#car stereos

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

ZOMG LOOK AT THIS GUYS THERE'S A LITTLE DANCING MAN IN THE EQUALIZERS!!!!

Also I saw this and went "Panasonic VZ200?" and it's a VZ201 which I didn't know existed, but seems not to be physically different, so I choose to still feel proud. Either way, this must have been a pretty baller unit, with all the fancy stuff like blank skip (it could skip to the start of the next track by listening to the tape as it was being fast forwarded and stop when it heard silence), four way balance (you can see it on the left, L/R balance and F/R balance to its right), automatic radio station seek, etc. Especially considering the prices it keeps selling for on the Japanese auctions JUST LET ME BUY IT FOR CHEAP GODDAMNIT

[mymusicbias]

[indygo-99]

Pioneer Car Stereo - Winamp (2001)

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

For those unsure what “of course Lexuses still come with CD players” was referring to, Lexus was the last manufacturer to ever sell a car equipped with a tape deck, selling the SC430 as late as 20fucking10.

Their perseverance was well justified, given Lexuses were big with the kind of customer who was old enough to still want the ability to listen to the tape collection they'd accrued in a brand new ‘00s car. But when it combined with Lexus's responsibility as an upmarket brand to feature the latest tech and keep up with the times, it resulted in a very entertaining situation:

Many of those '00s Lexuses featured both a touchscreen and a tape deck, and the more you know cars the weirder that looks.

Though this is both because Lexus stuck with tapes for very long, the one on the left being an '09 model, and because it was pretty early to color touchscreens, the one on the right actually being a '98 model, which was also early to satellite navigation being the first car ever to offer it as standard.

I say early to color touchscreens because we all know that Buick was onto the monochrome touchscreen/tape deck combo as early as 1986...

(How cool is that cassette door? Not too many are the car stereos that display the cassette!)

...and say early to satellite navigation because Honda came out with a gyroscope-based navigation system in 1981.

You know, the year they came out with the 1980s ancestor of the folding scooters that are infesting Europe. I been telling ya everything you think to be a product of the 21st century already existed in the 80s in some wonky form.

But I digress. Lexus is indeed quite the fan of showing love to musical mediums most consider outdated, as I found yet more proof of while telling beloved mutual and friend of the blog @demoness-one about a project of mine you've been given hints of.

And our beloved mutual was right to believe me, as indeed from '58 to '70 Philips made the Mignon, this 7" slot record player.

(God I hope those side vents are decorative. I don't want to believe it would have any reason to need vents.) To dampen vibration, as became abundantly clear when I held one, it was, just like me in that moment, internally sprung, but that only worked up to a point - and flipping through records while driving would have been a common occurrence with this, as the 7" singles it gobbled up had only one song per side, so every single time a song was over you had to fiddle with a record, whether to flip it our outright change it, as demonstrated by this here Muhammad Ali.

The thing is, as it often happens, while searching the web for those I found out something else entirely.

And while her reaction was entirely warranted...

...you best believe I made the most of my chance to slip in some light-hearted Subaru slander.

Links in blue are posts of mine about the topic in question - if you liked this post, you might like those!

OMG I'm such a dumbass I knew you did one on the GR Yaris before too, and I love her ALSO, but I actually meant the GR Supra 😳🫣 (slip of the tongue)

Gotcha.

Since I managed to take some two weeks to answer this (got distracted both by real life obligations and other posts that were meant to be very quick to make. Meant to.) y'all may have forgotten, but our dear friend of the blog had asked for opinions on the GR Yaris, hinting to its controversial status. Turns out the GR Supra is what that request, and thus that hint, was actually about - so let's talk about the car and the controversy that engulfs it.

In 1993, Toyota launched the fourth generation of its rear wheel drive sportscar (well, arguably a bit of a Grand Tourer, i.e. something more oriented to cruising than a sportscar) the Supra - which was born a quarter century earlier as a more upmarket, six cylinder version of the Celica, graduating from Celica Supra to its own dignified name with the third generation I talked about that one time I forgot to check what blog I was reblogging with.

But this time, things would be different. Most notably because the inline six the Mk4 Supra came out with was an absolute MONSTER.

Remember how I talked about the GT-R's RB26 engine being one of the greatest, most coveted production engines to ever come out of Japan? Well, the 2JZ-GTE is the other.

It was larger at 3 liters, no less powerful, and to reduce turbocharger lag it used two of them sequentially: first air goes in the smaller, more responsive turbo, then gradually some of it gets sent to the bigger turbo to make it start spinning, then when it gets going the two are finally used in conjunction. (Imagine the big turbo as a hung husband that takes a while to get it up and the small turbo as an eager stepson ready to take over until the hung one can join in for a spitroast. Or something. I don't watch porn with real people, but from what I gather the plots seem to resemble how sequential turbos work.) It even at one point got Variable Valve Timing, i.e. the ability to vary the time in which the valves open depending on engine speed, which allows to optimize tuning for performance and efficiency! (Cool thing to go over in detail if y'all want me to.) And also, the kind of things that engine is able to take make me wish I hadn't used up my porn analogy quota.

