Right Times, Wrong Tracks (Part 1)

There have been some colossal product flops, failures, blunders, bonehead marketing strategies and just plain dumb ideas over the years.

The 1958 Ford Edsel automobile, for many of us, remains the “mother” of all commercial blunders, followed by her bumbling “offspring,” the “exploding” Ford Pinto.

The “unsafe at any speed” Chevrolet Corvair was so bad it revolutionized auto safety in the US. The Corvair was followed by the Chevy Vega—another GM stinkeroo—which was number three on the Forbes top ten list of worst cars ever built. I know, I owned a yellow one—a real lemon! But would any of you ever admit to buying a Yugo? Numero uno, by far, on that Forbes list.

In men’s fashion, the zoot suit of the 1940s thankfully came to an end when the War War II Production Board restricted the amount of material that could be used in men’s clothing. Too bad the dorky leisure suit of the 1970s wasn’t banned as well!
The “wanna be cool” Nehru jacket in the late 1960s was also thankfully short-lived. Once again, I know: I owned one of those as well. No, not a zoot, you cynics, a Nehru jacket—I'm not that old!

In aviation, Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose airplane laid a colossal egg in the 1940s.

IBM’s PC Jr, in the early ’80s, never grew up into anything but a miserable failure.

People wouldn’t give you “two bits” for a Susan B. Anthony dollar coin.

ABC executives would have had Geraldo Rivera “whacked” for opening dead gangster Al Capone’s empty vault live on prime-time TV, except Geraldo was “vaporized” along with the rest of us when the Y2K bug ended the world at the stroke of midnight in 2000!

Frank Perdue’s “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken” slogan was translated into Spanish as “it takes a strong man to make a chicken affectionate .” While Parker Pen's ad campaign stated “it won’t stain your pocket and embarrass you,” in Spanish that translated into “no manchará tu bolsillo, ni te embarazará.” But embarazar can also mean “to be pregnant,” so the slogan was interpreted as “it won't stain your pocket and get you pregnant.” Now I know why they call Spanish a romance language!

New Coke lost its fizzle, then fell “flat”—on its face; and McDonald’s Pizza never really “panned” out!

General Motors should have thought up a better name than Chevy Nova for the Central and South American markets; “No va” in Spanish means “it does not go”!

Scandinavian manufacturer Electrolux didn’t sell too many vacuum cleaners in the US either with their ad “Nothing Sucks Like an Electrolux.”

And in the consumer electronics market, nothing quite “clunked, stunk and ka-plunked” like the old 8-track audiotape.

With the dubious distinction of being named to Time magazine’s top 100 list of the worst ideas of the past 100 years, the 8-track tape jammed more often than the lyrics of the Bob Marley reggae classic:

We're jamming
I wanna jam it with you
We're jamming, jamming
And I hope you like jamming too.

The 8-track also clunked like an old tin can and faded in and out so often you thought your volume levels were controlled by rubber bands. Only a “madman” could have been responsible for such a contraption... and one was.

In the early 1960s, California used-car dealer Earl “Madman” Muntz, who had acquired the nickname—similar to the Crazy Eddie character who came later—from his loud, zany, television commercials, was looking for a new idea to bolster his car sales. He acquired the rights to the 4-track tape cartridge, the precursor to the 8-track cartridge.

Invented in 1956, the 4-track was also a clunker that had been deemed as unmarketable, and forgotten about until the early 1960s, when the enterprising “Madman” Muntz realized the potential of car stereo.

Muntz believed that giving the driver the option of listening to the music of his or her choice while in transit had tremendous potential. So he acquired the rights to the format and began offering 4-track players and prerecorded tapes, licensing music from major record labels.

Now, for the first time, with a 4-track player you could choose your music instead of relying on the A.M. radios in the car. F.M. car radios also debuted in the early ’60s, but they didn’t work too well and stations tended to fade, and there were few available. A.M. radio stations were king in the early 1960s. Reel-to-reel audio recording had been available since the 1940s, but was obviously not suited for car stereo.

