What’s the connection between the Beatles’ George Harrison, boxing legend Muhammad Ali, and Chrysler cars? The Highway Hi-Fi: a vinyl record player that just happened to be the world’s first in-car music system. It appeared 60 years ago this spring, in 1956, and should have been a smash hit. It was innovatory, a major talking point, arrived as the car market was booming as never before, and it came with much press hype. It also had the backing of a leading motor manufacturer. What could possibly go wrong?
Unlike car radios—which had already been around for more than a decade—the Highway Hi-Fi actually gave you a choice. The records you wanted to play were picked by you rather than by a DJ in a radio station miles away, and those discs could hold some 90 minutes of music. This playing time was twice what you could get from a normal vinyl record of the mid-1950s—a trick accomplished by dragging the Highway Hi-Fi’s playing speed down to a mere 16.66 RPM, half that of a normal vinyl album. In technological terms, this was seen as a minor miracle.
The Highway Hi-Fi, in action.
And yet, within a year of launch, sales were plummeting, and 12 months after that the Highway Hi-Fi was being withdrawn—also soon to be the fate of the companies that were to "copy" the format.
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