1988 Car Stereo Guide | Retro Review
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- Which was better back in the late 80's, a high end aftermarket system or the best the manufacturer could offer? We needed to know!
Show 806 | Original Airdate 10-27-1988
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Man, I miss the 80's!!
Me too. 🫤
I sure do too....simpler times...and more
I remember well shopping in Walmart or Kmart with my mom and I’d always head to the auto section to sample the car stereos and speakers set up like in this video. Oh those were the days.
lol me also. I would always turn it up and run away 😂
@@brittanycunningham787My friends and I did the same thing 😂
The same was true for me when waiting for the service to be done at Pep Boys.I told some people how they sold small TVs and low rider rabbit ear antennas also.
The nostalgia this brings is awesome. When your radio was the only distraction in the car 😎
I had a BMW 2002 in high school with an Alpine 7903 pull-out CD player, Rockford Pro 12, Rockford amps. It was the good old days.
Now, because of touch screens and multimedia systems, an aftermarket system is nearly a thing of the past.
The aftermarket world is still booming. There’s customer touch screens, retro fits and of course upgrade speakers, amps, digital processors, etc. The aftermarket world has adjusted to the touch screen world as well
@@JustinDixon881It definitely isn’t what it used to be.
I used to spend thousands of dollars to get the sound my factory system has today.
@@JustinDixon881 yeah but for how much? My 2013 Elantra Limited with it's factory nav system gives a few options that are thousands when installation kits, signal processors, etc are needed to keep functionality. The cars KBB is like 4 grand. Not worth it. The car makers would rather you trade it in.
I mean sure all that ''touch screens and multimedia'' is like the pandemic, everywhere,
but carguys drive old cars. :)
Just saying. :P
In '88 I had a nice Nakamichi pull-out head unit on my lowered Toyota mini truck. Man those were the good days!
Ahh the pull out stereo. Always seemed like a short cut for thieves if you ever got lazy.
Who here remembers hiding your stereo faceplate in the glove box?
I still have a removable face plate radio and its still works.Its casette and a 12 cd changer in the hatch.The car is a 91 foxbody🙂
@@warrpedd my first stereo the entire deck pulled out. Like you were supposed to lug that around with you lol
Can’t imagine changing my stereo today. They sound better than the aftermarket ones I put into my cars in the 70’s!
Alpine and Pioneer were the best head units back in the day.
Don't forget Kenwood
Pioneer is still top of the line. Though, the factory-installed Bose and Becker units from that time were also really good
@@milfordcivic6755 Sony too in the early 90s had some nice equipment and looked good too
When simpler times was the best times!!!🤙 and when Lisa Barrow put JBL, Infiniti and Bose in one sentence it's like Symphony to my ears😁👀
I loved car stereo equipment stores in the 80s and 90s. I haven't been to or seen such a store in a long time. I remember the portable DAT players and car stereos around mid 90s i think. I wanted one so bad, but i stuck with CD players with removable faceplate for security (i had open to jeep at the time). 😎
I really wanted to see the Delco guy and the Crutchfield guy get into some sort of slappy-fight
I remember having my aftermarket cassette tape players in my cars back in the 80's. Don't know how many of my cassette tapes got eaten, lol.
Remember when the local, independent newspapers in most cities were cram packed with dozens of pages of adds for aftermarket stereos, speakers, amps and installers for cars?
And how many were stolen?
Thanks for the ride down Memory Lane :)
I put a Pioneer CD player in my 96 Toyota Corolla about 5 months ago, super easy to install. It was out of a 98 Buick LeSabre that I took off the road...sub frame rotted off it. Personally I prefer CDs over the touch screen, wifi, steal your personal data crap any day.
You got good taste. I kinda still worry about my CDs getting scratched and skipping while driving sometimes though.
The older Japanese cars with standard half-din radios sure made aftermarket installs a breeze. 15 minutes, a wiring harness adapter, and you were in business.
In 1985, I took my Oldsmobile to a custom stereo shop. They designed a system for it, but I told them that I would have to save up some $$ before having the equipment installed. I then went to a couple electronics retail stores, bought the same or comparable pieces and installed it all myself. Head unit, equalizer, speakers, all sounded fantastic.
First car; 78 vw rabbit with 2 mtx 12" subs, boston acoustics speakers with 2 Phoenix gold amps circa 1992.
Good times
Alpine, Clarion, Blaupunkt or Pioneer would give the best result once matched with quality loudspeakers.
Its Luther vandross! 2:13
Good song!
Although I was an audiophile in regards to home hi-fi use (even utilized sandwich panelling, wood-sand-wood in speaker boxes, Dynaudio drivers etc), I never liked to have a visible change in the sound system of cars I owned.
