Engineering school, 1986: Somebody pranked one of my classmates by wrapping his MGB with the innards of a cassette tape. I found it hilarious enough then to photograph it. But what’s compelling about the photos now is all the cars that surround it.
A college campus can be fertile Curbside Classic hunting ground, at least for cars 10 to 20 years old. Cars Mom or Grandma used to drive but handed down to the college bound. Cars that a high-schooler bought, thanks to a part-time job at Mickey D’s. The neighboring Chevette and Mustang II could have come from either source. I see a Ford Elite back there – probably from Grandma. I also see a Celica and an Omnirizon. Do you see anything I’ve missed?
But back to this MGB. Notice its license plate. This photo was taken in Terre Haute, Indiana, meaning this little car made the trip from Miami, Florida, some 1,200 miles. That’s about 17 hours of butt in low-slung seat. Sounds like a punishing trip.
I do not really miss cassette tapes. I recall seeing a good number of them strewn along roadsides, no doubt after someone’s car cassette deck took a good bite out of it.
My college parking lot experience was about 5 years before yours. Most of the cars were from the 70s, so Dusters, Novas, Mustangs were everywhere. There were even a few 50s cars still hanging on. I remember both a 55 or 56 Chrysler and a red and white 55 DeSoto. Both were pretty ratty, but still in use. I also had a math teacher who drove a 1947 Dodge sedan to school every day.
Last summer I was sitting at a red light in traffic and spotted a smashed cassette on the ground, film waving around in the breeze and all. I felt like I was in a time machine, since I haven’t seen that image in over a decade.
Who could afford a car?
I pedaled my trusty Fuji winter, spring, summer and fall.
When I was in high school, my friends and I used to pull pranks like this on each other all the time. They covered my car in shaving cream once, wrapped it in toilet paper another time, and squeezed packets of electrolyte gel all over my windows another time. I once poured sweet and sour sauce all over my friend’s door handles, and assisted in placing dixie cups filled with water on the hood of his car.
After I graduated, some of my friends who were still in high school moved on to saran-wrapping each other’s cars. Here’s my two friends doing that to another friend’s car. Man, I miss high school 🙂
I had a convertible that I never locked, so my friends decided to completely stuff the interior with crumpled newspapers one evening.
My buddy used to park his old one-lung motorcycle across from the lecture hall where I muddled through poli-sci. One day I thought it would be fun to pull the wire off the spark plug. I then got to watch him trying to kick start that beast over and over again. Ever had a foot slip off the lever mid-kick? Bloody shin city!….hahahahaha
Condoms over the tailpipe(s). Subtle yet effective.
A small potato pushed into the tailpipe. Just don’t stand behind when he/she starts it…
My brother did this to a much disliked French teacher’s A35.It shot out like a bullet.
Hey Brendan, I bet you wouldn’t be too happy if they pranked you with your TSX!!!!
BTW I saw my first V-6 TSX today at the dealership – it was a white one with parchment leather – in for a routine oil change – love those wheels in person!!
Haha, no I made it very clear to my friends when I got it that no kind of funny business would be tolerated. I was already anal about keeping the Highlander perfect, which was part of the reason they liked to prank me.
My neighbor has a 4-cylinder TSX in white over parchment. I like that color combination. My other neighbor has an ’08 TL in navy over parchment. I really like that car!
It pains me to say that one of my rims is scratched up pretty bad from hitting a curb parallel parking. I’m hoping to get it either refinished or worst case replace it once the weather gets warmer. They’re my favorite wheels!
I am going to call the car nose to nose with the celica an early Audi 5000 with the american round headlight treatment.
http://coolcarswallpaper.com/audi-5000-wallpapers/
I think you’re right.
That’s what I was thinking also.
I still use cassettes and have a perfectly good working Walkman. They’re advantage was that they didn’t skip like a CD player, and could be used on a bicycle, motorcycle and running. And I had very little problem with cassette players eating tapes. Regular cleaning, and FF/Reversing the tape at the slightest hint of speed wobble due to rub saw to that.
In my college days I was a audio freak: Home built amplifier, kit preamp, turntable, reel to rell, cassette, 8-track and elcassette (which many of our readers have never heard of, no doubt).
Radio Shack used to carry cassette repair kits; they were 1) a decent-quality empty shell, and 2) spools with leader attached. If the old cassette’s leaders were still OK, you could just transfer the spools of tape from the old cassette into the new shell, put the two halves together, put in the screws, and you were good to go, and the tape would play reliably. I did that with some ill-tempered prerecorded tapes that were in cheap, crappy shells.
