These days all you have to do is pair your smartphone with your car's infotainment system to access your music — at the very least you have an SD card… So talking about the last cassette player in a car feels… prehistoric.
However, it is not prehistory… It was in 2010 that the cassette player was no longer standard equipment in a car model, which is surprising.
Surprising because at that time the end of CD players was already being discussed, due to the popularization of MP3's and also to the growing number of cars with infotainment systems.
It is clear that car cassette players struggled before disappearing… They dominated the interior of cars for decades — they emerged in force in the 70s — and even with the arrival of the CD they resisted. Only at the turn of the century did they disappear more clearly.
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But there was one that lasted longer than the others. Interestingly, no cheap car, like a city car or utility car, was the last to have a cassette player as standard equipment. It really was a luxury vehicle.
THE Lexus SC430 , the intriguing alternative to models like the Mercedes-Benz SL, was the last car on record to have a cassette player as standard equipment.
Launched in 2001, the four-seater luxury convertible, with a bubbling atmospheric V8 and metal roof — so in vogue at the time — kept this equipment until the end of its career in 2010.
We can say that the end of production of the SC430 represented the end of an era… At least, it seems to be so.
Lexus SC430
There are caveats to this story. First, it was the Americans who referred to the Lexus SC430 as the last of the cars to have a standard cassette player, considering the specifications of the model sold in the USA.
Second, as I mentioned, the The Lexus SC430's cassette player was part of its standard equipment, so it is considered the last car to have it. . However, the very American Ford Crown Victoria also had a cassette player available, but in its list of options until… 2011, when it stopped being produced.
What do we stay on? We cannot overlook the possibility that there was another model in another part of the world yet to come with this post-2010 standard equipment. Are you aware of any car model that had as standard or optional equipment a post-2010 cassette player in addition to these two mentioned? If so, leave in the comments what this model is.
About “The Last of the…”. The automobile industry is going through its biggest period of change since the automobile… was invented. With significant changes constantly happening, with this item we intend not to lose the "thread to the skein" and record the moment when something ceased to exist and went down in history to (very likely) never come back, whether in the industry, in a brand, or even in a model.