
By the late 1980s, multiple-disc CD changers began to appear, enabling you to store up to 10 discs a time and switch between them whilst driving. While tapes enhanced audio quality, CDs took it to the next level.
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The eight-track player gave drivers control over the songs they listened to, and with a little bit of dedication and a lot of simultaneously pressing ‘play’ and ‘record’, the dream of hitting the road with your own individually compiled playlist was now a reality. The much clearer stereo sound of FM heralded a big step up in audio quality, but it still left you at the mercy of whatever the DJ was playing.īy the 1970s many car stereos featured a tape deck, giving birth to in-car audio’s greatest phenomenon: mixtapes. The first FM car radio was introduced in Germany in 1952, but despite this, AM continued to rule the airwaves until the 1960s. Here are the most relevant milestones in the history of modern in-car audio.Īlthough the first factory-fitted radio appeared in 1933, for the next 20 years drivers had to make do with the low quality hiss of monophonic AM, the process of radio broadcasting that uses amplitude modulation. Thankfully technology – and common sense – has come on leaps and bounds since then. Nice idea, if rendered somewhat useless by the fact that the records jumped all over the place every time you hit a bump in the road. If the Galvins' radio sparked controversy about driving under the influence of music – it was considered as distracting then as texting at the wheel is today – the debate intensified when Chrysler launched the Highway Hi-Fi, a dash-mounted record player, in 1956. And this in an era when car ownership was a luxury in itself. At $130 it cost a small fortune - around $1,800 today. But at least it existed.įor the first four decades of the automobile, the only soundtrack on offer to drivers was the one provided by its engine, so it was no surprise when, in 1930, brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin of the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation sought to liven things up a little with the Motorola 5T71, the first commercially available in-car radio. The technology seemed pretty clunky back then, and it was. Venture even further back in time and you may even recall methodically compiling that all important mixtape for hours stuck in the car en route to a family seaside holiday, your parents fast-forwarding through all tracks that offended their more sensitive tastes.
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Now, the latest models boast Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, meaning car-buyers can bring their entire music library along for the drive.

With its New Generation i30, which features a range of smart connectivity features, the company reacts to modern customers' needs. Hyundai Motor has a history of being associated with music, from sponsoring the Hyundai Music Park in Spain to this year's Mercury Music Prize. Think back to your first car and you’ll remember the tangle of cables as you plugged your MP3 player in at one end whilst simultaneously charging it through the other, or fumbling through a stack of CDs to find the one you wanted to listen to.

Precisely how we’ve brought that music to our ears has changed drastically over the years.
