to remove the centres of the 45s permanently.

Many on this side of the pond might not get that reference. Back in the day I obtained one way or another a couple of British 45s with centres (spelling appropriate ) in them, but American 45s came without them--you needed to use an adapter to play them on a player with only the small spindle.

8-tracks may have theoretically had better sound, but that became a moot point when they very soon got wobbly. I also avoided the 8-track phase, instead fitting out my '66 Volvo with the first available car cassette player, which instead mercilessly mangled most of my tapes.

[Roger Rettig]

Really, Brint? I didn't know that. Some 45s (or EPs - Pye's product comes to mind) were 'solid' and the centres weren't removable. Most were, though, because they had to be adaptable for use in juke-boxes.

I'm not sure we've come all that far - my car CD player still skips if I don't slow down over railway tracks! I-pods are still a long way in my future...

[Joachim Kettner]

I had a Phillips cassette recorder N 2203 and I had it my VW Beetle before a stationary player, in the early seventies we travelled to the Bretagne/ France and we were listening constantly to "Boomer's Story" by Ry Cooder during the trip.

Sorry for the big picture

[Kenneth Kotsay]

Had one back in 1967, in my 1963 Chevy Impala convertable.

My 1972 Mustang Mark II had a 8 track taper player, very big electronic technology leap from my 1963 Chevy.

Then in 2003 my Honda Oddessey came with a cassette player, it was the LX model.

And finally my 2013 Hyundai Sante Fe has CD player and MP3 hookup.

What's next????

KEN

[Adrian Wang]

Next will be reading Steel Guitar Forum in the car, parked at the car park while waiting for wife or children.

Using this http://www.roademperor.com/en/
I do not own one yet.

[Ron Page]

Well, with 8-tracks you needed a book of matches to wedge it in just the right position. It was only after you had the tape for a month or two you came to realize the other purpose of the matches.

Now I have my entire record collection on a single USB stick, which my cars play directly. No 8-tracks survived in my collection long enough to make it. Too bad, because I had a bunch of them as a teenager and young adult.

[Andy Sandoval]

It seems like the auto industry is always the last hold out for outdated sound technology. I once owned an 81'Cadillac that came equipped with one of the last 8 track stereos and with CD's already on the scene. C'mon Cadillac, get with the program!

[Roger Rettig]

In my earlier post I talked of hearing stereo in a car for the first time...

To elaborate: The car, a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud 111, belonged to record producer Ray Singer who'd had a big success with Peter Sarstedt's 'Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?' (#1 for weeks in the UK).

He'd treated himself to the car and the 8-track on the proceeds of that record. Peter and I had been in the studio working on the follow-up and Peter urged me to take a ride in Ray's car and hear the stereo - I loved it although, ironically, the first track he played me was Elvis' 'Jailhouse Rock' in that reprocessed stereo 'mix'. Still, I loved the fact that the sound came from every corner of the Rolls-Royce and I just had to have one for my S-Type.....

[Gary Spaeth]

before the 8 track was the 4 track. my cousin had one in his 67 camaro. there were only two programs instead of four so one whole side of an album (anachronism) would play on one program and the other side on program 2. it didn't split the songs so much but you had to wait twice as long if you wanted to hear a song again. i liked his everly's greatest hits tape. he said he liked their "tone."