#CarStereo

Ted writes:In your suggested fixes to a 200,000-mile BMW, you mentioned better aftermarket radios. That got me interested! I’m buying a 1989 Porsche 944 turbo with about 10 problems and the radio ain’t one. (The price? 6,500 Canuckian pesos!)As I fix it up for my own long-term use, however, I want to understand the options and the pros and cons of replacing the “meh” Kenwood unit that one of the nine (!) previous owners put in there.Can you do a kind of buyer’s guide for aftermarket radios with Bluetooth capabilities and/or smartphone integration? Currently I use Waze on my phone, which is clipped to the air vents with a small Kenu phone mount, and an aux cable. It works fine; I’d like to have fewer cables and better power to the phone, but this is a frivolous and fun upgrade for me. Maybe a low-cost option and an “all the features” option would be two options for most.

1950 Muntz Jet. Full gallery here.

When Chrysler touts its well-performing 8.4 inch UConnect touchscreen, somewhere Earl “Madman” Muntz smiles. When drivers use UConnect and other manufacturers’ infotainment systems to play their favorite music Muntz’s smile broadens. You see it was Muntz who started the convention of measuring video screens diagonally in the early days of television. He was also an important pioneer when it came to automotive audio systems, inventing and selling the first affordable car stereo systems. Muntz could also be attributed with selling the first modern personal luxury car, or even the first American sports car (though Crosley buffs would demur). Not only did he influence the way people entertained themselves behind the wheel and at home, perhaps more importantly he influenced the way mass consumer goods, including cars, are manufactured and marketed.

In my office is a clock radio and, if you are a child of the ‘70s or ‘80s, you already know which one. Made by GE, it has a red LED display, a plastic wood grain case and mounts one tinny speaker on top. It runs all day long, playing the greatest hits of the era in which it was built, and it fills the space with the cheerful din of bygone days. Everyone who sees it, thinks that I have owned it forever but the truth is that I spent long hours searching for that exact model. The fact I sought it out at all says a lot about me, that I have a strange attachment to old things, that I think history is important and, perhaps most obviously, that I am not an audiophile. Odd, it wasn’t always that way.

Detroit is a funny market when it comes to advertising. In addition to the ads, commercials and billboards that you might see or hear in other markets from national and regional advertisers, there is some advertising that is specific to the automotive industry, usually from tier 1 vendors trying to make a sale to one of the domestic automakers. As a result, there might be a billboard on I-75 about, for example, exhaust systems, suspension components or audio equipment that is targeted at a relatively small audience, the people at Chrysler, GM and Ford who make the final engineering and purchasing decisions.