See, to chop off eons of nuance, an engine is just a big block of metal with a lot of bits attached, and the two main measures of an engine's potential are the slope of the line in the Bits Fiddled With / Power Output graph and how far up (It's up, right? The second axis you specify is the vertical one, right?) you can take it before the block becomes the weakest link - with another important point being when you need to start messing with internals, i.e. the components inside the engine, e.g. pistons (the things the boom pushes down), camshaft (the thing the pistons spin) and connecting rods (you can guess).

So for instance, just to make the point that an engine can be beloved without having much overall tuning potential, in one of Toyota's most beloved engines, the 4A-GE four cylinder illustrated above (yes, the one from that white and black car in all the eurobeat videos), some pin the block's limit as low as 250hp. The 2JZ, tho? It can take 800hp without even messing with the internals, and once you get your grubby hands on those you can keep pushing the line to some 2000hp. That is two Bugattis. That is 40 times my car. That is well above the power level where "tires that will at any point grip" and "tires that are in any way road legal" stop intersecting.

I am not in the slightest exaggerating when I say that this and the Skyline GT-R are widely regarded as the top of Japan's 20th century automotive production. The Messi & Ronaldo of the Japanese Domestic Market. It is absolutely no coincidence this was the hero car in The Fast And The Furious.

And then in 2002, as all things, its production ended, and given the abysmal sales and catastrophic recession, Toyota decided that would be that.

And then, years later, The Teasening began.

I want to stress, almost half of my conscious life (I choose to believe the stretch from birth to kindergarten is just run-up) the world was in some state of getting teased with talk of a new Supra. The trademark on the name was renewed in 2010. In 2014 they dropped the FT-1 concept, and of course that became speculation about what the production version would look like.

Because come the fuck on, it's not gonna look like that.

Or was it?

Only five entire years and much more teasing later would we officially get an answer, when after seventeen years, the Toyota GR Supra (and for those wondering what GR means, y'all should've clicked the Yaris link >:C) hit the streets.

You know what, good enough.

Good enough to earn itself a sea of words of praise, Jason Cammisa's "The most punch-above-its-weight sportscar ever made" just some among them.

It did have its share of problems at the start, like its power being 335hp and not 382, a lack of manual transmission, and the inability to spec it with a less powerful 4 cylinder engine - well, I don't know who considered that last one a problem, but Toyota's updates solved that one too.

The Supra has a much bigger problem than those though, one no little update can solve. That red car in the background.

See, the new Supra is actually a joint venture with BMW, who made a new model of its Z4 roadster out of the platform. And unlike with the other joint-venture sportscar Toyota sells, people are big mad about that. Why?

See, the interior is engulfed in BMW switchgear and the drivetrain is all BMW (the manual gearbox took until this year to come out because BMW did not have one for that engine so Toyota had to modify another BMW transmission to fit), giving people the impression that this was less of a joint venture and more of a BMW project that Toyota tacked its design on top of, which is a problem whether true or not.

See, a range-topping sportscar is supposed to represent what the brand is capable of - having it done by someone else (or so the criticism goes) is a bit like performing Hallelujah in playback.

Actually, a better musical analogy: You know "I'm back bitch" singles? When a humongous artist drops a new record with a humongous lead single about absolutely nothing but reaffirming they're the biggest fucking deal in the universe? Without Me, Bad, Gimme More, so on. Well, think of SexyBack - one of the most monumental phenomenons of its decade, most incontrovertibly proving Justin Timberlake sat atop the goddamn world. Now, imagine if, after all the years that went by between that record and the next, when he finally came out with Suit And Tie all the verses were Jay-Z. Going from a humongous statement about having the power to reach the top of the game and stay there to having to get absolutely carried by what in this logic is essentially a competitor. Basically, that's the critics' complaint: the supra went from 2JZ to too much Jay-Z.

And therein lies the other problem of the Supra: the Supra.

See, any time you evaluate something, you do so relative to its context - and when you give it a nameplate, you make that context include where else that nameplate has been. An undeserved name may not just be stupid, but even outright kill the car in some's eyes, see the case of the Dodge Dart, or get me to talk about the Ford Capri prototype recently spotted if you want to find out what I'm like when I lose my cool. (I'd liken this phenomenon to undeserved Grammies but I already used my music analogy quota too.) So the Toyota Supra does not just need to be good, it needs to deserve the name. And some argue it doesn't. But why? This thing is no less powerful, no slower, hell it's not even any bigger or heavier and we've gone over how rare that is these days! So is it the lack of backseats and a targa version? No, no one gives a crap about those. It's something deeper.

