With 2024 marking 90 years since the first standard-fit car radio in the UK, CM looks at how in-car entertainment (ICE) has evolved over the decades. And with one major exception, we never had it so good, reckons Alan Anderson.
I had an opportunity quite recently to drive a nice old time warp classic saloon which was complete right down to a period DIY-fitted single speaker radio setup. Apart from transporting me back almost 50 years when I first passed my test and had the pleasure of showing off in my dad’s nearly new Capri 1600GT with a similar radio – it struck me that if anything has immeasurably improved over the decades then it has to be car sound systems. Not just their quality and certainly value-for-money but, as importantly how they are installed.
The first standard-fit car radio in the UK was 90 years ago in a Hillman Minx and to mark this auspicious occasion the model was sold as the ‘Melody Minx’. It was real one-upmanship even if the large, heavy Philco valve set added a massive 25% to the standard car’s price. Before the influx of Japanese cars during the 1970s, only the poshest, most upmarket of models came with a sound system as standard – even Jaguar’s E-type lacked melodics – apart from their engines – with the optional extra push-button Radiomobile costing an additional £50 back in 1972 – the thick-end of £600 in today’s money!
So… you had to be a pretty well-to-do sort to enjoy Radio 1 in your Cortina or even Rover 2000 as the price of even plain radio sets were quite astronomical and never more so than as optional extras when specified new because they also incurred added tax. In real life terms, a simple, somewhat naff push-button mono radio costed a typical week’s wage – where as now £100 spent at Halfords can nab you a quite nice ICE unit.
Worse still, music-loving motorists were hit by the Government slapping an annual licence fee. I think it was priced around 10 bob (50p to you) until this bizarre hard to police law was dropped by 1971 – after one million law abiding motorists had signed up. However,
portable car radios side-stepped this unfair tax as they weren’t permanently fitted. And, the fact that you could take it with you, also meant you avoided light-fingered folk, prising open the quarter light windows to open the door. But at least this was much tidier and less heartache than having a side window smashed to achieve the same effect – as was the craze during the 1980s/90s.
What’s in a name?
Makes such as Radiomobile, Motorola (reputed
