Up until streaming podcasts were a thing, virtually everyone was listening to some kind of music in the car while driving. What kind of tunes were they playing?
If the driver is a youthful car audio aficionado, the entire neighborhood can probably hear and even feel what they’re cranking out, whether they want to know or not. For most everyone else, we’d need to guess. What are some cars you associate with certain types of music, or even specific songs?
A second-generation Camaro? It’s gotta be Sammy Hagar yelling about Three Lock Boxes or his song from Heavy Metal, imaginatively titled Heavy Metal.
How about a Chrysler Fifth Avenue? You know it’s Sinatra’s greatest hits, or some Streisand. There are Neil Diamond tapes in there too, but wife Sheila says those are husband Maury’s and “they’re too loud.”
A Volvo 240 wagon? Since it’s likely National Public Radio playing, it’s going to be All Things Considered instead of music. However, when NPR finally stops blabbing on about, say, the tragic plight of Abyssinian goat herders or whatever they might play some “music” snippets from Prairie Home Companion.
Chevy square body? Gotta be some George – either Strait or Jones – played by an owner who “don’t like that Hollywood country bulls**t.”
How about you? Let’s hear what you think is playing in, say, a purple Geo Storm or a duck-covered Jeep Wrangler. Or flip it, tell us about the unexpected tunes you’ve heard from cars that very much did not fit the musical bill. Heck, maybe you’re playing them yourself.
Top graphic image: GM
Gen 3 Camero, 80s Japanese two doors- hair metal , arena rock
Fiero was lumped in but since sleigh bells exits something from them
Late 60s Mopars – Glam rock
Most late 90s to early 2000s Japanese cars – pop punk, dream pop
70s to 80s full size pickups – classic country
90s to 00s full size pickups – classic to 90s county maybe some 00s
A few songs like righteous brothers unchained melody almost have their own cars a 62 ford galaxie 500 two door comes to mind.
Dwight Yoakam Thousand miles from nowhere – 79 Malibu
I think most of dions songs have a specific car.
Like Wonder a 57 bel air
Dream lover – 60 ford falcon
Spirit in the sky can be 59 ranchero or 73 amx
I have a specific playlist developed for my Sunbird and I only listen to ‘80s/‘90s tunes in it, but it varies as to what genre. Anything goes, really, as long as the time period is right.
Helps that I have the original little Delco stereo modified to have a Bluetooth input for my phone.
When I’m in the ’79 El Camino I listen to my “That ’70s Playlist” on the iPod through the Aux Input of the Blaupunkt head unit.
I used to have a Bluetooth FM adapter but I finally got the factory setup to have the input itself so everything looks straight out of 1990 but has the modern Bluetooth connectivity behind the scenes.
Other than the laptop on which I’m typing this, I don’t own anything with Bluetooth. But I have a 1/8″ headphone jack to RCA adapter to plug into the iPod Classic.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen one, but anytime I saw an ’80s Crown Vic with dog dish hubcaps my brain would automatically start playing Beastie Boys’ Sabotage.
On a kinda related note and I commented this in the recent post about the new Mitsuoka car, earlier this year I visited a Mitsuoka showroom in Tokyo and I got to watch them bring a Rockstar down the elevator and spin around on a turnstyle. “My Life Be Like Ooh-Ah” immediately played in my head.
“…tell us about the unexpected tunes you’ve heard from cars that very much did not fit the musical bill.”
I once had a black Lincoln Town Car as a rental when I was working for a week at the University of Wisconsin Medical Center in Madison, WI.
I was listening to Mudvayne on WJJO (Madison’s Solod Rock!) really loud with the windows down. I stopped at a stop sign on campus and this kid did a double-take when he heard Mudvayne and then saw that it was coming out of a big black Lincoln.
Then he gave me a ‘thumbs-up’ as I drove through the intersection.
Updated fourth gen Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme (mostly the ’82 model with FWD and early restyled front fascia) blasting Salt N Peppa.
Or maybe that was just my high school friends.
I believe you mean ’92, as the ’82 was RWD, and Salt-N-Peppa were 12.
I will admit I can be (and often am) wrong about the FWD. but definitely it was the ‘82. Note that it was not being driven brand new at the time, this would have been about 88-90 timeframe as my area growing up wasn’t quite wealthy enough for the utes to be given brand new cars but some doing well enough for five year old cars.
But yeah, objectively bad memory but I think you get the idea.
i had a hand me down gold 87 cutlass supreme. it was definitely rwd on bald tires and always had starter problems. it was the mid 90s and hondas/acuras/mitsubishis were way cooler to have where i lived. i did bump some salt n peppa as well as rnb and west coast gangster rap while driving it.
Whenever I see a yellow Hummer, I assume the owner is playing George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone.” If you’ve ever read Carl Hiaasen’s Skinny Dip, you’ll know why.
It’s kinda, but not quite, like how I always hear Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” when I see an olive-drab Huey.
ETA: Jaguar XJ and Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again.”
