Say Watt? 10 Famous Retro Car Audio Partnerships
The car business is no stranger to partnerships, but few joint ventures have the marketing potential of a famous audio manufacturer and an established automotive company. Did you know such associations dated back to the 1980s?
While not every partnership on this list may be music to your ears, that’s not the point: Let’s consider 10 of the most famous retro auto-audio partnerships.
JBL Audio System (Ford)
Ford made a marketing misstep in 1980, when it introduced the new Panther-bodied Lincoln Continental and Mark VI with a “Premium Sound” system sporting six speakers. Even the dashboard was festooned with a “Premium Sound”-branded on/off knob to the left of the head unit. Bragging rights matter in the luxury car game, and the absence of JBL’s signature orange logo was a mistake Ford likely regretted when its crosstown rival got in bed with Bose.
Fast-forward to 1986 and The Blue Oval wised up: Ford’s JBL Audio system was optional for all Lincolns. The system boasted 40 more watts more than the Bose system and was comprised of a gray-faced JBL head unit and two- or three-channel JBL speakers at each corner. The beefy 6×9-inch ’woofers in the rear package tray sported unique metal grilles with Ford-JBL emblems so passersby knew you splashed the cash for better audio. By 1988, a gee-whiz CD player was available. In 1989 the JBL partnership spread deeper across Ford’s product portfolio, but in 1994 Ford engineered its own Mach Audio system.
Lincolns soldiered on with milquetoast Alpine systems during this time — having learned the perils of the Premium Sound Knob — before all Fords reverted to the audio branding game: first with Sony, and then with Bang & Olufsen (Ford) or Revel Audio (Lincoln). JBL wasn’t losing any sleep on the dissolved partnership with Lincoln; as part of a larger company (Harman International) it quickly partnered with Toyota and, later, Ferrari.
