1970s and 1980s car interiors are still sort of my baseline when it comes to my brain-template for being inside a car. I suppose that’s because those were the first interiors I ended up in, and must have imprinted on all those red and blue textured plastics with the fake stitching and the unashamed and ironic use of plaid. I was looking at this pleasingly blue-and-plaid 1980 Toyota Celica interior, complete with fake walnut or burlwood or whatever the hell they call that fake wood that looks kinda like meat, and noticed something. Well, really, I noticed the absence of something.
You’ve probably figured out what it is already: a radio! If I recall other Celicas of the era, the radio would have been fitted into the (was it double-DIN in 1980? No, looks like that standard, also called ISO 7736, didn’t get standardized until 1984) hole in that little cubby thing behind the shifter. If you were too cheap for a radio, you just got that little cubby, perfect for storing cassette tapes that you could not play in the radio you didn’t have!
Yeah! Really don’t crank up that nonexistent volume!
I’ve always found it curious that UK print ads and brochures in the 70s and 80s nearly always showed a new car without a radio, whereas in the US our brochures showed radios with the disclaimer “optional equipment shown.” I assumed it was some difference in trade regulation.
You are incorrect. Source, I learned to drive in a 1979 Celica GT Sunchaser.
The radio is to the right of the clock. The original radio was the style with 2 holes on each side for volume/tuning knob and a FM/AM thing in the middle. The one in this picture appears to have been cut out and replaced with another format. The area just in front of the shifter is from what we were able to tell was for the option of an 8 track tape player, which our car did not have.
The odometer’s hundred thousands digit is also missing.
is this the David Tracy option package?
I love the extra horn button on the lower steering wheel spoke. I guess they wanted to make sure you had easy access to the horn regardless of wheel angle? Interesting…
My dad’s 1985 Opel Rekord TD did not come with a radio either. His solution? He just got a little transistor radio to keep in the cubby where the head unit would have been. For the longest time as a kid, I thought that this is what all car radios were supposed to be.
Other things that the Rekord did not include were RPM gauge, right rearview mirror and rear seatbelts. AC is out of the question, of course. Did I mention that this was the CD trim? Meaning, it was the top of the line trim!
The first new car I bought, I ordered without a radio. It was way cheaper to install an aftermarket one and I could even get a better one. Not much chance you could do that anymore with all the integrated electronics.
I upgraded the headunit in our 2015 Focus when we still had it. It required a separate intermediary processing unit to handle all the vehicle related stuff (TPMS, backup camera, etc) along with an entire aftermarket fascia to accommodate a standard double-DIN. It was an absolutely horrendous task which I hope to never have to do ever again.
Space to put your knees?
I think the plaid is quite loud enough.
Toyota’s designers were just forward thinkers so they knew you would need that cubby so you would have a place to store your iPhone.
“whatever the hell they call that fake wood that looks kinda like meat, and noticed something.”
What a fantastic idea! Instead of fake wood, fake meat dash panels! Who wouldn’t love a dash that reminded them of a perfectly smoked brisket! Since black plastic is already the default dash covering in 99.9999999999999% of cars sold today, just add a pinkish red ring around the edges of the dash panels and you have the look of a crusty-smoked outside. Change the brown and blacks of the faked burled-wood to grays and glisteney fat color, and it’ll look like a well marbled slice of brisket. Brilliant!!!
Not quite Jason! Indeed there is no radio, but a quick Image search shows its space is above the vents to the right of the clock; the cubby is also present in the same images.
Actually, Jason, I think the radio went in shiny black space above the vents, to the right of the clock. I had a college roommate that had an early 80’s Celica and I don’t remember the radio being down there. I think the cubby storage was actually pretty common and frequently included ridges to hold cassette tapes vertically (or maybe those ridges were inserts sold separately?).
Confirmed that the radio goes in the top right slot. That cubby storage down below is where the optional graphic equalizer would go if you wanted to be fancy.
Wow, you’re right, that’s kinda kooky..
What kind of psycho drives around with no music? That’s some serial killer shit
I’ve had several cars that didn’t even have a radio. What’s the point in an old British roadster?
I’ve always preferred listening to the sound of the car and the road. Even now, even during long road trips, I rarely turn the radio on.
It’s nice to have when I’m in the mood, but the era where everything was interrupted by commercials every second or third song ruined it for me. When I was young, radio stations were mostly independent, and there were just a few commercial blocks per hour.