Those days are long gone.
As is Radio Shack.
And yes, I remember those. Used them once or twice.
In the spring of 1971 a high school classmate had a 1969 Honda N600 (introduced 1970). They didn’t weigh much and they were incredibly small. I just stared at the car and thought WTF is that. Eventually a chance presented itself and with 8 guys we picked up the car and carried it from the front lot to a back lot at the high school. Took him forever to find it.
Wow, my fellow engineering students never had anything as cool as an MGB.
Not that ran, anyway..
There is a guy here having a Porsche 944.
Other cars pop up in engineering university where I attend: Datsun 240Z, Honda S2000, Chevy El Camino, two Lincoln Mark VIII, AMC Gremlin, Plymouth volare, Chrysler imperial, and an unknown Fiat convertible from ’70s or ’80s.
In junior high school the coach had us students walk out to the parking lot and pick up and carry his MGB out of the ivy and back onto the parking lot. In high school the same thing happened to a teachers Corvair wagon, the coach got a bunch of students to pull it out of the iceplant and carry it down the walkway back to the street. Both time kids had lifted the cars into their off road spots. Probably wouldn’t be allowed to do that today. I had a 66 VW bus and had broken my ankle and the cast could not clear the front panel space between the clutch pedal. The solution was a toilet plunger resting on the pedal to push down when shifting gears. Of course this brilliant method required letting go of the steering wheel when shifting, so don’t try this at home, kids. My “friends” got a hold of my keys and rolled the bus down hill a few blocks and then stuck the plunger on the center of the roof. It was funnier to them then it was to me.
In the olden days, we used to carry a lecturer’s Mini into the building and up the staircase as far as it would fit. Then leave it there.
That would be Elcaset, an overgrown cassette format that Sony hoped would take off … that audio ensemble of yours would be quite something to have in working order today.
Off topic for CC perhaps, but it still amazes me how in boomer college days, listening to music was a *social* pastime, and the point of having a nice stereo was to entertain friends (hopefully of the female persuasion). Now, even the fancier gear targeting college-age people is all about headphone (i.e. solitary) listening. How sad.
I still like the visceral impact of speakers–the “whomp” of the bass drum in the Verdi “Dies irae,” the 32-foot low C pipes in organ music, that kind of stuff that hits the whole body. Even the very best headphones can’t match that.
Never had an Elcaset, but still have reel-to-reel and cassette, and I’m slowly digitizing my tapes (a lot of radio broadcasts and live performances) while the tapes are still playable….
The Elcaset was actually a neat idea. For those who’ve never seen one, visualize a cassette but about four times as big in all dimensions. The idea was to give cassette convenience, with reel to reel fidelity, as the tape traveled at 3-3/4 ips, which was the slower, but still acceptable speed on a reel to reel machine.
Unfortunately, Dolby B arrived immediately afterwards, thus giving the regular cassette fidelity that could compete with reel to reel and 8-track. The Elcaset immediately became an answer to a question that nobody was asking.
I don’t miss cassette tapes,I threw a Twisted Sister cassette out of my Sunbeam Rapier after it became disemboweled(probably not a great loss to music) and saw it dragging behind me 30 minutes later.
Just couldn’t take it anymore eh?
Actually they were pretty good live.I saw them twice,onceI think as a warm up band for Motorhead
Now that’s a concert I would have killed for tickets: Twisted Sister opening for Motorhead. About the only thing I could think of better would be Megadeth opening for Judas Priest (which I saw – the Painkiller tour).
Now that’s one I’d have loved to see.
+1! Would have been great seeing them back to back, Rust in piece is my favorite album too
I saw what you did there Matt….
CC effect. I was literally just thinking the other day that you never see tape from a cassette strung from trees, roadsigns, etc. anymore. Another American pastime bites the dust.
I had the effect inside a car a few times…
Here student pranks often involve beer, rather cars….but there is a famous occasion when an Austin 7 was put on to to the roof of the Senate House of Cambridge University. I’m innoccent as charged, of course, except for the memorable occasion we poured a bottle of washing up liquid into a city centre fountain……
Ah yes, the old ‘detergent in the fountain’ trick.
Back around 1970, some universtity students (not me!) poured a significant quantity of detergent into the large fountain behind the administration building, creating a spectacular quantity of foam that spread far and wide. What they (probably) did not realize at the time was that the fountain was an integral part of the cooling system for the university’s brand new mainframe computer, which had to be shut down for a couple of days while the mess was cleaned up.
