Car radios stretch back all the way to the 1920s, and quickly caught on in the following decades. Despite their success, in-dash televisions never had the same success. And yet, one creative soul has shown us just how magical this could have been.
Meet Dax Martin. He’s an artist from Toronto, Canada, and he’s also the proud owner of a Honda Element. It may be a quirky version of a run-of-the-mill crossover, but he’s given it a very fancy accessory. In the dash, he’s installed a vintage Sony CRT television, and it looks absolutely fantastic. Even better, Dax was on hand to answer my questions on the build.
Once upon a time, putting a TV in your car’s dashboard was considered totally out of the question. After all, what a distraction a big screen would be! But then infotainment happened, and we got used to it. Now that it’s normalized, seeing a TV mounted like this just feels right.
The project came about for a simple reason. “My radio went bust months ago, and I’ve been eyeing this little TV that I’ve had sitting on a shelf in my living room,” Dax explains. The TV in question looks to be quite the vintage piece. That’s not fancy window dressing, either—it really is the genuine article. “I used a Sony 5-303W Micro-TV from 1962,” he says. Even better, the controls on the TV are all working, as well.
By a beautiful coincidence, this retro portable television was perfectly sized for the job. “It was almost an exact fit where my radio was in my 2004 Honda Element,” he says. Only minor modifications were required to fit it in the dash. “I did have to remove part of the air vent to accommodate the depth of the TV,” Dax explains. Since the TV was originally supposed to run off a 12-volt supply, too, powering it was as simple as hooking it into the car’s existing 12-volt wiring.
The TV is neatly mounted in a plate of black plastic custom-cut for the application. It very neatly emulates the appearance of the interior plastics already in the Element, so the TV blends in far better than it has any right to.
Analog TV is dead in much of the developed world, but a handful of stations do still transmit in Canada. However, the images seen on Dax’s screen here sadly aren’t from a broadcast station. “I was testing the TV with a media player and a VCR, via an RF modulator,” he explains. He’s going to ceiling-mount a VHS player down the road. Other future plans involve hooking the screen up with a back-up camera. “I’ll be hooking it up to a vintage CCTV camera mounted on my roof, as well as a media player to play movies.”
It’s not Dax’s only dalliance in the TV world, either. To celebrate Halloween, he also stuffed another Sony TV inside a pumpkin.
To me, this project makes perfect sense. Sony’s little TV is clearly a hardy design to have survived this long, and it’s close enough to a double-DIN radio slot that you could probably chuck it in tons of cars. The retro screen looks surprisingly good for something from 1962, as well. It’s almost tempting to hook one of these up as a navigation display or something just for the fun of it. Perhaps it would suit the neo-retro styling of my Audi TT…
Image credits: Dax Martin
Absolutely ridiculous… that I got rid of that little Samsung 5” colour CRT telly in my shed and I now can’t do this in my car!
I’d like to see some more pictures of the build and how he managed to cram it in there. Even though my aforementioned Samsung TV only had a 5” screen so was roughly the dimensions of a double DIN slot from the front, it was about 30cm/1 foot deep.
Oh man, I have had a project in the back of my mind/closet for years to make a vintage TV work with modern broadcasts. I’ve got two possible approaches:
I vaguely remember seeing a unit ages ago that would do option 1 all on its own – basically a digital-to-analogue TV converter with a built-in sensing circuit. Option 2 is significantly more foolproof, and has more fun DIY potential.
An ex once told me that if I was really rich, I’d have a whole room full of broken old TVs to putter around with. I’m still not rich, so uh, if you want any advice on cramming a TV into your dashboard, let me know 🙂
Neat! I wonder if there’s a way to convert the signal – possibly with multiple adapters/conversions – so that navigation from a cellphone can be displayed on the CRT. That would be so cool!
You could actually install a micro-PC somewhere in there, install Android Auto onto that, and get the whole shebang. Of course, it’s not a touchscreen, so you’d have to use some ungodly navigation wheel or mini-keyboard setup. Or install a mic and try your luck with speech recognition.
