Pure nostalgia: In car entertainment 1980s style

[lowdrag]

I had a run of Beemers during the 80's and all were fitted with Alpine units by a company off Welford Road in Leicester. All buttons glowing green but very tiny and fiddly but super sound. Back in the 60's the radiomobile had a whopping 5W output, and I still have the original radio from 1961 in the E-type, although with new guts and FM.

[Derventio]

alex.baker89 said:

LotusOmega375D said:

What about the ubiquitous cassette holder? Standard fitting on the LHD Lotus Omega, but not on the RHD Lotus Carlton.



My parents had a 1979 1275 GT Mini with a huge array of modular Clarion separates on the dashboard: self seeking radio, cassette player, sound control panel and two amplifiers. The only part missing was the graphic equaliser. It filled most of the huge gap to the left of the instrument binnacle. The rest was taken up by a car phone, in a Mini, in 1979!

Bit of a thread revival a year too late....

The space where the cassette holder usually goes on the Carlton / Senator was sometimes fitted with a Blaupunkt CDP 08, which was paired up to a Blaupunkt Memphis SQR 88. A family member had a Carlton (I think it was a Diplomat), which had this dealer fitted. The LC's mostly came with these fitted as well. I think towards the end of the Carlton's life, they started fitting Grundig single DIN units in the dash and 10-disc changers in the boot. That's what my 1993 Senator had in it anyway.

I remember my 1990 Carlton 2.6 CDX estate having that double Blaupunkt setup. I seem to recall that the rearmost speakers were actually mounted in the tailgate and got smashed up when loads moved in the rear. That was easily in my top five most comfortable cars.

[dontlookdown]

Good thread. My dad got car stereo-itis in the 80s after getting a Mk2 Granada fitted as standard with a tape deck and four speakers. He was converted and had a host of Blaupunkt, Pioneer, Sharp and Clarion gear in various cars over the subsequent years. He kinda lost interest when CDs came in for some reason.

Any love for Harry Moss? The cheapest, nastiest brand you could get in the 80s. Car stereo equivalent of an Amstrad tower system. I had one in my first car, would only play and do FF as it had but a single spool drive. The wow and flutter was something to hear;) But hooked up to an equally cheap and nasty equaliser/amplifier mounted on brackets under the dash (Saisho? It had lots of lights on it that was the main thing) and some 6 inch speakers it did at least go quite loud. Loud to still be audible at vmax in a mighty 77 VW Polo 900...

The last aftermarket stereo I can recall owning was one of those drop-front Kenwood things from the mid 2000s. Factory fit only for me thereafter as they are generally OK these days.

[alex.baker89]

dontlookdown said:

Good thread. My dad got car stereo-itis in the 80s after getting a Mk2 Granada fitted as standard with a tape deck and four speakers. He was converted and had a host of Blaupunkt, Pioneer, Sharp and Clarion gear in various cars over the subsequent years. He kinda lost interest when CDs came in for some reason.

Any love for Harry Moss? The cheapest, nastiest brand you could get in the 80s. Car stereo equivalent of an Amstrad tower system. I had one in my first car, would only play and do FF as it had but a single spool drive. The wow and flutter was something to hear;) But hooked up to an equally cheap and nasty equaliser/amplifier mounted on brackets under the dash (Saisho? It had lots of lights on it that was the main thing) and some 6 inch speakers it did at least go quite loud. Loud to still be audible at vmax in a mighty 77 VW Polo 900...

The last aftermarket stereo I can recall owning was one of those drop-front Kenwood things from the mid 2000s. Factory fit only for me thereafter as they are generally OK these days.

Yes, the factory fit stuff was generally harder to replace in later years without anything aftermarket spoiling the look in the dash. Don't remember Harry Moss personally, but do remember my Dad's obsession with car audio back in the day. He ported a Blaupunkt New York between various company Vauxhalls including an early mk2 GTE, before finally putting it into an E30 before he went down the CD route. He managed to get hold of a big pair of Pioneer Cross Axial speakers (TS-2000?) That went between a few cars. When he ended up buying a Mercedes Cosworth in the very early 90's he fitted a Sony pull out with 10-disc changer in the boot. I remember a button on the head unit used to retract the boot aerial if he had the CD on. He had an early DAT walkman connected to it via a car kit which was really ahead of its time! The Merc had a bunch of Clarion speakers in the back shelf, with a Blaupunkt BEQ F/R in the glove box (with two mini EQs for the front and rear).

Into the mid-late Nineties and he'd ripped all of that out, fitted a nice Alpine unit and installed a load of Rockford Fostate, Phoenix Gold and JL Audio gear before it eventually got taken off the road in around 2000. Still got the car with most of the audio gear stowed away somewhere.

Those were the days!

[Downward]

Had a Rover back in the 90’s With a Blaupunkt which the whole unit came out with a handle to carry around !
Then upgraded to an Alpine CD player 7826R with quick release face off (remember the boxes) ?

https://www.jtaudio.net/product/alpine-car-radio-s...

They didn’t half have some funky looking parcel shelf speakers back in the days too.

