If you grew up four to five decades ago, your idea of infotainment in your parents’ cars was a lot different from what it is today. Forget even a VHS of Cars in the back seats of the minivan; as children, all we had to look at was whatever was visible through the windows, and the audio portion of the not-entertainment was whatever came through the static between 5 and 16 on the radio dial, as determined by the parent behind the wheel – and we didn’t even know what those numbers meant.
Hopefully you didn’t have a General Motors car with that built-into-the-windshield antenna that couldn’t get a station even if you were parked next to the transmission tower. Look at that Chevette radio pic below; you can just hear the scratchy reception and CHOONK noise of the push buttons.
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Some of us were lucky enough to have family cars that got FM as well, perhaps even in stereo, but only the richest kids experienced pre-recorded music. That’s right, an actual tape deck in the car itself!
Car makers started putting tape players into dashboards around the mid-sixties, with Ford being the first in 1965. Often, they were standalone things that pumped sound through speakers on the rear deck, providing surprising bass from the massive trunks in old land yachts.
These optional accessories were rare, likely because they weren’t cheap, and people didn’t see the value. How could a car salesman get you to check the option box for a fancy eight-track deck?
The answer was demonstration tapes: something packaged with the car’s logo and featuring a potpourri of different kinds of music to show the potential buyer how magnificent their life could be for just a few extra bucks on each monthly payment. Here are just a few.
At Least None Of The Songs Got Cut In Half Like On Most 8-Tracks
One of the older ones I found was this “Fancy Colors In Sound” 8-Track from Buick, as these huge cassettes were the primary media for cars up through the seventies.
A lot of real bangers on this one, particularly Carol Burnett and whoever Andre Kostelanetz is. One of the tracks is Oye Como Va from Carlos Santana, which seems a little bit heavy for an Electra 225 owner in 1972. That’s sort of like putting System Of A Down on a compilation for a Lexus.
Here’s a later Buick demo tape. I’d probably select that disco A Fifth Of Beethoven to cruise down I-95 in my new Regal, or maybe put on Theme From S.W.A.T. if I wanted to really squeal the tires like I was in a Kojak-style undercover car.
A 1979 tape gives you some Toto to rock out to, but I think that Lou Rauls would be better to chill on the maroon crushed velour seats.
Shove a Pencil In It
By the ’80s, the cassette had replaced the old 8-Track so car makers had to follow suit. Here’s a late ’80s Oldsmobile test tape that kicks it off with the There Is A Special Feel In An Oldsmobile song, and then rolls into pop tracks. Based on the artist selection of this and those earlier Buick tapes, it seems like Neil Diamond was on GM’s payroll. Toto likely was as well, here singing what an Oldsmobile owner might consider to be “world music.”
Don’t worry; if you look at the song list on the case, the entire other side is classical for the typical Olds 98 Regency, most likely a family doctor or owner of an accounting firm, a real “I could afford a Cadillac but that’s too showy” type.
Mopar owners could show off their Infiniti I Premium Sound Systems with An Introduction To Chrylser Audio Systems, which I hope was narrated by Ricardo Montalban (“rich, substantial bass”). The tape then segways into pulsating Kenny Loggins, after which auto reverse would switch you into Gloria Estefan followed by a bunch of classical that was far more befitting of your New Yorker Brougham.
Did You Get Fingerprints On It, Or Are We Just On A Bumpy Road?
Nothing deserved a demonstration more than a new-fangled compact disc player, especially when you sometimes had to move around all your crap in the trunk just to get to the damn discs. Chevy was ready to show you how those little silver records gave you quality digital sound with a demo that, sadly, did NOT include Bob Seger doing “Like A Rock.” What the hell?
At least you got Sean Penn’s brother doing his one hit at number 2, David Lee Roth at the top of his game on track 7, and what I’m assuming is Mr. Mister strongly and repeatedly encouraging you to carry a laser down the road that you must travel at track 11.
General Motors got its money’s worth out of Mr. Mister, since Broken Wings appears on a 1990 Cadillac Style demo disc. Wait, didn’t that dude drive a ’58 T-Bird in the video?
With No Apple CarPlay, You Might Want That CD Player Back
Demo discs continued for a lot longer than you might think; our Thomas Hundal recalls a promo CD for the Acura RSX that featured Good Charlotte’s Motivation Proclamation.
Naturally, today you can’t even play a disc in a new car, which has obviously been the case for a while, but that doesn’t mean brands aren’t eager to show off how awesome their sound systems are. How about that head-exploding THX noise from a movie theater?
