"Remember when the radio was the best part of your car?"

Remember when that advertising slogan ran? It was about 1975, I think, in a TV commercial for a mix tape (remember those?) that recaptured top tunes from the 1950s and 1960s. Not my demographic, I'm happy to say, but I understand the sentiment. Upgrading the lousy factory in-dash radio was the first thing I did on all my old cars, and just about the only bit of automotive surgery I was qualified to perform. While the cool kids added limited-slip differentials, coil-over shocks, and injection kits, I fooled around with the in-dash electronics. Geeks before gear heads.

Fiddling with a car's electronics was easy back then, too. You basically had one +12V line, a fuse, four pairs of speaker wires, and… not a lot else. Electronics and automobiles weren't exactly incompatible, they were just… different. Like corn flakes and blue cheese dressing, you might enjoy them both—just not at the same time.