We hear people joke from time to time about the tacky automotive items for sale in any given JC Whitney catalog, but the company is still around and celebrates a century of business in 2015. As part of that centenary, the purveyor of car accessories is looking back to find some of the oddest products in its history.
It’s hard to imagine anyone ever buying some of these things for their car. There were fuzzy covers for the rearview mirror and visors, custom door chimes that played Ave Maria and stuffed animals with light-up eyes for the rear window that basically previewed the CHMSL.
Other items were almost certainly overstating their capabilities. The gyroscopic stabilizers for your wheels somehow claimed to increase tire life for $20. There was also a precursor to the car phone that turned your vehicle into a “low-power radio station” to broadcast up to 10 miles, but with multiple parts priced at up to $169 in ’60s money, the technology certainly wasn’t cheap, even if it worked. The dashboard-mounted record player was also a cool idea but probably didn’t operate on rough roads as well as advertised.
There is one outlier on the list that doesn’t seem absurd in the least. JC Whitney sold audio from events like Le Mans and the Monaco Grand Prix on records. Remember, this was the ’60s and long before recording motorsports for yourself was easy. So, offering a recording that someone could listen to repeatedly was actually a pretty good idea for race fans.
Read the whole list for yourself below, including seemingly dangerous entries like the in-car coffee maker and left-foot gas pedal.
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