Classic Car Radio 1973 - 1998
Classic Car Radio was a dream my father had while he was working for Bell Telephone and came to life when he retired, and through his hard work it was a reality for 20 plus years. My dad loved music and he loved working on anything that made music.
As a kid in the 60's I helped him wire multi speaker arrangements in other people houses. He was ahead of his time in that regard.
His idea to restore classic car radios for the collector car market was not new, but was very limited and he wanted to go beyond what others were doing which was one make, ie Ford repairs. During that time he amassed one of the largest collections of classic radios in the world. He also had a love for fancy OEM upgrade car wheels and wheelcovers which became a secondary part of the business.
In the first few years (the early 70's) my dad and I scoured flea markets, junk yards and car swap meets all over the country buying up every radio he could get his hands on. We bought entire lots from wrecking yards. We bought out old stock from any and all radio repair shops all over the world. This eventually gave us a massive inventory of collector car radios and parts.
Throughout those years we sold and repaired classic car radios from the early 1900's through the mid 1980's. We repaired, restored and hand built thousands of radios for the classic car market.
As a shop we could have easily made it on any of the current SPEEDTV, Discovery and Learning channel reality shows. We had a cast of characters come through the business that rivaled the Tuttles on American Chopper in every way. The company and the people working for us had an air about them. I'm sure we could have entertained everyone.
We not only repaired and custom built radios, we did custom installations. We saw and worked on cars from million dollar vehicles trucked in to our place, or I would travel to a customers location, as well we handled the occasional rolling scrap heap that someone wanted to resurrect. In terms of car radio restoration and installation, we worked on it all and we saw it all. We dealt with multi millionaires to the regular Joe off the street who was struggling to complete a 10 year long restoration from their youth.
We built radios for a lot of big time people in the movie industry. One who stands out as someone we did not work with is Tim Allen who had a lackey contact us and insisted that everything be provided for free, that included flying out to LA and installing the system and after numerous phone calls with his lackey we decided that it just was not worth the costs. We all got a laugh at how Tim was always saying how much he supported Michigan companies. Basically as long as it was free, Tim was willing to support us.
We tackled radio conversions that nobody else could or would do. No one! Crazy 6 volt positive ground radios from the early 1900's that took massivebatterys to run to radios with angled shafts, roller wheels and any combination there of. Nothing scared us and everything was a challenge.
If you look at the photos you will see radios with shafts mounted above, below, on the side and in some cases using roller wheels. We tackled all of them. Many had 8 track tapes which we replaced with cassette tape. We never turned a project down.
What you will see in the photos is a handful of the thousands of radios we inventoried and or worked on.
I have to say I am most proud of the team of employees we had, and the last version of custom radios we designed and built. Classic Car functioned as a team and their work represented everything a classic car owner could want out of his or her radio.
This was an era where a lot of new electronic ideas were coming to fruition by audio manufactures and installers. I certainly capitalized on any and all new technology in designing and manufacturing our products.
Most of the classics we worked on were built out of steel. Unlike todays car, everything was customed fitted and usually hand built to fit a specific application. We mounted speakers, sub woofers, crossovers and amplifiers in some of the toughest locations in a car long before the tools of today came about and made the job as easy as it is today.
We worked in A pillars, sunvisors, consoles seat backs and we designed hundreds of custom built boxs to house various componets of these high end systems to hide them so as to not take away from the cars originality.
Each FM conversion radio was hand assembled. I developed a great working realationship with Kenwood and Pioneer electronics and we utilized their electronics as the core of the custom radios we built. We hand designed and then manufactured pushbuttons, printed curcuit boards, complete case/housings, faceplates and whatever was neccessary to build an exact replica radio that had modern electronics and features. . By 1999 we had a bulletproof system and offered a 3 year parts and labor warranty on them. CLICK HERE to view a PDF on the operations manual of this radio.