More entertaining was time a bunch of engineering students (again, not guilty!) disassembled a VW bug, carried all the pieces down into one of many tunnels linking the buildings on campus, then reassembled it in a very tight space, all in the middle of one night. It took quite some time for the campus maintenance crews to get it out of there.
Excellent!
Engineering stuidents are always the best for a decent prank……
I knew some engineering students at ODU that would invert and rotate a large abstract steel sculpture they’d pass cutting across campus on the way home from the bars. Eventually the prank lost its zest, as it dawned on them that nobody ever noticed the sculpture wasn’t in its original orientation.
Yes. There was the time in my dorm when a EE student got a signal generator, hooked it up to his big stereo, and through trial and error discovered the resonant frequency of our dormitory.
Same thing happened at Ga. Tech, only with an MGB into the owners dorm room.
The “fountain as cooling system” is a neat trick. Back in the ’50s and ’60s (well before my time) there was a huge fountain/concrete pool on NC State’s campus that served as a heat exchanger for the research nuclear reactor in the adjacent building. (Of course this was the non-irradiated cooling water!) Unfortunately, in the mid 70’s they expanded the nuclear labs building over where the fountain used to be, having installed a new reactor with a more conventional cooling system.
An Austin 7 was also put on the top of this building, the top storey is 25+ feet high and access to the roof is via a ladder.
Perhaps slightly more recently (than the 1930’s) at a similar nearby building one of the rock climbing club put a chamber pot on top of one of the chimneys. It was far beyond the reach of a ladder so they put up a scaffold, but ran out of time before reaching roof level. The next morning when they came back the chamber pot was moved two chimneys along!
Oops I didn’t include the photo of the building…
“Washing up liquid” or soap, as we know it here.
I was only party to one automotive related prank in college. There was an annoying girl who claimed that the couple year old Mazda pickup she owned was the greatest vehicle ever created. So we hatched a plan. We saved a couple of 12 packs of bottled beer complete with the cardboard box and someone scrounged up a couple of boards about the size of the top of the case. One night we found her truck in the parking lot. A few of us grabbed the bumper and lifted it up while two of us slid the case of empties and the board under the rear axle. The result was the rear tires were sitting ever so slightly off the ground so the vehicle was immobile. A few weeks later some of us ran into her at a party and asked her about her truck. She quickly figured out that it was us that had left her high and dry.
That is definitely more creative than putting the drive wheels on watermelon rinds.
Or greasing the tram tracks on a hill.
Ah, Matt! I see what ya did there!
CC prank effect! Today, my work buddy said he slung a hubcap…so on lunchbreak i fabbed up an ‘aluminum alloy’ upgrade. I think it looks as good as any full chrome ‘dubs’. Ill have a site on Kickstarter if sny fellow CC’ers want to invest!
I know people who would consider that aluminum foil wheelcover to be a permanent solution.
Yeah, I’d just ignore that problem.
Now, is this what they mean when people keep referring to dubs on an Impala?
A friend of a friend was such a cheapskate, he wired rocks to the wheels on his Vega to avoid having to pay for balancing.
Subscribed .
-Nate
I love that MGB, and the Mustang II hatchback next to it. You can keep the Chevette. I have never been in an MGB, but found the 2006 Miata quite comfortable, once you get into it. Getting in and out is where all the pain is. If it weren’t for that, I would seriously consider one as a daily driver.
I am seriously into 8 track tapes. I spent a small fortune on 8 track tapes and equipment on eBay. I have underdash 8 track players in both the Pinto and Fairlane. I got lucky and found a whole case of 24 blank 8 track tapes that had never been opened on eBay, and grabbed them. I have the equipment to record digital music onto 8 track. I also have lots of cassettes and records (yes, actual vinyl records) including over 100 45rpms. Digital may be easier, but for someone my age, nothing beats the fun of listening to ’60s and ’70s music on tapes and records.
I was recently reading about one of Pink Floyd’s records from the 70s (can’t remember which). They had to split one of the pieces in two to fit on the LP, but the 8 track has the piece complete as one.
The album was ‘Animals’ and the track was ‘Pigs on the Wing’. Apparently the 8 track version features a guitar solo by Snowy White that’s on neither of the split tracks on the LP.
That’s right, Pigs on the Wing faded out on side A and faded back in on side B. I used to hit the reverse button to keep it going. 8 Track gave better continuity but you had to jam a folded up cigarette pack down one side of the cartridge to keep it tight enough in the player to drive the tape.
