Fake Car Stereo will Deter Thieves
19 Comments By Eran Abramson on July 8th, 2008 in DIY (Do It Yourself)
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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July 8th, 2008 at 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
July 8th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
cheap-ass JVC is also theft deterant
July 8th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Cool idea… I dig it.
July 8th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Nice idea, let’s hope I find the old original stereo of my car…
July 8th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Is that the soundtrack for Dirty Dancing? That’s music abuse.
July 8th, 2008 at 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.
July 8th, 2008 at 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.
July 9th, 2008 at 4:04 am
I thought this was hilarious, and blogged about it over on CarDomain. Great stuff.
July 9th, 2008 at 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
July 9th, 2008 at 6:37 am
what a wigger ^
July 9th, 2008 at 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.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
[...] Prevent Car Stereo Theft [...]
July 14th, 2008 at 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.
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:23 am
@jimmyjames “cheap-ass JVC is also theft deterant”
My thoughts exactly.
August 16th, 2008 at 1:32 am
The fake one fits so much better in that seriously fugly car.
September 20th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
[...] car project is completely different that the car stereo installation project to deter thieves and is a huge change to the mobile computing we usually hear or read [...]
October 19th, 2008 at 5:43 am
I enjoyed reading your post. While searching for vehicle security products I am came across the enclosed link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzyGRu6M8sA
Hope everyone finds it helpful.
J
October 20th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
[...] from Cassettes but cannot completely let go. We have seen recent uses of them in this design, the Fake Car Stereo, and the USB Cassette Tape Mix. Cassettes just won’t [...]
October 24th, 2008 at 1:58 am
[...] that makes the iPod seems a little less desirable by Technology innovation. It reminds me of the Fake Care Stereo Deck that uses an old Tape deck to deter thieves from stealing [...]