And stealth shelves or DIY ones.

Then we moved onto moving displays

https://www.pioneer-car.eu/uk/products/keh-p7020r/...

Edited by Downward on Thursday 9th March 11:31

[soxboy]

Still got these in the cupboard from my old Mk2 Golf 16v

[Dapster]

Just dug out the Mercedes price list from 1990. No Merc of the time came with a standard fit stereo except the absolute top dog 560 models. For everything else you'd choose your own but the Merc price list featured Becker systems as the recommended choice. They were button-fest-tastic to my then teenage eyes



The prices were eye watering. The single disk CD player listed at over £3,100 which is an inflation adjusted £7,000!



Roll back a few years and look at this from 1983. The Becker telephone. The phone itself cost 22,000 DM at a time when a brand new 190, as in the entire car, was 26,000!!

[CT05 Nose Cone]

C. £600 for a pair of speakers in the back!

[Oi_Oi_Savaloy]

I'm currently restoring (well, re-fettling might be more apt) a 1987 Lotus Excel and I've spent the last year putting together a complete retro High-end system from the late 80's and early 90's to install.....Alpine head unit, Kenwood amps and graphic equaliser, with kenwood speakers and a 90's 10" rockford fosgate sub that fits snugly in the side area of the boot (the empty battery space on the left hand side of the boot).

I've had the alpine unit for years and years and thought, might as well use it which lead to......extensive trawling on FB! I've put the entire system together for less than £100.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Anyone recall what the system was that came as standard in the Tickford Metro. I heard it playing once and it sounded amazing for the era. This is the best pic I can find.

[williamp]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

Anyone recall what the system was that came as standard in the Tickford Metro. I heard it playing once and it sounded amazing for the era. This is the best pic I can find.

Its a Uher system

[MattsCar]

This news segment on car audio from the 80's/90's is pretty cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c6IhN8J7ds

[alex.baker89]

I hope these pictures come through. They're of the SQR88 installed in my E30. It wasn't originally in there when I bought the car. It had a very basic dealer fitted Pioneer pull-out which sounded rubbish. The Blaupunkt sounds really very good all things considered, and in a 1991 BMW dealer price list it would have cost £749 fitted in an E30! I also added the rear Blaupunkt speakers (MD1690's) not long after which sound great, and were box fresh. The original shelf had no holes so I removed it, safely stored it away and had a second-hand E30 shelf freshly re-trimmed in the correct cloth to put the speakers into. All-in-all I'm very happy with the period look. The front speakers in the kick panels were cheap dealer-fitted Pioneers as well, which I've replaced for some more modern speakers as the originals started to perish around the foam surrounds. I've finally managed to source a pair of very fancy 80's Blaupunkt Honeycomb speakers for the front, so they'll be fitted very soon.

The next step is to fit a pair of Blaupunkt BSA 107's (new in their boxes in storage), along with a BEQ M/S mini graphic in the glovebox. I want to get that done in time for car show season, but will take time as I want none of it to involve drilling any holes through the bodywork, so it'll take some chin scratching to get that done correctly!

[alex.baker89]

[alex.baker89]

And I have a pair of these ready to go in very soon. Also have the rest of the HCS set that comes with tweeters and crossovers, but they might be a bit fiddly to fit into some OEM tweeter pods (which are very hard to find for E30s these days).

[TwigtheWonderkid]

williamp said:

Its a Uher system

[Img]https://handh.blob.core.windows.net/stock/20056262-41-medium.jpg?v=63785359163090[/thumb]

So cool.

[alex.baker89]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

So cool.

Don't think I've ever seen a Uher car stereo before. Only ever known them to have made home audio (mostly cassette decks), popular with German consumers.

Looks very similar to some of the old Clarion stuff.

[swisstoni]

I bought a version of that UHER from one of the many HIFi shops in Tottenham Court Road in the early 80s.
Mine was black and had no branding. It sounded very good.

I presume it escaped from the same factory the branded UHERs were made.

[sidewinder500]

This UHER stuff was supposed to be the highest end car audio for the likes of b&b, Gemballa, Koenig at that time

Remember lusting after as a kid in the 80s
(Someday I will have that 323i with a bespoke UHER system with Equalizer, Recaros and blacked out chrome...)

Great stuff

Oh, how time flies

[bristolracer]

UHER was the only portable cassette machine considered good enough for the BBC

My first car came with a Motorola MW LW radio. This was soon binned off in favour of a good old Harry Moss system which I think was Halfords own brand. I don’t know which genius came up with that as a brand name?
In time,I acquired a Sharp which had the benefit of dual spools so it could rewind as well as fast forward and it also had APSS (automatic programme search system) which relied on cueing the tape very fast until it reached the next track, done by detecting the silence between tracks.
In time it got nicked, the was no break in damage, I’m guessing they used an iced lolly stick to unlock the car (a mk 2 Escort) I was more pissed off about the tapes they nicked !

It’s a shame to see the Blaupunkt name stuck on all sorts of cheap electrical ste in B and M these days
Once upon a time it was a premium product.