Record Players For Cars Seemed Like A Good Idea In 1956

The history of consumer goods is littered with brilliant ideas that weren’t quite ready for public consumption yet. In the ’50s, if you wanted to listen to some music in your vehicle, your choices were listening to the radio or forcing your family members to sing. Until the invention of the Highway Hi-Fi in-car record player changed all that. Or could have, if it had caught on with the public.

You know, records: those large, flat vinyl discs susceptible to scratches and prone to skipping that people used for playing music for much of the 20th century. In a world without consumer magnetic tape players, how else were you going to transport music into vehicles? Multiple companies thought that turntables for the car were fantastic and commercially viable ideas. They were not. Consumer Reports unearthed this bit of semi-forgotten tune-blasting history from the late ’50s and early ’60s.

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