Haven’t actually listened to the album for a long while. I remember really liking ‘Sheep’. Maybe it’s time to drop the needle soon…
That’ll be “Dark Side Of The Moon”. I finally copied my german vinyl pressing to an MP3 format and made the wonderful discovery that it is one seemless piece of music but had to be seperated in two.
I’ve been digitalizing my entire collection of vinyl slowly but surely. I can now cruise and listen to music on a tiny mp3. Still got my cassettes though. And yes, guilty of chucking those outa the window when they jammed or broke.
Haven’t got round to digitising my LPs. I did some CDs before I lost them all. As to listening off the ‘Cloud’, I’m not so happy with the idea of renting music when I want to listen to it – which seems to be the way things are going. Apparently iTunes was seeking out tracks that weren’t actually licensed and was deleting them from collections.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/apple-deleted-non-itunes-music-off-ipods-for-two-years-answers-for-it-in-court/
Annndddd, that’s why I will never own an Apple product. Or a Kindle. It’s too Big Brotherish the way they can delete stuff from ‘your’ device. It’s only a matter of time ’til we can only rent devices and ownership will be the sole property of the manufacturer.
same here- although I only buy ‘quadraphonic’ tapes now…I have an Technics RS-858DUS in my basement- love it although the sound quality is lacking
wish they had quad cassettes…..would have made for some interesting audio equipment
The furthest any of us got in high school was to attempt to lift a classmate’s brand-new ’71 Pinto onto the sidewalk. There were four of us; a couple more, and we might have done it.
I’m kind of amazed none of us organ students ever messed up the awful practice instruments available to us in college. I think we just fantasized verbally. Of course, there was fragrance of pot wafting down the hallway from time to time–probably the jazz majors….
Ah practical jokes, condoms over the tailpipe can be effective but you’re gonna need more than one. Not that I’d know anything about that.
Once some friends and me opened the bonnet of a friend’s car while waiting for a bunch of others to arrive (including the owner, we had the key), just to kill some time. No malicious intent at all of course…. What we found was unusual though, negating any need of a prank: there was a small ROCK placed right under the throttle, partially blocking it. It was unlikely to be someone else’s prank. Now the guy does drive like my grandmother (and just as dangerously), so he never noticed anything behind the wheel… We left the rock there.
The worst tailpipes were the beveled ones on late 1980s IROC Camaros. Ford Tempos were much better
Ahhhhh, the 80’s – cassette tapes, vinyl records, big hair on girls…….those were the days! My biggest complaint about cassettes were that very often they would sound distorted, going from low to high volume. I still have a huge selection of them in my basement.
Interesting fact – Acura made one of the last factory in-dash cassette players still standard right through 2008 on the TL!
My ’01 Malibu has both a CD player and a cassette player, both stock. The cassette player makes a nice way to connect any audio source to the system, using one of those fake cassettes with an audio cable on it. There is no audio input.
8 track tapes were all one piece, with a splice. On old ones, that splice tends to come unglued from deterioration of the glue over the decades. I found a place online that can repair these tapes. I haven’t had a problem with the new sealed tapes I bought on eBay.
While cassette tapes failed from time to time, I think the roadside tape streamers were far more common during the 8-track era. They were particularly given to issues with the tape shooting out while being unloaded from their players.
Ah to relive the Muntz 4 track days.
When I was a junior in high school, the traditional prank was to move all the cars around. We had a teacher who drove a Nissan Stanza, and there were tons of small cars, so it was easy.
I drove my pickup truck that day. I had a lot of seed in the back (planting season), so that one stayed put.
Sadly, security cameras put an end to that.
It was funny though to see every Mazda, Escort, and Cavalier parked really tightly around a Stanza. The teacher had a very good sense of humor, and was cool with it.
Fun article and comments. Colleges as good CC hunting grounds indeed. My college years were maybe 10 years earlier than this, and British cars like this MG B were well represented. I had a ’70 MG Midget until a much more travel appropriate Ford Torino and a few more dollars came along. A good friend had a ’60 Chevy, another a SAAB Sonett. But things like Novas, Mavericks, Valiants, Beetles, and Corollas were more the norm (pranks: saw many a Beetle picked up and moved to where it didn’t belong). IIRC, cassettes were considered an improvement over 8 tracks. Several friends also had CB radios and radar detectors (tools for coping with the 55 mph national speed limit at the time).
Speaking of Beetles and 8-tracks, remember that proprietary audio cartridge that Volkswagen offered with the Beetle radio? I think it was a 4-track, but had nothing to do with the original Muntz 4-tracks (which 8-tracks developed from).
