BERLIN: An old car tends to come with an old radio, and, despite the welcome retro aesthetic, the sound and feature set will probably be less than impressive.
That's where one veteran electronics brand comes in with a range of retro radios ready for older (and new) cars.
Some 35 years since Blaupunkt, one of the big car speaker manufacturers, stopped production, the German company has rebooted and begun reissuing its classic speaker models with modern features paired with original designs.
For anyone with a 90s ride parked in the garage - or just a thing for 90s visuals - their newest product is a car radio with a classic and clunky 90s look.
The Frankfurt RCM 82 DAB is based on the brand's 1992 model of the same name, but things leave the 90s pretty quickly once you start to look at the features.
Behind a slot where you'd expect to put your old cassette tapes, there are ports for USB, AUX and micro-SD. The radio also supports all common radio modes from FM to DAB+, and there's even Bluetooth audio.
The original cassette deck would have been found in 90s Ford Escorts, VW Golfs and Porsche 911s. While it will certainly look great today next to a retro Nokia phone, the price of €500 is steep enough for something with such dated looks.
Selling from Germany, Blaupunkt also offers a modern car radio with a look and feel straight from the 80s, the Bremen SQR46 DAB+, also with DAB+, as well as Bluetooth and connections for a USB stick and SD card.
At around €450 (RM2,117), it's also not a bargain.
Meanwhile Blaupunkt is keeping alive the cult of globe speakers, something that you were likely to see in a Volkswagen Golf Mk1, a Ford Capri or an Opel Manta in the 70s or 80s.
Blaupunkt is targeting classic car owners who have always wanted to screw the circular speakers onto the boot lid, or whose original LAZ 6525 model stopped working a while ago.
The Globe Speaker, as the reissue is known, is equipped with a 3.5-inch full-range speaker. The manufacturer gives a power rating of 25 watts and frequency response of 100 to 20,000 Hertz; by comparison, the original's peak power was 10 watts.
The price is around US$45 (RM214), which is quite modest compared to the amount that classic car owners users usually invest in old-school equipment for their rides - perhaps it's time to bring the spherical speakers to newer-looking cars as well.
