Car radio nostalgia

My experience with driving different vehicles over the past couple of weeks has stirred memories of the cars I've had over the years, and more specifically, the car radios.

My first car was a 1984 Chevrolet Caprice Classic. There was only a stock radio that used buttons that physically moved the dial to the general vicinity of the station, and the dials allowed fine-tuning. There was no way to play music from external sources. 

I had friends who had upgraded the stereo systems in their cars. One friend had a Kenwood pull-out radio. The idea was that you could slide in the radio and pull it completely out and take it with you to prevent theft. These were much fancier than stock radios with a cassette player and equalizer. The really fancy ones had the ability to fast-forward or rewind a song and stop at the break for the adjacent song.

My next car was a 1984 Toyota Celica GTS, which I had in college. I didn't want to go the route of a pull-out radio, so I opted for a detachable faceplate. Rather than pull the whole radio out and carry it around, this innovation allowed you to remove the faceplate. If someone broke into your car and stole your radio, supposedly, it wouldn't work without the faceplate. I don't remember the exact one I had, but I know it was a Pioneer and had a CD drive. It could also play MP3 CDs, which was a new innovation at the time.

After I graduated college and moved to Arizona, I purchased a 1996 Nissan Sentra and was back to a stock radio, which still had a cassette player. This radio was very strange because it gradually and mysteriously increase the volume without my adjusting it. I accidentally discovered that if I pushed my finger through the door covering the cassette slot, the volume would go back to normal.

I kept the Nissan for two years before I finally purchased my first new car--a 2001 Dodge Neon SRT-4. What a fast little car that was! The stock radio had a CD changer that allowed you to load up to five discs. I don't remember whether it played MP3 CDs.

I burned out the clutch and eventually sold the SRT-4. I went through a couple of leased cars before buying a Volvo from a friend of mine that crapped out well before it should have. This brings me to my current 2010 Mazda 3. The radio isn't much fancier than what I had previously. There is a six-disc CD changer that can play MP3s. There is no USB port, but there is an auxiliary port that doesn't work anymore. I use a Bluetooth device that broadcasts my phone through the radio tuned to a specific frequency.

I recently bought a wireless touch screen on Amazon Day to finally have Carplay. It works, but the mount that came with it doesn't keep the screen in place on my dashboard. I'll live with it for now as long as I can listen to my podcasts. When I'm ready for the next vehicle, I hope it will have Carplay built in.