The car is being painted so there is nothing exciting there. Lets turn our attention to another item that adds so much to the looks of the dash - the radio. I say looks because the radios of the era would not tune any stations worth listening these days in addition to being 6V which makes them practically useless except for their contribution in the looks department. The radios that came with Ovals were supplied by Motorola and their logo (Motorola) on the face plate gave them the popular name - the big M radios. The cars did not come factory fitted with radios (which would have been Blaupunkt, Telefunken or the like) and were fitted with Motorola supplied units. There is a mystery surrounding the absence of European units and the supply of American Motorola units in cars sold to American customers. The most logical explanation that I have been able to dig out so far is that the European units were considered illegal in the US at the time as they could tune into more than one frequencies. Those of us who have seen or used the radios of yesteryears must be familiar with the terms Long Wave, Medium Wave and Short Wave. To my friends who were born after 1980 you can be excused to think that Radios are only FM (frequency modulation) and AM (Amplitude modulation)
The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is the equivalent, even though a potent version of our PEMRA though I should be excused for making this comparison as FCC is an independant body while....anyways back to the topic...
So FCC did not approve the European radios fitted to the cars imported into the US as they also had the Long wave reception capability. The Long Wave at the time was used for strategic communications hence its reception in cars was considered illegal.
Contd....