Muntz’s 4-track Stereo-Pak had an advantage because they used an endless loop tape, which was easily built into a self-contained cartridge that did not require rewinding.

By 1963, Muntz’s 4-track players had started to catch on, especially with celebrities. They could be found in the cars of such notables as Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, James Garner and Red Skelton. And soon major record labels began issuing new releases and old favorites on the 4-track.

Around 1964, William Powell Lear, the man who became famous for the Lear Jet, signed on as a distributor for the Muntz 4-track in order to equip the plush Lear Jet with the revolutionary mobile audio technology. Unhappy with the technology, however, Lear made two modifications to the hapless 4-track cartridge.

First, in order to circumvent the Muntz 4-track patent, he incorporated the pinch roller inside the cartridge instead of inside the playback deck. This helped reduce, but never quite eliminate, tape jamming. He then doubled the record time from the 40 minutes offered by the 4-track to 80 minutes with the 8-track. Lear lined up the 8 individual audio tracks parallel to each other on a 1/4 ”-wide lubricated audiotape. The lubricated tape was needed on the back side of the tape because on an endless loop 8-track, tape is pulled off from the center and the tape has to be loose because it’s constantly sliding against itself.

But Lear's genius was, like Muntz’s, in his marketing savvy. Lear had known Henry Ford many years earlier and had a good relationship with the Detroit automaker. He approached the company with the idea of offering an 8-track car stereo as an option in their cars. In 1965, Ford debuted built-in 8-track players as a custom option on select Mustang and Fairlane vehicles. That proved so successful that all 1966 Fords offered a factory-installed in-dash 8-track player as optional equipment. The response, in one Ford spokesman’s words, “was more than anyone expected.” 65,000 of the players were installed that year alone. The decks were initially manufactured by Ford’s electronics supplier, Motor Victrola, better known to us by the name of Motorola.

Thanks to Ford’s backing, the 8-track format eventually won out over the 4-track format.

Lear made four basic units in 1965: two under-dash units and two in-dash units. They were either straight 8-track players, or a combination 8-track and A.M. radio.

In the 1967 model year, Chrysler and GM offered the 8-track players in some of their models as well.

However, the 8-track was a system that just did not adapt well to the motoring environment. The constant bumps encountered while driving would often cause a misalignment of the tape head, as well as the tape itself within the cartridge. This meant that you heard echoes of adjacent tracks bleeding into the song that was playing. Ironically, the 4-track, with its wider channels, was less susceptible to misalignment.

With the wide temperature fluctuations found in automobiles, the cartridge was quite vulnerable to damage, especially if you left it inside the deck in the heat. Problems occurred due to the contact of the capstan and pinch roller. This would create a “flat spot” that caused the tape to fuse to the pinch roller. Then, when you turned the deck on, the tape would wrap around the capstan and jam inside the player.

Temperature was also a contributor to the breakdown of the graphite lubricant (back coating), creating a black dust inside the tapes that would contaminate the playback heads.

These, among other problems, eventually made the 8-track a “bit of a joke” in the industry. In 1971, when the Phillips audiocassette came out (this remains the standard used today), the 8-track quickly declined.

The major record labels stopped making pre-recorded 8-track tapes in the early 1980s.

Ironically, on December 24, 2005, the 8-track was added to another list: it was ranked #46 on PC World’s “50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years.” Despite its clunky technology, the 8-track had, after all, revolutionized car stereo the way the Sony Walkman revolutionized personal stereo in 1979, and the way the iPod does today. The bumbling technology gave it a “Forrest Gump”-like legacy of “sweetness” and “simplicity” that is missing from today’s sleek, high-tech products.

Just like Clarence Oddbody AS2 (angel 2nd class) in the movie “It's a Wonderful Life,” its inclusion on the PC World list of greatest gadgets, precisely on Christmas eve, finally earned the “odd body” 2nd class 8-track tape its much deserved “wings.”

“At a boy, Clarence!”