Our physics teacher used a BMW Isetta for commuter. Of course we lifted it up over a 1 foot step and tried to carry it inside the school building. It wouldn’t fit through the door, so it was only blocking that entrance.
Unfortunately the teacher did not see the humor in this. He was enraged!. We knew then we stepped over a line.
He must have found some ramps to get it down that step.
I once drove my 1970 MGB to south FL from CT. Needed an alternator in PA and had to start tapping the fuel pump to keep going by Jacksonville.. Good times.
Thanks for the “pranks” – uh… Memories, I mean. I think my favorite was the old “rocks-in-the- hub caps” trick. That and removing the starter solenoid wire always worked, too. Easy to do either. Dry quickly any VW
i can’t let the judas priest reference go by without mentioning the film footage of ‘heavy metal parking lot’ if you haven’t seen it. its also full of old cars
I’ve had very few problems with my cassette tapes, I still listen to them occasionally. On the other hand eight-tracks were an absolute disaster. Back in the 70’s and the 80’s it seemed like every time I made a stop at a rest station there were remains of eight tracks all over the place.
I thought it was a promo for the new Madonna album.
http://www.discopopheaven.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Madonna-Rebel-Heart-Album-Cover.jpg
Ive turfed out dozens of cassettes over the years only way to stop someone reinserting them and jamming the player hoist em out the window.
A fish under the bonnet works well – let the victim drive off, and after a while he’ll smell something cooking… Kippers a particular favourite.
Although far from perfect, cassette tapes were a huge improvement over 8 tracks, which were big, clunkly and prone to jamming. You could also get blank cassettes and make your own mix. I don’t recall any blank 8 tracks being available. Thank God the 8 tracks were only around for a few years. Had a spoiled rich friend who got a new, stunning 1969 GTO for his 18th birthday. 4 speed with Ram Air, and a factory 8 track player that kinda sat on the front of the console.
In my college days (circa 1970) the student car population could basically be broken down three ways: Tons of VW Beetles, old compacts and hand-me-downs, and late model Mustangs and Camaros for the rich kids. My Chevy Nova fit into the middle category. Plain but reliable, it would easily make the annual 2,000 mile round trip to Ft. Lauderdale. Even managed to get it to 100 on Alligator Alley, when you were lucky to see another car on the trip west to Naples.
Your Nova must have had the 250 six. A 250 in a Nova, el Camino or Chevelle can…just barely….reach 100 mph if the straight is long enough.
Yes, it did have the 250 six. It took forever and alligator alley is flat as a board, but it did nudge 100.
College parking lots do often seem to hold interesting cars. When I was a student, and later a staff member at the same university (1998 to 2012), there were quite a few that stood out. From the “normal” but uncommon student cars (very early M-body Diplomat sedan and LeBaron coupe, 1st-gen Fiesta, H-body Olds Starfire, mid 60’s Polara, Volvo 164, diesel Datsun 810, ’65 Bonneville, ’60 Oldsmobile) to the semi-exotic, faculty owned (Cobra replica with a legit 427, gray-market E24 M635CSi, ’68 Porsche 912, ’79 Ferrari 308GTB, Fiat 850 Sport Spider). Always something to see!
Can’t think of any particularly interesting pranks though, at least not that I was involved in…
Early M-Body indeed. There are still very very few hanging around in typical college town, Ann Arbor. Also Mercedes W123.
When my dad was at Fresno State in the early 70’s, he and a few of his church buddies would take their friends Beetle, pick it up and then turn it sideways in the fellow’s apartment breezeway. All in good fun, of course.
I once bought a used “Madman Muntz” four track player, thinking it was an 8 track. The tape slid into an exposed retainer on top of the case which mounted under the dash. It was chromed thick steel and felt like it weighed a least 5 pounds. When I finally got an actual underdash 8 track player, when the tape began to sound funny you had to be quick to pull the tape out before too much got sucked into the machine and wrapped around all the rollers. I got good at extracting the tape out of the player and then standing up on a chair after pulling out the bunched up tape allowing it to hang to just above the ground. A quick tug on one side of the tape would cause the winder inside the tape case to quickly spin the loose tape back up inside, if you did it right. I once had an 8 track recorder that I had hooked into my home stereo and you could record records and radio broadcasts directly on to blank 8 tracks that were at one time available. Cassettes quickly turned 8 tracks obsolete. The four track tapes looked like 8 tracks, but were only around a short while before longer lasting 8 tracks made them obsolete.