Ever since I was a kid I liked the idea of ''sleepers'', and nearly all car's I owned were sleepers, running high 11's, 12's, 13's in street gear but all had original hubcaps, wheels, interiors and the stereo systems would be kept as original, visually, that is I would have the original radio/cartridge/casette, but have the real working head-unit in the glovebox and speakers/amps under/hidden beneath cloth that suits the original interior.
But of course I didn't invest a lot in car audio, as I did in house, because the noise of the cars I used to drive were music to my ears.:)
Gotta love the detachable face…
Can’t forget Kraco or Sparkomatic stereo systems.
Car stereos from the 80s and 90/ sounded fantastic! Now a days they invest too much into the screens, and the radios sound like garbage. They don’t even have enough bass unless you spring for the upgraded vehicles that have a separate subwoofer.
Yep, I have a Harmon Kardon in my Hyundai 8 speaker system and it sounds like crap no amped subwoofer.
Car CD players in the late 80s and early 90s would skip if you looked at them wrong. It wasn't until electronic skip protection was introduced in the mid-90s that you could listen to an album without worrying about potholes ruining your listening experience.
Not the Ford ones (built for them by Sony). They were excellent, didn't jump, and didn't need electronic memory to accomplish this. Beyond the CD player, the early Ford/JBL Systems were fabulous.
My dad had a 1978 Audi 5000 and at some point, he put in a Jensen auto reverse AM/FM cassette stereo, which seemed simple to operate at the time. Nowadays, we have CD stereo systems, and custom stereos, with so-called touchscreen and oddball controls, which can be mind boggling, especially in today’s vehicles.
Love this one.... 1989 Lincoln Town Car (in the test bay) and Lincoln Continental (cd player) which we had back then in the same video! I still have the first one with an aftermarket radio I got from Crutchfield! Cool.
I really enjoyed the Ford/Sony/JBL collaborations of the 80's and 90's.
Yes. The two Mark VIIs we had in our family both had the system. They were excellent. Very well balanced, with bass extension from just a pair of 6x9's that was remarkable. The only system of the era that might have beat it overall was the Nakamichi system in Lexus...I recall sitting in a Lexus SC (I forget if the 6 or 8 cylinder) for a while that had the Nakamichi and it was just wonderful sounding.
Wow, was just reminiscing about with a friend 👍
Wow that was when you could change out a car stereo relatively easy. Now everything is integrated and complicated.
They didn't test those power antennas enough
Easy in a lab. Now put in real life with heat water tree residues smog corrosión...
You have to clean and lubricate the masts periodically.
I still have a 6 disc cd changer that I purchased in 1994. Had a wired remote that I fished under the carpet. Now I hardly listen to the radio
When I was a teenager I always had to be listening to music while driving. Now, except for the occasional road trip, I don't really listen to music at all, and mostly do short drives anyway.
Late 80's through late 90's was the golden era of aftermarket car audio. Still to this day, I'd rather have an aftermarket stereo than an overpriced factory stereo. OEM stereo systems have improved a lot from where they used to be, though.
Sounds good until Felontavious break's your window a takes it.
This is so true. That used to be a huge deal back in they day. My folks owned a GM autoplex in the 80s and early 90's. We'd come to the dealer on Monday morning after being closed Sunday and find the pre-owned cars vandalized and the CD players stolen. CD players in the 80's were a HUGE deal. Thieves wouldn't touch the new cars though.
Circuit city had an entire car radio installation dept.
I loved this video. So on the money. One ridiculous thing I saw was the power antenna. What a pure money maker for the dealer, and so little value to the consumer. The $1,000 for the Infinity system - what a ripoff in dollars back then. The Crutchfeld guy who got a better system for $800 installed, he should have done watt for watt, probably would have been $500 to match the Infinity system. I just can't imagine wasting $2,651 back then for what was worth $1,325. I wonder who kept the $1,326 overcharge (todays dollars).
I'm going to take exception with the "high end" Chrysler/Infinity systems. I ordered that option on my new 2001 Dodge Dakota, primarily because it gave me steering wheel controls, which were still pretty rare then. I loved having those buttons, but that's about all the praise I could give it. It sounded no better than any other factory system at the time, and - of course - I ended up installing a quality head unit (Alpine, I think), a 4-ch amp, sub + mono amp, and (ironically) Infinity Reference speakers. The "Infinity" factory speakers were no better than any other garbage you could get in the truck then. I ended up paying probably $700-$800 for..... steering wheel controls.
My first car was a 1988 Mercury Cougar but it didn’t have a factory CD player so I had to install a Sony CD player. It was the one with the detachable faceplate you could remove so it wouldn’t get stolen.