We know for a fact that a recent Member’s Rides included a reader’s 2012 Lincoln MKZ that had a THX stereo unit with a demo mode that plays the bone-shaking THX sound right out of the multiplex theater. Technology might have changed, but we still need to blow people away with our car tunes.
The downside of purchasing these recorded media players back in the day was something that our parents still have post-traumatic stress about. With their newfound tape and CD players, they often bought into this crap:
Maybe it’s a good thing that we can stream whatever we want now without fear of unwanted, unasked-for, full-price cassettes or CDs showing up in the mailbox.
If there are people out there who collect air sickness bags, then I can imagine that at least a few people are stockpiling old car stereo demo recordings. If so, I sure hope they have a disc with the Ride Pontiac Ride song on it to blast in your 1989 Trans Am. Here’s the big question: if audio demo discs existed today, I wonder what the various brands would put on them?
Holst’s Jupiter from the Planets Suite is the the most badass selection there. Damn I love the Planets. The best birthday present I ever got was a chance to see the symphony play it – it was amazing.
Isao Tomita did ol’ Gustav’s The Planets by synthesizer. I like both.
Funny, because I used to do to the same thing to pretty girls who were nice to me.
So you did it once?
Ayyy jk that was me
🙁
The equivalent now is the free couple months of Sirius, then they get you with Columbia House pricing so the best of both worlds! I miss the random mix tapes of yore, like even Shell stations would have samplers, for when you’re driving on the highway for hours and stations kept coming in and out.
Nissan sent me a CD to tout the redesigned Frontier of 2001. I have it somewhere.
Does anyone remember K-Tel records? They promised like 30 songs on one album. Original stars, original recordings. They achieved this by cutting every song down to about 90 seconds. One verse, one chorus, fade out.
Please allow 8-12 weeks for delivery.
I remember the first time a friend showed off his 8 track player to me. A fade out right in the middle of a song, a nice Ka-chunk sound, and the song fading back in. I refused to have anything to do with 8 track right then and there. I recently found a box of CDs I forgot I owned spanning many, many years. I bought a new CD player and am very happy.
The only tape I got with a new car was a VHS explaining how anti lock brakes worked on my new 1994 Grand Cherokee.
I had to check if Cars even came out on VHS, and apparently it was the last Disney movie released in that format, and is now a collector’s item because no one was buying VHS by 2007. TMYK.
If you need me this afternoon, I’ll be in an 80’s music nostalgia hole.
That was my uncle. He thought Olds was tasteful luxury and Cadillacs were for showoffs. Drove an Olds 98 until they went FWD and then he switched to custom GMC conversion vans. He was a GM man until the day he died.
My grandparents were Oldsmobile people, had many over the years including my first car, a 99 Oldsmobile Eighty Eight. My Grandpa always wanted a Cadillac to show off so for his last car he bought an 06 DTS. My Grandma hated it and called it a gangster car.
Now I’m thinking about the promotional VHS tapes you could send away for by filling out the little card buried inside issues of Motor Trend or Car and Driver.
Hands up if you have the BMW Films on DVD…
I remember the demo tapes, but they weren’t nearly as exciting to me as a kid as the fact that we could PLAY OUR OWN MUSIC! I remember fondly the first car we had with a 8-track player and sliding in Black Sabbath and jamming out to something other than what the radio DJ thought we should listen to. Same with cassettes, though I remember the demo cassette that came with the “premium sound” in my dad’s K2500 was crap and it was still unopened and taking up space in the glove box when I inherited the truck a decade later.
One of those tapes came with my dad’s 1990 Suburban…I don’t remember what was on it though.
Andre Kostelanetz and His Orchestra über alles, of course.
do Ze Germans! (please 🙂 )
German companies, German bands.
Beautiful, thanks for indulging me!
The most recent one I’ve seen was Acura’s from 2008 (I was seeing it in lease returns in the early/mid 2010’s, so checks out). Largely, it reflects a then-50-something buyer, and feels consistent enough* right up to the end tonal shift, where you go from Simple Plan into Beethoven (it’s really the Simple Plan that sets me off).
*Foo Fighters is a bit out there, but it’s a lower key track
https://www.discogs.com/release/4878279-Various-AcuraELS-Surround-Premium-Audio-System-Demonstration-Disc?srsltid=AfmBOorEIXr9enBAv5bC372uH-aXFgT3-o2B5JA51_7ZLPxr8A1a_I0F
Scion did these mixtape cds that I looked forward too every time they released then I thought they were pretty good. They definitely targeted millennials with Jurassic 5, dj shadow, groove armada, etc.