Sometimes, the problem with a revival is people base their expectation not on what the original was like in the context of its time but what it's like in the context of today (for example, I've heard people call the latest GT-R "too computerized, too assisted, far from the pure driving experience of its predecessors", when its predecessors had some of the most technologically advanced driving assists of their time and could only be called "pure" and "analog" by comparison with cars decades newer). But of course, that'll only be some people - so if what the original car looks like to modern eyes and what the original car represented at its time are two different enough concepts, any revival will receive some criticism for not being one of the two.

But for the Supra, this compounds with another problem: the original Supra (as in the previous generation, since no one gives a crap about the first three), to modern eyes, looks like a thousand-horsepower flame-spitting beast, because that's what all Supras have been turned into, and that's why you know of Supras in the first place (it sure isn't because people bought it!), and that, consciously or not, exacerbates the problem of misplaced expectations to a level akin to hearing an NBA player is about to have a brother and expecting the baby to be a 6'4" three-shooter.

But I wasn't asked about the controversies, I was asked about my take. And my take is: no realistic expectation of what a Supra would look like today was disappointed - at least not by where the car stands today. Well, unless the expectation involved backseats.

"But it was made by BMW" and so? This is a new Supra, and a good one - what does it matter how it got here? Especially when this is an upgrade over the Z4 in every way - looks way better, drives better, and now has a manual that the Z4 doesn't.

Okay, almost every way: the Supra's roof won't get out of the way. If only though, if only. Could you imagine a Toyota product that looks this good, sounds this good, goes this fast, and has a drop top? ...and maybe backseats?

Well, I can.

Yes, the badge and core concept may have some people consider it from midlife crisis mobile to old man's car. (though we know it's not a car bought by old men because if that was the case someone would be buying these). But just try to imagine sitting in this thing.

Take a couple of seconds to take in that picture and truly immerse yourself. You're in a Lexus LC500 Convertible, with a V8 at your right foot's command, its spectacular sound ready to battle the perfect sound system serenading you with your fanciest CD, because of course Lexuses still come with CD players.

Are you immersed? Okay: Someone just called your Lexus a midlife crisis car. See? You don't give a shit either, do ya.

Automatic only though. The pain. Oh, and it kind of costs as much as two Supras. But, you know, neither of those Supras will be convertibles!

Links in blue are posts of mine about the topic in question - if you liked this post, you might like those!

[arcadebroke]

[fuzzyghost]

[eightiesfan]

[opendirectories]

[goshyesvintageads]

Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc, 1988

[gameraboy2]

Christine (1983)

[ctl-yuejie]

"It will just end how it started"

[catfindr]

[goodvibesatpeace]

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

While I avoided noting it because it led to the digression you're about to wade through, I'm ecstatic to announce that yes, that cool satnav was also available for my beloved childhood Corolla! What do you mean "what childhood Corolla?"? The one from the first blue link in the post, silly! The one you clicked when you first read it because you know I lovingly weave them into my posts just for you (btw thank you so much for that! c:). What was I saying? Ah, right, the satnav! You can see the multi-function screen that would display directions right atop the dashboard!

And, like in the Yaris, the CD player or tape deck (or as shown here both if you're a real baller) were installed below in the center console DIN. Oh right, we're being accessible here - DIN is the standard head unit slot size's name, which derives from the German standard institution that codified it, like ISO files and film sensitivity came from the international organization DIN is the German branch of.

And that Corolla sure liked DINs - so much so that, as was the case for ours, you could swap the factory screen pod for a third DIN and forego factory Toyota infotainment in favor of whatever stereo you wanted, and those lower slots would just be filled by a storage tray.

Tray which, of course, someone handy could swap for yet more car Hi-Fi! But, since the Japanese law says "it's either Japan-only or has a cooler Japan-only spec", they made themselves a double DIN dash pod...

...and since the cupholders below the storage tray sure look like they're installed in a half-DIN slot, that makes for a maximum total of 4.5 DINs, which while I'm open to be proven wrong I think is an all time world record for production passenger cars.

To communicate the sheer power of this amount of space, let's list car stereo components until we fill it:

This, as you can see by the watermark, is no ordinary tape deck, but one of the handful of car stereos ever made that could play Digital Compact Cassettes, Philips' cosmically flopped attempt to update its most successful invention (at least if you count the CD a team effort with Sony).

The nice thing about that stereo is the DCC mechanism was designed to be able to play normal tapes too, meaning it can also function as an ordinary tape deck, unlike, uhh...

