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A Personal History of Car Radio
For some years the Radiomobile radio cassette models were being
produced in Perth, Scotland, by G.R. International Electronics,
a company employing around 400 staff. We were at that time experiencing
problems with the tape deck mechanism which was supplied to G.R.I.
direct from the manufacturer, Gerrard Ltd, also based in Scotland.
G.R.I. was owned and run by Mr Tony Twine who, knowing the trouble
we were having with the decks, teed up a meeting for John Roberts,
our quality control manager, and myself to visit the company with
him on a Monday morning.
Tony telephoned me to say why not come up on the Friday afternoon,
then we can make a sporting weekend of it. John and I agreed and
flew to Edinburgh, where a member of Tony's staff picked us up and
drove us to Perth. After checking into the guesthouse that Tony
had organized, he arrived and said he had arranged for darts, snooker,
golf and curling over the next two days. After a snack in a local
restaurant, Tony took us on a conducted tour of his factory where
we had large whiskies in the boardroom. His office was impeccably
furnished but with the unusual feature of a rubber mat on the floor
and a dartboard on the wall. He said "Come and meet some of
the boys" and took us to the staff club room.
This was an eye opener indeed. There were eight dartboards lined
up along the end wall, some being used at the time. Now John and
I at that time were no mean dart players ourselves and when invited
to play for £1 per game felt it would be churlish to refuse.
Thinking we might make a little extra pocket money we were rather
disillusioned when we lost six games in quick succession. That was
our first mistake.
Fortunately Tony came to the rescue by inviting us out to dinner.
By now, and several large whiskies later, it was near midnight.
The only eating establishment open at this time was the local Chinese
restaurant named the Ping Yong. It was while we were dining that
Tony confided that our opponents were county players. Tony then
drove us back to our hotel and waited for us to go in. This was
our second mistake, for although we had a front door key, someone
had applied the internal safety chain and the door would only open
some 3 inches. After ringing and knocking for 15 minutes to no avail,
we spent the next 15 minutes with our sleeves rolled up and hands
through the letterbox trying to unhook it, unfortunately without
success.
The rest of that night we spent on the floor in Tony's lounge and
we then went back to the hotel for breakfast. Saturday was a slow
day indeed until lunch, when the hair of the dog proved good therapy,
and we were then given a tour of Perth and then more darts in his
boardroom, followed by snooker at a local club. After a wash and
change of clothes, Tony picked us up from the hotel and took us
to dinner, this was followed by a quiet night.
At 10.00am on Sunday Tony appeared. "We are due to tee off
at the Gleneagles Kings course at noon". When we arrived we
were met by Tony's golfing partner who said "The clubs and
trollies are here as arranged, have you explained our local rules?"
Tony then said to us "If you look in the pockets on the golf
bags you will find cans of beer and some miniature whiskies, whenever
a hole is won the winners must drink one beer and one whisky".
This proved to be a great equaliser, we all failed to complete the
course and the curling was cancelled. The meeting on Monday went
well, however, and the problems were resolved.
On the flight back our plane hit an air pocket and the air hostess,
who was pouring coffee, let go the pot, hitting me on the head and
spilling its contents over John's leg. He was most annoyed when
I was given a brandy and he wasn't.
All complaints would be received in my office, either by phone,
letter or a caller in person; some were abusive and some quite humorous.
One letter in particular caused great merriment. Apparently the
customer was driving up the M1 and was annoyed by the incessant
chatter from his wife. He said in desperation he switched on the
radio, whereupon a huge cloud of smoke billowed out from under the
dash panel completely enveloping his wife. As he said in his letter
"It fair frit the life out of the wife, best laugh I've had
for years".
I met many personalities over the years, some I shall never forget.
Arthur Askey, Sid James, Eric Morecombe, the singer Frankie Vaughn
was another. He telephoned my office to say that the Radiomobile
tape recorder in his Rolls was not functioning correctly. I arrived
at his house in Totteridge, North London, where his car was on the
driveway, at around 10.00am, and after rectifying the fault he invited
me in. We sat on the edge of his swimming pool drinking gin and
tonics for the rest of the day, a most charming and interesting
man to talk to. As I left he presented me with a copy of his latest
recording, which he signed for my wife.
Back in the 50's I was introduced to a Mr Norman Richardson, who
had been sent to RDM from a car dealership in Guildford for training
on radio repairs. Norman sat alongside me at my service bench for
two weeks and we became firm friends. After some years Norman decided
to open his own car radio business in Guildford and eventually become
a Radiomobile authorized dealer. I, therefore, met up with him in
latter years on a regular basis. Norman gave a lot of his free time
to the Variety Club Sunshine Coaches Charity as an organiser of
various events and would always send me two free tickets for the
annual lunches in London. I would take with me different heads of
department and it was much appreciated by all.
In 1975 we were receiving reports from our dealers that a number
of vehicles had experienced burnt out wiring looms, which they were
sure had been caused by the radio fitting. After investigation,
it was discovered that the supplier of the plastic fuse holders
attached to the radio had changed the material to a softer compound,
the lugs of which could break allowing the live end to drop on to
any earthed point. Unfortunately, Radiomobile had no idea of the
serial numbers of the units affected and this created a huge dilemma
for us.
The batch of faulty fuse holders totalled 10,000, most of which
had been fitted to radios in stock, but many had already been distributed
to the dealerships around the country. Jack Crone held a panic meeting
in his office with all departments concerned in order to decide
on what course of action to take. It was suggested that we alert
dealers to the problem then recall their stocks for modification.
However, as I pointed out, the dealers would have a field day. Not
that any of our agents would be dishonest you understand, but they
could return faulty receivers that were out of warranty and charge
us for removal and refitting. It would also be possible to return
radios from their stocks together with a charge for removal and
refitting without us being able to check the validity of such claims.
And, what about sets sold to car distributors? They could recall
thousands of customers for a replacement radio as a precaution and
charge RDM removal and refitting costs, and possibly their customers'
out of pocket expenses as well.
Everyone agreed that the potential cost of a total recall would
be crippling. I then suggested that it might be better to play down
the problem and deal with each complaint individually by visiting
each customer personally. I made a total of forty visits to various
parts of the country and authorized the replacement of only twelve
wiring looms and minor repairs to the remainder of the cars. However,
most of the complainants did join me for lunch, but in spite of
that, we did get off lightly. I still hear from some of those customers
even now, twenty-five years on.
At the end of 1978 Jack Crone transferred to Smiths Industries
as Director of the overseas companies and spent some time in South
Africa. Radiomobile were now beginning to loose market share as
the Japanese, with their technical resources and vast budgets, had
realised that cars were a real captive market. New more sophisticated
models were being manufactured with higher output levels, and our
own UK built FM unit was not a success. A new MD took over and transferred
the service department to Milton Keynes, a move which myself and
my staff found unacceptable. We closed the service operation down
at Goodwood works and I left the company in August 1981. The production
unit closed down and the company disbanded in 1982.
Jim Mozumder started his own car radio business. I carried on with
the business I had already started with David Longfield. Sadly some
of our old colleagues are no longer with us, however, those of us
that are still around meet up regularly and reminisce on the great
days of Radiomobile when work was fun.
Roy Harriss
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