Memories of “Ford Motor Company presents: Stereo For Today,” which came free with my mom’s 1979 Mercury Grand Marquis. It had some bangers – the title themes to “Star Wars,” “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind,” “The Pink Panther,” and “The Young And The Restless”; Waylon Jennings, “Luckenbach, Texas”; Hall & Oates, “Sara Smile”; and even Barry Manilow, “Mandy.” You can get yourself a copy on eBay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/256457059744
My grandpa drove Lincoln Town Cars and one from the 70s, maybe 1973, had an 8 track music sampler. I was in elementary school and I remember listening to it on the quadraphonic stereo with headphones. It had a mix of pop, country, show tunes.
THIS: Same, my Mom’s Lincoln Town Car had the quadraphonic sampler, the best sound system ever. Seriously!
Back in late ’04 my Dad traded the family truckster for a brand new ’05 Mini Cooper S. It came with a CD of Monkees tracks and the salesman as part of the delivery process had it playing on the stereo as we got into the car to drive away.
But you could pick your favorite “category” with the Columbia House Record Club! You could get Hard Rock, like Genesis
Thank you for how much I hate that.
One time I talked my mom into splitting the initial order with me (6 CDs for me, 6 for her), and ordered a couple with the parental advisory label on them. I opened the box before she got home and hid them under the couch until I could squirrel them away in my room. One was Adam Sandler’s “What’s Your Name?” and the other was “Whitey Ford Sings The Blues” by Everlast.
Embarrassing disclosure aside, those were both pretty weak candidates for the Explicit Content label in my opinion.
That Kenny Loggins Danger Zone tune from Top Gun was blasting in every stereo shop, Sears, Best Buy, Circuit City in the late 80’s and early 90’s. You were pretty much guaranteed to hear it at least once if you walked through the tv stereo department. Guys who were trying to sell you things really thought it was a great example to show off how big the sound was from their audio/video equipment!
Long Live K-Log!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyAn3fSs8_A
Certainly, The Bishop remembers the 8-track in The Bishop’s Father’s Peugeot 504 with the slightly-misaligned heads, so that Grandma’s Feather Bed bled into Country Roads every time…
I still have that Oldsmobile cassette (not that I have had anything that can play it for about 20 years)! It came with the Old Man’s ’85 98 Regency Brougham – which had *AM Stereo* as part of it’s upgraded sound system. Doesn’t get more fancy than that in the mid-80s.
That car was my main ride the first half of my senior year of high school post licensing, and I have to admit, it had an absolutely ass-kicking stereo for the day. About the only good thing about that giant steaming turd of a car. The Old Man hated it so much he just kept driving his diesel Suburban. The Olds has his retirement present to himself.
My Dad had a Lincoln Mark IV or V in the late 70’s that had Quadraphonic sound. And the only 8 track that I ever found recorded in Quadraphonic was the one that came with the car. Pretty cool at the time though.
Back in the 90’s, Mercedes had a mix tape that came with the optional Bose stereos. I wore that tape out until I bought a car with a CD player. I’ve been looking for that tape to get the song selection from it because whenever I hear one of those songs now I expect the next one to come on, but can’t exactly remember which one it was.
Was it this? https://www.ebay.com/itm/276269217868
I think that’s similar, but I think the one my parents had had the songs listed on the cassette and this one doesn’t.
What a pity. Good luck, maybe you can find on ebay or else.
These demo tapes, especially the 70s ones, are a valuable resource for preserving the musical mediocrity that has pervaded every era of popular music. We all like to imagine that everybody in 1979 was listening to The Clash or Elvis Costello or Pink Floyd because that’s what’s come down through the decades, but there was a LOT of Andy Williams and Ray Conniff out there. That “Send in the Clowns” is on two separate tapes says a lot.
Amen to that. You may have been listening to Elvis Costello and The Clash in your bedroom at home in 1979, but on the ride to school, you were probably hearing Barry Manilow and Melissa Manchester.
Which is why I would go for rides with my black sheep Uncle as many times as he would let me, because a) I would get to hear Marshall Tucker Band and Boston and Cheap Trick and Lynyrd Skynyrd and Styx instead; and b) 1979 Trans Am, duh.
Hey now, Barry Manilow’s songs are catchier than syphilis at a truck stop. Copacabana is a non-ironic masterpiece.
“Send in the Clowns” is worthy of a repeat listen.
Dream Academy seems like a left-field choice for that Chevy CD. I dunno, too ferrin or something.
I always thought those demo tapes were a funny concept, in the ’80s, they came with basically every car with a tape deck, even though the speakers were usually pretty unremarkable, kind of always wondered what they were supposed to be demonstrating, other than just the ability of the tape deck to play tapes, because the sound quality was typically nothing special