Back in High School, I was so excited when I purchased a cassette player with a removable faceplate. I worked hard to afford that car stereo and was happy about all of the features, sound, and options except how attractive it may have been to thieves. In the beginning, I removed the faceplate when I left my vehicle, but that didn’t last too long: who wants to carry their stereo’s faceplate with them? With the technology and amazing sound coming out of car stereos today, these items become even more attractive to car thieves, and a better way to deter them must be realized. How about the fake faceplate?
To find a car with a cassette player is very rare, and the chances that these same stereos would be stolen is pretty slim. Why not combine the practically obsolete technology to your current car stereo in order to decrease the chances of it being stolen. In other words, make your stereo uglier and less appealing.
A great Do It Yourself project was created that used an old cassette car stereo, half a physical cassette, and some ingenuity to build a faceplate to go over the car stereo, making it look worthless. You can make your own using the DIY direction at Instructables, which include instructions, explanations, and images.
Since you will be using an old stereo, I guess the cost would be decreased and wouldn’t matter much if you screw up along the way. Just save your worthy stereo deck.
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We used to have these in the 90’s - It looked like a knob type fm radio that fit over any DIN style tape deck - we didn’t own cd players back then - they cost $300, and skipped constantly.
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jimmyjones — July 8th, 2008 @ 7:59 pm
Honestly Dude,
Your car looks better with the cassette deck. Why didn’t you spring for a deck that actually matched your car? Crutchfield does all that work for you.
Jimmy
jimmyjames — July 8th, 2008 @ 8:12 pm
cheap-ass JVC is also theft deterant
Josh — July 8th, 2008 @ 9:44 pm
Cool idea… I dig it.
Poringo — July 8th, 2008 @ 10:26 pm
Nice idea, let’s hope I find the old original stereo of my car…
Joe — July 8th, 2008 @ 11:04 pm
Is that the soundtrack for Dirty Dancing? That’s music abuse.
Egon — July 8th, 2008 @ 11:27 pm
Thieves dont care how cheap your stereo is. I have had multiple $50 road gear cd players stolen out of my cars.
Remember theft normally takes place at night and their goal is to get in and out as fast as they can.
Nice mod.
John Coyle — July 8th, 2008 @ 11:36 pm
In all fairness, the Dirty Dancing soundtrack does contain “Be My Baby” by the Shirelles, and that’s pretty much the greatest song ever recorded.
John Coyle — July 9th, 2008 @ 4:04 am
I thought this was hilarious, and blogged about it over on CarDomain. Great stuff.
mike jones — July 9th, 2008 @ 4:41 am
All my tapedeck ever bangs is “Ballin is a habit” by Lil’ flip.
I got a better stereo than that ugly ass thing tho
gerry — July 9th, 2008 @ 6:37 am
what a wigger ^
Eran Abramson — July 9th, 2008 @ 8:30 am
Hi Everyone, thank you so much for your feedback and comments.
I thought this was a creative idea of using old, useless products to hide newer, more valuable ones…practical and fairly cheap diy.
@John, thanks for the post at CarDomain.
Bloody Condom Daily Links » Blog Archive » July 9, 2008 — July 9th, 2008 @ 3:00 pm
[...] Prevent Car Stereo Theft [...]
Dwindle — July 14th, 2008 @ 2:40 am
We used to have these in the 90’s - It looked like a knob type fm radio that fit over any DIN style tape deck - we didn’t own cd players back then - they cost $300, and skipped constantly.
kamikaze.cockroach — August 2nd, 2008 @ 3:23 am
@jimmyjames “cheap-ass JVC is also theft deterant”
My thoughts exactly.
Liam — August 16th, 2008 @ 1:32 am
The fake one fits so much better in that seriously fugly car.