...that weird time Sony decided what people really wanted in a car was the ability to play their Video8 camcorder tapes. Well, to be fair this was more to put on movies for van or bus passengers, and putting videotape technology at the service of car entertainment was not a new idea...

...as indeed, there were a few stereos out there that played Digital Audio Tapes, Sony's attempt to make a compact cassette successor through VCR technology, which labels, frightened by bit-perfect copies, cockblocked out of mass adoption cornering it into the professional space. Professional space in which however it was a hit, so while you may not have heard of DAT, you've heard DAT, e.g. the master for Whitney's cover of Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You was a DAT!

[someone right now:]

The nice thing about DAT stereos though is that, with how new and high-tech it was when it came out, the few consumer DAT products ever made were range-toppers aimed at Hi-Fi tech pioneers with cash to blow on cutting the edge, so all these stereos are hefty, sturdy, well-built, top-quality, no expense-spared masterpieces.

Whereas nowadays most car stereos are more like this...

...cheap garbage whose only quality is that, however poorly, it does a lot of things. Hell, this unit alone has a DAB radio, Bluetooth, an AUX in, an SD card slot, a USB port, and a disc slot that promises to play CDs, DVDs, and -and I know you're not sold so far but here comes the dealmaker- Video CDs.

Which, combined with all the other formats from the head units above, forms a combined 14 different sources. Hell, if you want to round that up to 15 (let's pretend 15 is any more round a number) you can just move to the trunk...

...where you can mount a changer for MiniDiscs, the portable, digital, re-recordable Sony format -yeah Sony made a lot of formats huh-most notable for everyone falsely believing it flopped (truly the Tumblr of formats) and for NOT BEING A FUCKING MINI CD PEOPLE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU. But then again, why mount that changer in the trunk when the thing is so adorably tiny you could effortlessly slot it under the seat or even in the glovebox!

"Ah, this is why I like you, man. You start talking about the Mk1 Yaris and you manage to fly the fuck away into completely unpredictable territories" glad you appreciate it, but what car do you think that changer is in? ;)

Links in blue are posts of mine explaining the words in question - if you liked this post, you might like those!

the Toyota Yaris is my babygirl... (I have a 2002 one which I named Tilly)

can I learn some more about my car maybe?

Call yourself Dr. Pepper because you can!

I have made a helpful diagram to illustrate.

Very happy someone asked about the car me dad was gonna buy, so I get to show its funky optical-illusion digidash that, through some magic I must say still eludes me, is made to look a lot further than it is so your eyes don't have to refocus to glance at it.

And I know what you're thinking - "Wow, digidashes are so cool, if only there was a website that collected them all" and my dear where do you think I got this image from? ;) But there's another cool thing about this image, speaking of it - what's with the coordinates in the lower display? Well it turns out that's why that button at the bottom right says "NAVI" above it - for the low low price of an absolute fucking fortune that it seems no one was willing to pay you could get your Yaris fitted with a little underseat satellite navigation unit that fed off map CDs (because people who say things were better back in the day just don't remember the details that well) and gave you directions in return!

"But wait", I hope and pray you're thinking so I get to do the reveal, "where's the screen then?" Well it's right there! What more screen do you need to be given a turn and a distance?

And that's not even all the cool tech that the Yaris ever got! In 2004, they made a special version called "Yaris Blue", available in blue, blue and blue, which offered steering wheel controls and what color was that tooth again ah right Bluetooth!

Hm. I wonder what website this image came from. Guess we'll never know. Anyway, imagine life in 2004 with a decked out Yaris: electric windows, a sunroof, Bluetooth and satnav, a wicked digidash... what else did you need? Hell, what else do you need today? Maybe a bit of space, but that was taken care of by the Yaris Verso that was introduced alongside it a couple years later! It married Toyota reliability and quality with a surprisingly spacious mini-MPV body style, with the only problem of being phantasmagorically ugly.

yeah. I don't think even in Japan you couldn't find one that looks decent.

Hm. I'm gonna need to sample the public on this one, but the fact that they call it Fun Cargo there may risk swaying me over.

They also did other fun things with the Mk1 Yaris in Japan, like calling it Vitz, giving it a turbo version because of COURSE, and making it one of Gran Turismo's most famous surprise win cars. You know how Gran Turismo has made many people, including some of y'all, fall in love with some cars? Yeah. I suspect it's done the opposite here. It is worth noting, here, that Gran Turismo random car prizes were not influenced by what cars you already had. Do you see where I am going with this.

Links in blue are posts of mine explaining the words in question - if you liked this post, you might like those!

[indygo-99]

Spyamp 2.0 - Winamp

Music: ATB - Ecstasy (2004)

[polaroidtransfers]

The Cars

Moving in Stereo