The Classic Car Radio company was featured in a multiude of magazines, Hot Rod, Car Audio and Installation, Installation News, Corvette Fever, Mopar Collectors Guide, Cars and Parts, Hemmings Motor News, to name a few.
Classic Car magazines such as Cars and Parts, Mopar Collectors Guide, The Chevelle Report, Vette Vues and a multitude of others wrote articles on our work.
We provided repair and upgrade services for companies like Year One, Eklers and Corvette Central over the years.
Classic Car Radio also provided a variety of custom built head units to Hot Rod's by Boyd, Chip Foose, and many custom audio and restoration shops throughout the world. An example in the photos is of Larry Huffs 49 Chrysler which used a Classic Car Radio head unit and was then mated to 10 speakers, 2 amplifiers, EQ and 2 10 inch subs. Major sound with no noticable changes to the cars interior. The car was featured in Installation News - January 1995
We also provided the restoration for the Cars & Parts Corvette project (see photos).
From 1995 until my fathers death in 1998 we were a big part of the Woodward Cruise. Classic Car Radio was one of the original sponsors of the event and helped to get the whole program off the ground. Woodward was simply the place to be during my teenage years and is considered one if not the "street to cruise" in all of America during it's heyday in the 50's, 60's and 70's. Both my father and I cruised Woodward during our youth. A lot of manufacturer test vehicles in the 60's and 70's showed up on the Ave. Today over a million people show up to the August Woodward Cruise party.
In 1995 and 1996 we were one of a hand full of sponsors who stepped up to get the cruise off the ground. Sadly in 1997 as a small company we were no longer able to afford to sponsor the cruise as the big wheels (GM, Ford and Chrysler) rolled in and crushed all of the smaller vendors throwing millions of dollars at the cruise.
The growth in sponsorship really was a blessing and a curse to the cruise. Today the event is a non stop traffic jam. It has however become the largest one day gathering of classic car people in the world. Karoline and I live 5 minutes from the epicenter of the cruise (Woodward & 13 mile) and head down yearly to join the rock and roll party! CLICK HERE to see for more info on the cruise
Classic Car also attended all of the big shows at some time or another, Bloomington, Hershey, Carslie and a multitude of others.
My first real use of computers came in 1989. I began learning how to design a database to inventory the thousands of radios we had. It was then that we began using multiple computers and I began a journey in computer programming languge and networking. I also began learning Adobe Pagemaker and Photoshop, HTML , and from there web design.
From that I started our own computer consulting company called Infinity Technologies which handled all of the computer business we had acquired through word of mouth.
The end result for me was that by the end of 1997 I felt that we had finally designed a serious classic car radio using modern electronics that kept the original classic apperance of the radio and the car and I have not swayed from that feeling since. We put quality over quanity and it has held up over the past 10 years.
In January of 1998 my father who had just been given a physical and a clean bill of health a month earlier had developed a cold that he could not shake. A trip to the doctor resulted in all of our lives and the business changing forever as he was diagnosed with incurable cancer. The doctors gave him 3 to 6 months to live based on the aggressive nature of the cancer he had.
This changed everything, everyone and the company did not survive the ordeal. The sheer labor of getting my father around, out of bed, back and forth to the hospital made it next to impossible to run the business. The joy was no longer there and that was the end of Classic Car Radio. My father passed away in August after fighting a losing battle with this horrible disease.
Although my dad wanted badly for the company to go on. It was not the same without him. His knowledge of cars was on par with the best in the classic car industry and he left a huge void that only a handful of people might, I say might have been able to fill. At the time the entire business depended on him and I as a team. Both of us had massively full plates in running the businesses, and with no one to replace the knowledge that he had, we had no choice but to shut the operation down. I simply could not do it alone. No one can or ever will understand just how difficult the end was on my family and everyone who worked for us. Years of work gone in few months.
Classic Car was a testiment to my fathers tenacity and a dream he had. I miss him greatly.