As radio stations got bought up by megacorporations, they experimented to find the maximum saturation of commercials that people would tolerate. My tolerance is very low, and there were even times when there was a commercial after every song. So I got used to listening to other things as I drive.
I visited my brother a few days ago. Slightly over 2 1/2 hours of driving and didn’t even think to turn the radio on. Spotify turned itself on when I connected to Android Auto, but I turned it off right away. I thought about an audiobook, but didn’t feel like focusing on anything specific like that.
If that’s really some serial killer shit, then I’m missing the important part, you know, where I actually kill some people.
So when will we read about you in the news?
So when will we read about you in the news?
Shortly after they insert commercial breaks between my gear shifts.
Fa Fa Fa Fa
Run Run Run Run Awaaaaaay
I remember radios still being an option, even FM was an option. Our Ford Tempo (this is 90’s mind you) had an AM/FM tuner that was it, I don’t think it even had 4 speakers. Roll-down windows, power nothing, but it had A/C. Weird.
My first new car was a 1989 Toyota Tercel. No radio. The car was not my first or even second choice (I really wanted a used Corolla FX hatch, but there were no decent examples to be had), but my mother was co-signing, and she wanted me in something reliable. Later she did buy me an aftermarket stereo as a gift, but I had to get it installed myself.
That had to be one of the last model years that any car was sold without a factory radio in the USA.
Nope! When my Eclipse died in college and I was desperate for something reliable I bought a left over ’98 Chevy Metro directly off the showroom floor. The only “feature” on the sticker was rear defrost. No radio, A/C or power windows (or engine power, really), but it was cheap, reliable and got exceptional mileage.
My first car had the in-dash AM radio near the speedometer that stopped working soon after the car was new in 1969. (I got the car in 1985) my car stereo was a small D-battery-powered boom box that sat on the bench seat, all through high school. Second car and many after I got the cheap screw under dash mount for whatever cheap radio shack radio I bought.
I upgraded the radio in two separate cars before I realized the radio wasn’t the issue, it was everything attached to the radio.
My grandma had a buick skylark of that era. No sideview mirror on the passenger side. No AC. AM Radio only. The good old days.
I bought a new 1980 Fiesta, with zero options. No radio, no hole for a radio, but you could purchase a pod that attached under the dash behind the shifter, similar to this Celica. A nice Pioneer head unit, two amps, and 4 speakers later I took 2nd place in a car stereo contest.
Larry, my mother bought a new 1976 Fiesta and then a 1980 Fiesta when she totalled the first in a snowstorm. She had the dealer add AM radios. They were attached to the bottom of the dash board in the center of it. Neither car even came with a door on the glove box! One time I was rear-ended in the ’80, and all the papers, booklets, pens, maps, etc were shot in perfect order onto the passenger seat. No mess at all. But: They got 40mpg and were so light you could get air on a bit of a lip.
They were wonderful, simple cars. I drove mine for my job, 100k miles in three years, but I was young and didn’t mind the flat seats, noise, and the light front end above 70 mph. Yeah, no glovebox door, and no dimmable rear view mirror, but there was also nothing to break.
So you got a tach and a clock, but no radio?
Where’s the choke?
What’s that large thing behind the shifter?
The cameraman is really excited to be in this car.
That interior is great! I love the simplicity of that era, no tablets haphazardly stuck to the dash as ‘features’!
Also, more cars need plaid or colored seats!
Plaid is back and fully in style, but only in cars I can never afford.
VW GTIs aren’t that expensive, especially if you shop used. And they have some of the best plaids.
And actual gauges instead of just another screen behind the steering wheel
100% agree! I wish manufacturers were brave enough to make cars this simple in the EV era. Just give me AC, 250 miles of battery range and a dock to plug my phone, and I am happy cranking up my own windows.
I was thinking it would have been to the left of the cigarette lighter (and I presume that’s an ashtray to the right of the lighter), but went on a picture hunt – I guess it’s actually to the right of the clock, but integrated with the trim, so maybe not easy to replace with an aftermarket unit.
That truly is the quintessence of a ’70s dash. Except most of my family’s cars weren’t even fancy enough for the fake wood. And had way more blanks for features Dad didn’t spring for. He wasn’t cheap, just had six kids to feed.
I used to look at those blanks and think “someday…”
No radio, but you do seem to get a horn push on each one of all three of the steering wheel spokes!
The decadence is making my head spin.
Homer said you could never find a horn button when you needed one. Toyota Kaizen.