There’s two ways I usually do these Cold Starts: first, I’m either diligent and smart and do something the night before, leisurely, gracefully, a snifter of cognac in my hand, my trained raven, Albemarle, whispering some novel word choices in my ear; or, the more common way, scrambling desperately when I wake up and realizing I don’t know what I’m going to do, frantically tossing piles of car brochures around and peeing myself, just a little bit. Today is one of the second type, but luckily our own Adrian Clarke threw that image you see up top there in our Slack room and I was smitten: rear-view mirror radios!
That one up there is one of the more famous ones, I learned – or maybe assumed, it’s early – and is called the Voxon Vanguard, from 1960. Voxon was an Italian company, and that makes sense when you think about it, because unlike in America, where cars had vast acres of dashboard space, with plenty of cavernous garages ready to take big tube radios, little Italian cars had no such advantages.
Just look at the dash of the famous Fiat 500, Italy’s every-Tony-and-Maria’s car:
That’s a tiny dash, and there’s no provision for a radio. I guess you could try to cram something in that central open glove box/bin or under the dash, but then your passenger would always be smacking their knees on it and who wants that? Hence, the brilliance of a radio built into the rear-view mirror, hung out of the way!
One thing I can’t quite figure out, though, is if these ads are hiding wires from me, deceptively. Look at this:
Other companies that made similar units were much the same, too, like this Murphy rear-view radio:
So.. where are these getting their power? Do they actually need 6 or 12V from the car, or do they just run on how beautiful your eyes are when you look into that mirror? The Voxon one also seems to be a two-part unit, since this was, after all, 1960, and things weren’t really miniaturized. Here’s a little video showing the under-dash unit with speaker and tubes, and the mirror unit:
As you can see, there’s a nice big bundle of wires going from that speaker unit to the mirror unit, so where are they hiding them? I know it’s an ad , but still, how are they doing it? Is there enough headliner in a Fiat 500 to run wires behind?
I did find some schematic diagrams for the radio, like this one of the speaker/power unit, but there’s no wire-hiding secrets here. Maybe people were just good at tucking the wires from behind the dash and around the windshield border? That’s what I’d have tried to do, I think.
Interestingly this general radio-in-mirror concept is alive and well today:
There’s lots of replacement rear-view mirrors you can get that will display Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in them, which is really the spiritual successor if these old Voxon radios. Of course, these aren’t usually true mirrors, but actually screens, which are garbage, as I’ve explained before. So there.
Voxson (correct spelling) did some weird radios in the 70s, often removable because of the likelihood of theft in Italy. Look up the tiny Voxson Tanga, which fitted into the dash in front of the passenger on a Fiat 126.
Jason, It’s a radio. It’s by nature wireless. Sheesh, I would have thought you would understand.
If this is an oblique IT Crowd reference, I salute you.
Clever packaging, really, being able to mount the amplifier and speaker into a package to drop into a speaker hole. The radio and amp unit are all solid-state, so quite fancy for 1960s aftermarket tech.
The mirror unit did the receiver business–single conversion superhet receiver design, and the four-wire harness sending power to and getting receiver output from the tuner to go to the amplifier/speaker unit. Nowadays, that whole tuner unit would be packaged on one IC.
I want eyes like that. Where can I buy one?
My mirror must be broken because it just shows an old chap looking nothing like the image I have of myself.
Looking at the carefully labelled dashboard, it is number 15, which always got me. Why did no-one else put the starter lever down by the floor tunnel?
And I also remember having to take shoes off because numbers 13 and 14 were so close together….
I have a Carplay Box that I suction cup just below the rear view to help with cars that don’t have a Bluetooth radio or I don’t want to take apart the original.
Bluetooth Torch. They used bluetooth. Learn your history! /s
When I traveled in Spain in the 1980s there were still plenty of tiny European cars on the road. It was typical to see a little transistor radio dangling from the rear-view mirror by its wrist strap, or propped up on the dashboard somewhere.
(Bonus points to anyone who remembers palm-sized transistor radios…)
I was watching In the Heat of the Night last night, and one of the police cars featured a hanging transistor, that was conveniently turned off so he could peep at a lady.
I recall building a crystal radio when I was abut 9 or 10.
When I had the ’72 Super Beetle, the stereo consisted of a Sony Discman* attached via patch cable to an amplifier, and those pieces were stacked neatly in the glove compartment.