That angle of the shifter is sooo phallic. 😐
Not a fan of the angle of the dangle?
Curious how it survives a hot summer car interior. .
Luckily he’s in Canada, and according to Hollywood it’s always winter.
Does liquid water exist in Canada?
Yup, from what I recall (since it’s been so long since I’ve owned a CRT), those tube tvs get hot.
Does anyone else remember in-dash DVD players? My first thoughts at the time had to do with “Cool! Look at how the screen hides away in the dash!” and “Wow, what a distraction.” I was pretty torn on it.
I installed a double-DIN radio with a display in my car and was able to play movies while driving.
Quickly figured out didn’t want the ability.
I like that the topshot anigif is from the scene where Zorg says “Zero stones… ZERO CRATES!”
I came here to quote this, am not disappointed.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with an emp-TEE case?” He is so great in that role.
Dax is really in his element when watching The Fifth Element in his Element.
I remember when carrying a little B&W TV around was considered cool. Back then programs were beamed for free THROUGH THE AIR so you could watch anywhere! I know, that’s some pretty amazing retro-future stuff, but it really happened.
They still are.
You’d be surprised how many people now a days doesn’t know that. Think have to have cable/internet to get stations.
That’s how the ‘as seen on tv’ commercials sell those ‘get free tv’ gadgets…its just a tv antenna:)
Indeed! My HD antenna gets ~30 locally broadcast channels (most of which I don’t watch bc they are as interesting to me as 90% of cable’s packaged channels).
I actually have an HDTV antenna in my attic connected to my TV and a DVR.
I was surprised to find that you can get a 12V chargeable portable HDTV to carry around (or install in your dashboard). The world just gets better and better.
I wouldn’t say that, but the daily horrors are displayed in ever-increasing resolution and continually expanding color ranges. No more of those fuzzy, silent, black-and-white films of atrocities for us!
The revolution will not be televised.
Maybe it’s generational but this is still cool to me. When I was a kid having a TV screen somewhere other than a living room was the height of technological achievement. KITT had 2 screens in the dash, Inspector Gadget had his watch screen, and in just about every episode of evening TV shows the swinging bachelor would clap his hands and a bar would appear, the fireplace would light, and sure enough a TV would emerge from somewhere.
I can remember holding my watch just right on long car trips so that the light coming in the window reflected off the face of my watch so I could no longer see the digital readout but instead I got a reflection of the trees going by outside the car. I sat there forever watching the world’s most boring “nature show” so I could pretend I had a TV watch. In the late 80s Casio came out with a tiny pocket TV which was about the size of a walkman but had a little 2″ color LCD screen and I begged and pleaded and saved my allowance and chipped in and finally got it one year. I carried that tiny thing around for years feeling like I’d finally made it.
Now, we’ve all got screens in our pockets and wrists and cars and who cares anymore. Today is different, today I want a wall of built-in bookshelves with one of those ladders on wheels that rolls from one end of the book cases to the other. Somehow this is now how I measure success in this world.
I have the walls of books, but sadly they aren’t tall enough for the ladder. Next project is to build a 4th wall so I can shut out the sound of the TV the rest of the family is watching.
Remember the tv watch that Q was testing in one of the Roger Moore Bond flicks? It was the height of space-age cool back then.
I remember when real ones came out and were on display at Sears. I thought is was the best thing ever.
When I was stationed in Japan, I would regularly drive the Shuto Expressway into Tokyo.
One afternoon, traffic was at a standstill – and as I looked around, I saw a man in the Nissan Laurel Medalist (C33) next to me watching Grand Sumo on his in-dash television.
Because in JDM cars, in-dash color TVs were not uncommon in higher-end models back in the 90s.
There was briefly a Skyline R32 residing in my parking garage with a monitor in the dash. And not flush-mounted, but appropriately bulbous, if interior-matched. It just fit the entire mojo so well.
This is officially the coolest thing ever. Everybody go home.
…but I’m already home.