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The History of Car Audio

After buckling in and turning on your vehicle, the next thing most of us do is crank up our car stereos. Whether you’re listening to classical music, rock or the news, can you imagine a car ride without your radio?  We love to listen to our tunes while driving here at Hendrick Luxury Collision Center Charleston almost every day and we hear loud stereos blasting music out of car windows all the time in Charleston, SC so here is our short history of automotive audio.

The car radio debuted in 1930 when Paul and Joseph Gavin and William Lear invented the dashboard radio for the automobile. The 5T71 prototype used vacuum tube technology and was used in a Studebaker. It was called “Motorola” or motorized Victrola and millions were sold.

Before the 1950s, when the first FM radio was introduced by Blaupunkt, car stereos only played AM. In 1953, the first “Seek” station-search capability allowed drivers to listen to different stations before deciding which one to choose.

Transistor-based radio was introduced in the mid- to late-1960s. Since it reduced the space and power required, vacuum tubes were no longer used.

Remember those bulky eight-track tapes, also called Stereo 8? Popular from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s, eight-track tapes were often known to have poor sound quality but allowed drivers to customize playlists.

Compact cassette tapes were introduced by Phillips in 1962 and soon after, a cassette player was designed for the car dashboard.

Beginning around this time, companies such as Crutchfield began selling car stereo systems. This was followed by brands like Alpine, Kenwood and Pioneer. They were a hot topic of conversation for drivers wanting great sound.

With expensive stereos becoming more commonplace in vehicles, the Benzi box became popular in the 1980s. The pull out stereo receivers helped address the problem of car break-ins happening during this time.

After years of single car speakers, often placed in the center dashboard, many drivers began installing multiple speakers. By the early 1980s, it wasn’t unusual for a car stereo to be as good or even better than the one owned at home.

High–end systems continued to be introduced throughout the 1990s. Another development was the compact disk (CD). With better sound quality than eight-track cartridges and cassette tapes, CDs were a welcome addition to the market.

Once MP3 players became widespread in the late 1990s, the use of CDs began declining and cassette tapes seemed to disappear overnight. Today’s driver now has a variety of options when it comes to music, including internet or satellite radio, connecting to your smartphone, FM, or where it all began—with simple AM radio.

Sources: Billboard, Wikipedia and Forbes