* For the youngsters, that was a small portable CD player with a built-in radio. Baller.
Taking a step back, in my ’61 Beetle I had a Panasonic 8 track that cost more than the car mounted on a sliding under dash bracket. I could remove the radio from the car and take it into my dorm room for use there with a 12 volt source. In the car I had a 6 to 12 volt upverter.
Anti-theft *and* useful. 🙂
While driving I left the glove compartment lid open for access and to cool the amp, and when parked the lid was shut so no one could see the frankly epic technology installation.
Taking a step forward, in my 1972 Super Beetle, I fitted one of those Retrosound radios. Pretty neat, they actually look like they belong in a classic car. I didn’t get one with Bluetooth because it was 2014 and it wasn’t like they were going to get rid of aux ports on cell phones or anything. But they did so I have a small Bluetooth adapter plugged into my stereo via the aux cord I installed in the glove box. It feels weird talking to someone on the phone via Bluetooth in a 52 year old car.
Have similar in my ’49 Sled… passers-by just think I’m a crazy guy talking to myself (since they can’t hear over the exhaust rumble anyway)
Leaving a trail of AA batteries in its wake. AAs were basically currency among my peers.
Actually no – it came with a cord that connected it to a 12V cigarette-lighter-style outlet.
The VW didn’t have one, so I wired in an aftermarket socket from Radio Shack. Unlimited power! 🙂
Such luxury!
Boy I hope that Discman had skip protection!
My first portable CD player did not, and the rear suspension in our Dodge Stratus was not kind to me and the Columbia House CDs that I signed up for (unbeknownst to my parents).
I believe it did, though it could be overwhelmed by the stiff front end.
The VW had been lowered in the front about four inches by someone – not me, btw – installing two sets of spring compressors (per side) on the MacPherson strut front end. Basically they were clamps with bolts that hooked over two individual coils on the springs, and when the bolts were tightened the two coils would be clamped together.
It sounds janky and in retrospect it almost certainly was, but IIRC that was the intended purpose of those particular compressors. IOW they were not modified versions of the longer type one would use to disassemble a strut so… maybe they weren’t so bad?
Narrator: they were still bad
Since these radios are mounted or integrated with the rear view mirror, I assume they can only receive Oldies stations.
Or music from the days of future passed.
Perfect for breathing deep the gathering gloom.
or to watch lights fade when invoking the “anti-dazzle adjustment” feature
If you bundle the wires it would be a pain, however if you arrange them so they are all flat, maybe that would work?
I wonder how these dealt with the heat of sitting in the sun all day.
My ’71 Fiat 500 has a switched interior light in the bottom of the mirror. A 12V and GND wire plug into the mirror. It would be quite simple to plug those into a jaunty little radio mirror. Picture here
My 93 Chevy had map lights in the bottom of the rear-view mirror that were powered by a circuit that was switched with the ignition. It was really simple and tidy to tap into for supplying power to a radar detector mounted in the ideal spot above the mirror.
Back in 1990, I ran a 12V wire up to the rearview in my brand new Miata for a radar detector. Soonafter, an aftermarket interior light mirror kit debuted. Double win!
I went to adjust the mirror in my Camaro yesterday morning and instead of getting to listen to my music the car just yelled at me about OnStar and how I don’t have an active subscription for 15 seconds at a volume that was entirely too loud for the first thing in the morning.
Just a few months after buying my 18MY car, and paying the dealer $200 for port tags and to set up all of my accounts (because you can’t do that on your own), AT&T turned off the 3G networks all of the infotainment/app features ran on. I’m actually kind of glad, because *puts on tinfoil hat* now they can’t track me, or send me ads, or scream about a service I don’t pay for. It’s a “dumb” car now. I still have built-in nav, AA/CP, all that good stuff, but no internet connected services and it’s kinda perfect…
I made sure my 17MY car couldn’t track me. Since it starts with a crank and has no electronics I think I am good. Model Year 1917.
Thanks for the laugh. And the memory of my late Grandpa. Born in 1902.
Broke his arm at age 8 trying to crank a car with a friend so they could cruise the streets of Yonkers. Wish you a good one.
I still haven’t got used to the idea that we are living in “The Twenties” or that “Turn of the Century” might mean the year 2000.
That just broke my brain.