Also, show me a county-mountie in their patrol unit and I’ll start hearing “Radar Gun” by The Bottle Rockets.
Well… from a personal perspective, beat-up Datsuns will always remind me of nu-metal and psy trance (both genres I was exposed to a lot growing up and didn’t really enjoy), because that’s all that came out of my friend’s beat-up Datsun’s stereo back in the day. Lots of fun memories of hanging out with friends and listening to the absolute shittiest music ever commited to tape by humankind associated with old Datsuns for me.
Any car with spinner wheels playing any artist from No Limit Records.
Camaro is always the answer. Pick a (Camaro) generation and you know the (young men) generation that drove it.
International Scouts with U2’s “Rattle and Hum“
I will always associate Eurodance with FWD midsize sedans (with the occasional RWD American/Aussie fullsizer) zooming down empty Middle Eastern highways
Pristine lifted pickups with chrome deep-dish 24″ rims shod with shiny “aggressive” treaded low-pro tires will be blasting the shittiest, probably AI-generated bro-country you’ve ever heard
Sammy will forever drive a gated manual Ferrari for me, one he promptly drives past 55 mph.
in the early 2000s, pretty much all escalades were in or playing hip hop vids on multipole screens. Now it is more Challengers if anything, but like nu metal, they no longer seem to articulate lyrics in a way my brain understands.
TNFS cemented my association of the NA1 NSX with jazz.
For Mustangs, Lalo Schifrin’s edgy jazz score from Bullitt. In particular, the tune Shifting Gears. You know it.
Who cares about cars. All I know is the B-17 Flying Fortress only matches with Don Felder’s Takin a ride, when filled with radioactive zombies and a brave captain.
The best segment in that movie, since it was about the only one that didn’t have inexplicably naked women whose sole personality trait was “horny for main character”
Counter point: Only one segment can be described that way and it’s maybe Den, the idea being Katherine and he are both from earth so share a connection, the queen is the only real case of no tangible reason for being with Den. The “girl” (she doesn’t have a name) uses Harry Canyon for help, double crossing him in the end. Gloria (So Beautiful, So Dangerous) has sex with a tertiary (at best) robot character. Taarna just kills everyone.
El Camino = Lynyrd Skynyrd
Or a decrepit Plymouth Superbird.
El Camino = “El Camino” by Elizabeth Cook
My wife’s white QX60 absolutely blaring System Of A Down’s Vicinity Of Obscenity pulling up to our kid’s elementary school.
I can’t decide if that makes perfect sense or it’s a complete dichotomy.
Both. For me it was Type O Negative from our 2007 Jetta circling the Trader Joe’s lot.
That was the gist of a Mitsubishi ad campaign recently (albeit a white Outlander and Come Out and Play by the Offspring), so going with perfect sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsaZCKaOXGU
Toyota Hi Ace with Reggae.
50’s-60’s hot rods and muscle cars with boomer garbage music.
a light-blue 1976 AMC Pacer with Bohemian Rhapsody.
Call me by Blondie with Group B Rallying thanks to this classic video: https://youtu.be/tiTtgq2Pcow?si=Vl2dWS7EEM5nxYB8
And I associate the original Mustang Cobra with a cover of Motley Crue’s Kickstart my Heart by the Ukrainian (?) band Sticky Jams thanks to this video: https://youtu.be/K2Dh8tKXLvs?si=9B6RMVtovXCxpLud
James McHenry has already mentioned Eurobeat and the AE86, so…
NPR played some Neko Case once and had a conversation with her. I’m pretty sure that was on All Things Considered. I listened to NPR until Trump got elected to his first term. He’d end up on there every day blathering on about something in his inimitable word salad. I couldn’t take it and went back to MP3’s.
Hot Rod – rockabilly
Rat Rod – psychobilly
Camaros with 80s metal, all generations, which I can explain
This wins for sure, though I’d argue ’70 and up; the late 60s first gen is more regular rock if only b/c metal wasn’t a thing yet.
Those were depreciated used cars by the 80s and driven by the same people who would have bought new ones if they could
Can verify. I went to high school with several “Bitchin’ Camaro” owners.
I think it’s physically impossible for me to hear Bon Jovi yell “Shot through the heart and you’re to blame…” with out immediately thinking of an IROC Camaro
I enjoy the whole meta thing that I think the best lyric of Wheatus’s Teenage Dirtbag is the IROC one.
I think the lyric of “he drives an IROC” is a super clever way to describe someone and give us the idea of who they are
A Toyota Sprinter Trueno or Corolla Levin?
[EUROBEAT INTENSIFIES]
And, yeah, screw it, I’ll even count the FWD ones.
I know he kind of built his own car, but I always hear Giorgio Moroder music in my head, when I se a Series 2 white Citroën CX GTi
A Porsche 928 makes me think that kind of music too because if the cold, technical appearance as well as Tangerine Dream in Risky Business.
Or to go sideways, any 80s Ferrari that’s not the 308 but is especially a white Testarossa.
I hear Grace Jones when I see one of those Citroens