Master Fabricator Aaron Kaufman shared his experience seeing a real deal 1950’s Philips Norelco Auto Mignon in-car record player and honestly, our minds are blown too.
It’s hard to believe but over 60 years ago, if you wanted, you could listen to the latest jams while you’re driving without a radio thanks to these ingenious in-car record players. Fabricator Aaron Kaufman shared on Instagram earlier yesterday (Nov. 13,2019) the first time he ever saw an old-school in-car record player working, installed in a car, for the first time and it’s pretty mind blowing.
Ironically, Aaron had to go all the way to Sweden, a repository of old muscle cars, to see one in action.
In-car record players first hit mainstream cars as aftermarket add-ons around the early 1950’s with the Highway Hi-Fi Record Player pioneering the market. However, since these new Hi-Fi Record players only used 33 1/3 rpm Long Playing Microgroove records, a record size most popular music of the time wasn’t being produced on, these Hi-Fi systems were superseded by players using the more popular 7-inch 45-rpm size records.
One of the most popular in-car record players was the Philips Norelco Auto Mignon, just like the one Aaaron Kaufman saw. Unlike other 45-RPM in-car record players which automatically played records from a stack as high as 14, these Philips units only held one record at a time.
If you had one of these, you’d better have a passenger riding shotgun to swap a new record in if you wanted to driver longer than a trip to the post office with music blasting.
If you use your imagination, these in-car record players probably got more use when cars are parked on some romantic hilltop overlooking the city if you catch my drift.
Youtube is full of videos showing just how awesome these in-car record players are. Here are some of my favorites below.
And on the off chance you still have one of these in-car record players kicking around, it would behoove you to know, in good condition, they’re fetching upwards of $2,000 on eBay.
So the next time you complain about how there’s nothing good on the radio or how you don’t have enough songs to bluetooth through your speakers, think about how hard it was for drivers a couple of decades ago.
They’d be lucky to have more than five songs to blast on their commute home.
