The Cars That Go Boom

Just Because You Can Build It Doesn't Mean You Should

Around the time I graduated high school in the early 90s, every guy in school either wanted their car to be the fastest, or the loudest. By loudest I don’t mean engines or mufflers; I’m talking about stereo systems with gigantic speaker boxes full of oversized woofers with hundreds and sometimes thousands of watts blasting bass for the entire neighborhood to hear.

For a couple of years I was part of the hot rod club. My friends Jeff and Andy drove Camaro Z28s (1980 and 1978, respectively) and my 1979 Formula Firebird fit right in. Prior to the Firebird I drove a 5.0 Mustang hatchback, and after the Firebird I had a Buick Regal with a turbocharger. I still have my old collection of speeding tickets to back it up.

When my insurance got to the point where I could no longer afford it, I ended up driving a 1988 Ford Festiva. The ‘88 Festiva came equipped with a 1.3 (1300cc) liter engine that put out a whopping 63 horsepower. To put that in context, I have owned several motorcycles both with larger engines and more horsepower.

With one of the slowest cars on the rode, I decided to go the loudest route. In high school while working part time in local restaurants I could never afford one of those loud, booming systems I was so jealous of. Lord knows I tried. I would buy speakers and amplifiers from the flea market with weird Chinese names and wire them up with whatever cables I could salvage from the Radio Shack bargain bin. While my classmates had stereos that could be heard for blocks, mine could barely be heard in the front seat.

That all changed by the time I got my Festiva. After my sophomore year of college I got a job at the printshop my dad worked at. Instead of making $300 every two weeks I started bringing home $300/week. And on weeks I worked overtime, I could bring home twice that amount. That same summer I moved out of my apartment and back in with my parents. With all that extra cash I bought my first real electric guitar, a component stereo system for my bedroom, a CD Walkman… and a booming system for my Ford Festiva.

When a local stereo shop went out of business, I bought four 12” subwoofers for $100 from them. I also bought a Crunch 1,000 watt amplifier. My friend Jeff is an electronic madman who can wire up anything; Andy is an expert craftsman. Between the three of us, we had everything we needed to build one hell of a stereo system. I didn’t care what it looked like. I just wanted a system the girls would like — a car that would go “boom.”

The first step was to remove the Festiva’s rear seat. With that gone, and after making a few trips to Home Depot, we had enough wood to build a gigantic speaker box. With no real concept of acoustics or design, we decided two of the speakers should be facing upward while the other two should be facing forward. Andy used some rough calculations we found in an old book about building speaker boxes, and Jeff wired everything up.

I vividly remember the night we fired it up for the first time. We had pulled my car into Jeff’s parents’ garage to finish all the wiring. We had also wired another small amp up to the front speakers as we reasoned (and rightfully so) that they would be difficult to hear over the massive box of bass we had added to the rear of my car.

With everything wired up and ready to go, we cracked the garage door, started the car, and turned on the stereo. There was a buzz in the air — not an audible sound, but the feeling of static electricity in the air. In the dash I still had the car’s stock stereo which came with a cassette player, and balanced on the passenger seat I had my CD Walkman with one of those “aux-to-cassette” adapters plugged in. With one of my favorite “bass” CDs in the player, I pressed play and thought someone had just punched me in the back of the head head.

There wasn’t a part of the car that didn’t rattle. A professional stereo installer would have applied sound deadener to the car’s panels or used other tricks to fix unwanted rattles, but we had no time for that. The dash, doors, side mirrors, and even my teeth buzzed every time the subwoofers BOOMed.

After a few seconds, Jeff motioned for me to get out of the car. As I did I saw my friends pointing at the roof of my car. The metal was literally flexing each time the speakers hit. One of them grabbed a can of Dr. Pepper and placed it on top of my car. The can vibrated, bounced, and eventually fell over. We had created a monster.

While Jeff and I watched the can dance on top of my car’s roof, it was Andy that noticed my windshield. I’d had a small crack in my windshield for as long as I owned the car, but Andy was the one who noticed it was growing. Each time the car shook, the crack grew a little longer. A smarter bunch would have shut things down at this point, but instead we stood there in awe of tis monstrosity we had created. I’m sure when Dr. Frankenstein discovered his monster had thrown a girl into a well he was like, “eh, minor glitch.” That’s how I felt.

I spent the next several months driving around town, always with the volume turned up to 10, annoying everyone I could. It wasn’t a sophisticated stereo system nor was the quality all that good, but good god was it loud.

The problem with a stereo system like that is that everybody knows you have it, and eventually, the wrong people know you have it, too. I eventually bought a car alarm from a pawn shop that hooked into my 12v adapter and promised to twart off thieves. I think I paid $20 for the alarm and, like the stereo, you get what you pay for.

A few months later I found myself working for a pizza restaurant on the wrong side of town. After a long night of work I walked around behind the building where employees parked. As I unlocked my car I remember looking down and thinking to myself, “huh, I don’t remember parking in all this glass.”

And then it hit me.

The thieves had stolen the speaker box, all my speakers, both of my amplifiers, and a gigantic briefcase that held 60 of my favorite cassettes. In fact, that was the event that made my switch from cassettes to CDs.

In a final bit of insult, they literally stole my car alarm.

I replaced the window the thugs broke to get into my car, but not the stereo system. They didn’t bother stealing the stock radio or the speakers in the front doors which still worked and so that’s what I listened to for the remainder of the time I owned the car.

It would be many years before I invested any money into another stereo. Years later, as an adult, I decided to build a car for car stereo competitions. That time I purchased a Geo Tracker, added a hard top, and spent more than the value of the car on a stereo that not only won several trophies, but also gave me permanent hearing loss. But, that’s a story for another day…