I vividly remember when turning the volume knob in my dad’s old 1994 Volkswagen Golf actually felt satisfying and when finding my favorite radio station required a bit of finesse—and maybe a little luck.
I could not agree more that we’ve now got infotainment systems with more bells and whistles, but are they really better? Or are they just more complicated? Personally, I’ll still bet the farm on those old-school decks for reasons that go way beyond simple sound.
They Were Built to Last (and Easily Repairable)
Old car stereos were built like bricks, not just in the sense that they were heavy (and really, some of those units could double as free weights), but in how they were designed to last. Crack open a vintage Alpine, JVC, or Pioneer unit from the ’80s, ’90s and even 2000s, and you’d find a durable chassis (usually metal), proper circuit boards with components you could identify, and screws—actual screws!—holding everything together.
Components like the cassette mechanism or the radio tuner were often separate units that could be individually replaced. If your tape deck started eating tapes, you could order just that assembly rather than junking the entire unit. Repair shops were commonplace, and manufacturers actually published service manuals with detailed schematics—imagine that today!
Simplicity Meant Less Distraction and Safer Driving
Sometimes technological progress creates more problems than it solves. The touchscreens in cars nowadays require your visual attention. There’s no physical feedback, so you have to look away from traffic, navigate through menus, and precisely tap tiny icons, all while piloting a two-ton vehicle at 70 mph.
The old systems were brilliantly simple with AM/FM, maybe a cassette or CD player, and basic controls via buttons and knobs. No notifications were popping up, no complex menu, no software updates, or crashes. Your stereo never needed to “boot up” when you started your car. You turned the ignition, and music played—period.
I’m not saying we should all go back to cassette decks and FM static, but there’s something to be learned from that era. If your stereo setup requires the same level of focus as texting while driving, that’s a problem. Driving should be about—you know—driving.