Freaky Friday: Dropping the Needle…or Dropping the Ball?

We haven’t done one of these in a long time, but a poke from our good friend Matthew Guy alerted us to a new product offered by Ford Motor Company.

One with RPMs that max out at 78.

Not since the Blue Oval convinced Dr. Pepper to introduce a 15-can cola pack to satisfy the Expedition’s obscene cupholder count has this writer been so rattled by a non-automotive automotive product. If you’re a Bronco lover, get that Starship LP out of storage.

For the maybe reasonable price of $150 (any music snobs feel like chiming in?), you too can have a turntable modelled after the front end of a vintage, first-generation Bronco. Yes, the headlights work. Decked out in a retro turquoise-teal color, one that some readers might associate with the bathroom of a crime-scene motel, the Bronco Turntable is a new addition to Ford’s merchandise line.

Lifting the hood won’t reveal a 200 CID straight-six, but you might find Rush’s 2112.

To be fair, it’s somewhat fetching, and you can bet a few of these will call a studio apartment, rec room, or man-cave basement home before long, if not already. One thing this writer would like to know: Will there be a Fairmont model? Because that’s what my family was driving back when mom’s copy of Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man was hogging the record player and little Steph was up in his room making mixed tapes off of AM rock radio. You know the ones — the first 10 to 15 seconds of the song was always missing.

Millennials might not know the joy of bolting across the room to press “record,” but with this turntable they can at least save albums to a USB stick. Given socioeconomic trends, it might be all the Bronco they can ever afford. Of course, all of this begs the question: what do Bronco devotees listen to?

[Image: Ford]