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No, never owned a car that cost over $500 when they were in actual play in the world.

In fact, the number might be smaller than $500.

But I did fix a lot of small block engines.

I installed a RCA VICTOR 45 rpm record player in my 1957 Ford, but it didn't look anything like that. They were original equipment in Chrysler cars in certain years (1959 and 1960, I think...); I think the one pictured was an earlier model. You could buy them at various car radio shops (for about $65, I think...).

The one I had had a door across the front that was hinged near the top, and an inverted thick spindle for 45 rpm single records. You slid up to 10 records in the front and then pushed them UP onto the changer spindle, and the arm/cartridge was held against the lower surface of the bottom record with a spring mechanism. The whole record player subchassis was suspended inside the case by four fairly elaborate shock-mount assemblies.

When the bottom record was done playing, the arm swung aside, the mechanism dropped the bottom record off into the bottom of the cabinet, and the arm swung back in place to play the next record on the bottom of the spindle stack.

You had to open up your radio and cut the wires between the tuner section and amplifier section and wire it through the RADIO/PLAYER switch on the player; it used the radio's amplifier stage. The 1957 Ford factory radio had a strange design; it used tubes that would work with 12V on the PLATES of the tubes (as well as the filaments), eliminating the need for a vibrator high-voltage power supply which almost all car radios had then. There was no voltage higher than 12V in that radio; the output stage of the power amp had 2 transistors, and did not give much power operating on only 12 volts.

I made a few bucks hooking these things up for people I knew, because most of them had no idea which wires to unsolder or cut, let alone know how to solder properly. At least half of the guys I knew had these players in their cars in Long Beach, CA in the late 50's and early 60's.

We were so much like what was portrayed in American Graffiti at that time that I was stunned when I first saw the movie; they really nailed it!!

I used to practically live at Hody's Drive-In at Pacific Coast Highway and Anaheim street at night, and then spent my days putting in the latest camshaft or carburetor or whatever for the weekend at the Lions Drag Strip in Wilmington; a strange phase...rofl.

Here is a picture of one identical to mine:

http://www.meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5490/

Great post and pics to both ncdrawl and commsysman.

Don't mean to hijack the thread, but speaking of old bastards, can anyone shed any light on how this record machine functioned?

commsysman,
You're a classic car guy & an audiophile? Me too! I think we're rare. I've heard of such things as these players, but never saw one; kinda cool! How good were they?

That was the Proceed beta unit.

For the more modern minded dude.

But MP3?

That RCA record player worked great; the only problem was that it was a bit hard on records (the tracking force was probably 10 times what you would use on an LP). I do still have a couple hundred 45s that are quite playable, however, that I bought in the 1950s and early 1960s. They were played a lot in the old Ford. I guess that cartridge was a very-hi output special one, since it was designed to feed right into the amplifier of the radio with no preamp or equalization. Hmmmm...maybe there WAS some sort of preamp stage in that record player...I don't remember if there was or not.

For years I had various old cars; for about 20 years I restored a 1960 Austin-Healey that I put a Ford 302 engine and Ford HD 4-speed into, and when I was a kid I had a 1929 model A sedan for a while with a Mercury flathead V8. That big Healey was a fun car, but not too practical for everyday. My current cars are a 2008 Prius and a 2009 Corvette, which I just bought new last Saturday, and also a 2005 Hyundai Tucson 4WD.

It appears to have a mechanism like a jukebox for pulling the records out of their storage slots and feeding them to a turntable; hard to be certain, but that's what it looks like.
It looks like the picture was taken around the 1940s; the records appear to be mostly 12" (classical) 78 RPM records, with one section of standard 10" 78s (actually, the big ones might even be the 16" transcription-size discs that were used to archive radio broadcasts; they look very large...).

That picture appears to have been taken in someone's home, but I'll bet that the unit was actually designed for use in radio stations. Jascha Heifitz owned the classical radio station in Los Angeles for years; I wonder if this could be his home.

...The PANASONIC CQ-TX5500...!

I think these were sold in Asia and maybe South Africa until maybe 2007; never in the USA, I think. Some versions had a built-in tuner.

This was a head-end unit to go in an automobile!!!! Not exactly your 1957 Ford radio....

I had a small Sony reel to reel in one of my first cars.

Didn't stay there very long just a novelty thing.

Lived on Bennett St. in LB just south of Anaheim for a while. Ever go to Jo Jost? Cirivello's deli? Marri's Pizza? It's still there. My sister's boyfriend owned the 49er tavern by LB State. My roomie had Quad ESL's and a home built triode (still has 'em). Sometimes we'd thrash his wicked '64 Chevy II with a built, solid lifter cam 327, MT slicks and aluminum flywheel down Ximino past Wilson High to give the kids a little thrill. Lucky we never got caught by the cops. Long Beach was a paradise for single young people in the '60's and '70's. It's been a while. Back then we all had the ubiquitous Craig 8 track with Pioneer speakers in our cars.

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Lived on Bennett St. in LB just south of Anaheim for a while. Ever go to Jo Jost? Cirivello's deli? Marri's Pizza? It's still there. My sister's boyfriend owned the 49er tavern by LB State. My roomie had Quad ESL's and a home built triode (still has 'em). Sometimes we'd thrash his wicked '64 Chevy II with a built, solid lifter cam 327, MT slicks and aluminum flywheel down Ximino past Wilson High to give the kids a little thrill. Lucky we never got caught by the cops. Long Beach was a paradise for single young people in the '60's and '70's. It's been a while. Back then we all had the ubiquitous Craig 8 track with Pioneer speakers in our cars.

Spring reverb??

I went to Wilson High from 1958 to 1961; a friend of mine lived on Bennett street, but north of the traffic circle off Lakewood Blvd.
Another friend lived about 3 blocks directly north of Joe Jost's and we would go there and get a pile of the Joe's Special sandwiches (swiss cheese, german sausage from the factory 2 blocks away on Anaheim, and a pickle on rye) and play pool; or take the sandwiches and pickled eggs back to his house and drink his dad's beer (we were still under 21). He had a built-from-scratch 5881 amplifier and a Klipsch corner horn with an 18" woofer and one of those huge fiberglass midrange horns on top; it was made from a Klipsch kit he ordered.
He was really precocious; he had his FCC First Class commercial radio license by the age of 15; used to build all sorts of electronics from scratch. I did too, but I was not as good a designer as he was. All of us got jobs at Autonetics as technicians on the Minuteman ICBM program as soon as we turned 18. I bought a lot of car parts with that money...lol.
I remember the Marri's on Broadway by the old DMV building, and also the one on Stearns at Palo Verde. The one on Stearns is still there; only about three blocks from where my future wife lived when we met in 1963 at LBCC.

Joe Jost's is still there, I guess (the last time I was there was 5 years ago), but they don't have Brew 102 beer any more, and the Special sandwiches cost $2.50 now instead of 35 cents; the pickled eggs haven't changed much though, and the poolroom in back still has 80 years of tobacco smoke congealed on the high ceiling.

That sure looks like a big juke box.