I added a Kenwood KRC 8001 to my car.
My '85 Iroc-z still has the removable "benzie box" 😂
I haven't heard the term "benzie box" in decades. 😂
I recall the cassette tapes like Maxell gold. You would record on them using a double tape deck. CD’s are better and quicker.
I sold and installed car stereos in Sweden in the 80´s and 90´s. Back then very few european factory installed units made any kind of great sound experience...
But I remember a trip to Florida in 1985 and we got a brand new Chevy Caprice as our rental, and it had a sound system way better than any european car at the time. But the car itself was a mess, the paint started to deterioate after only two weeks🤣🤣
With today's modern infotainment systems burying the radio features within, aftermarket radios are much harder to put in. Especially since a lot of cars also put the climate controls and vehicle settings into the infotainment screen as well
You can purchase adapter plates that give you a standard double-DIN slot for an aftermarket head unit.
Today's cars come with infotainment systems that have a short life, are difficult and costly to replace with quality aftermarket systems, and are designed to encourage car owners to trade in their ride just to get new tech. My 2013 Hyundai Elantra is an example. The car itself is great and has been, but the decade old integrated navigation/radio shows it's age. While it has features like Bluetooth, streaming audio support is limited to audio only with no app control, no ability to upgrade the dated navigation maps, and the touch screen is starting to age with hard finger presses required to operate. Replacing it means sourcing one from a junkyard or Ebay, and it's like everything else: buying a little time. Cars today are disposable items. I sure love MotorWeek's Retro take me back to when "cars were fun".
the best old car stereo systhem is blaupunkt greetings from germany
I never owned one but every time I got in a car with a blaupunkt system, it sounded like garbage to me. I would compare all the specs back in the day (signal to noise ratio, frequency range, THD etc - blaupunkt was always substandard despite the higher price tag.
Not so with the blaupunkt Denver. Unfortunately I think they reissued it now made in China. Junk.
Last year fitted Blaupunkt Bremen reproduction with all mod cons to mine 91 VW Passat. It looks great and it works as it should, radio reception is great all i need is swap the speakers and install the subwoofer and amplifier that i have lying in garage
@@justas525 a original blaupunkt with cassette player that is waht i like
@@autojogi well i wanted a little bit of modernity but keeping oldschool look. And it looks like cassette Blaupunkt from late 80's
A can only assume installing some subwoofers would disrupt something in modern vehicles.
OR, I could take that 800 (in 1988 money) and put 4 10’s across the back behind the backseat to a Kenwood 920 and a reasonable radio and the whole neighborhood will know when I’m coming home. Maybe not playing that particular Luther Vandross song (that one was alright) but something more for bouncing quarters. Just an idea because that’s what we did back then. Just a thought.
“The main advantage of an after-market system is…self-expression?” That reason never crossed my mind when I installed my Sony CD system with Rockford-Fosgate amp and Pioneer Speakers/Sub.
Pioneer, Kenwood and Cerwyn Vega were popular
I thought that was Howard Stern in the thumbnail.
Now, you cannot get a cassette tape player or CD player or changer in any newer vehicle.
Cassette player and giant subwoofers. CD's would skip. Got several noise ordnance tickets. 96 Dodge Neon.
Clarion
My 2020 Lexus NX300 has a sound system with CD player.
The problem was a lot of younger guys would cheap out w the equipment and installation and the final setup was usually just kinda wonky and all bass
However, the only nice aftermarket setup I have ever experienced was in my middle aged uncle’s car. It was a nice balanced, crisp setup. He loved his long weekend drives listening to his music. I’m sure he probably paid a lot for the setup.
Most were just crap. You could easily make something very loud with cheap amps and idiots would equate that to higher quality.
Automakers now purposely integrate the audio, ventilation controls and vehicle monitors to the same unit so you can’t really upgrade anymore. And then they can charge what they want for replacement when something does go wrong.
Fu** aftermarket radios they all look like 💩 compared to factory units especially nowadays.
Yes. Some people don't mind their dash looking different, but I never find aftermarket equipment in the dash to look right.
With a vintage car, I often let people know they can not only have the original head unit restored, but also have a Bluetooth receiver added (the best way is having it wired directly into the preamp), have preamp outputs installed should you want a different amplifier (you could also get an outboard amp that accepts "speaker level", but the cleaner sound will be to bypass a built in amp), and change speakers. This way you still get to have the look and experience of the factory head unit, play modern sources, and upgrade the sound. In some of the better factory systems from the 1980s onward, like the early Ford/JBL ones, I prefer keeping the original amp and speakers since they provided a very nice experience in and of themselves which is special for that vehicle.