A conversation today reminded me of a mid-70’s Olds Omega we bought that only had an AM radio. We bought an FM converter add-on, bolted to the underside of the dash, but it never really worked well.
What items did you buy for your cars in years past that would seem outlandish today?
In the early 80s we had some company cars that had AM radios only. We installed those same FM converters one weekend when the brass wasn’t looking. (And it’s a long story about buying them from a Best Buy precursor, during a “sidewalk sale” in which various people had staked out the piles of super-cheap stuff and were extorting pay-me’s to let anyone else have one.) We had enough strong local FM stations that it worked okay.
My sister had a '62 Bug and found a mint window-mount ‘swamp cooler’ at a swap meet. Used it for years in hot,dry summers.
I had a mid-60s station wagon that someone gave me a variable-delay windshield wiper controller for. I never did get it to work right.
Driving lights and fog lights on everything.
And the prize: I picked up a beautiful, very expensive set of tow truck jumper cables at a garage, maybe 25 feet long and with enough copper in them to make me a rich man had I held on to them until today (fine-strand, limp as rubber). The heavy-duty socket went under the hood of above station wagon, and I could nose-to-tail jump start anything up to a full sized pickup.
Seat covers of many types.
CB Radio.
Have curb feelers died off along with the people that used them?
Probably a thread win for any era after 1960s.
We added a cassette deck to our 1976 AMC Hornet (also bolted to underside of dash), and put in better speakers.
My 65 Ford F-250 features the “Dealer Option” under-dash air conditioner. I’ve got an old BMW with $400/each in 1974 (I’ve got the original receipt!) Recaro seats. You don’t hear too much about people swapping out seats these days.
I remember after-market cruise controls, but never tried to install one.
We had an under-dash 8-track player that sat on a shelf for years and years (and long after 8-tracks were a joke) because it had been bought overseas by an ex-BIL and had the ‘special feature’ of being able to adjust head tracking.
I’ve still got CB’s in three cars. Its a nostalgia thing.
I tried it again a few years ago when I got the chance to pick up a complete set, including antenna, for virtually nothing.
In my area at least, it’s now pretty much a deserted wasteland. I can pick up the occasional trucker on the nearby motorway, but that’s about it.
It’s a shame really - I used to have a lot of fun with mine back in the nineties. I even found my first serious girlfriend with it.
I installed a CC I got out of a JC Whitney catalog, was a son of a B to install but worked decently. I believe I transferred that to a second vehicle IIRC.
I can remember, as a very little kid, watching my uncle install a dashboard clock in his early '60s Olds.
I installed little Radio Shack beepers in two cars, to let the driver know they had forgotten to turn off their lights.
My dad had purchased an aftermarket rear window defroster for his 1968 Galaxie. These things had white self-stick bands keeping the heating wire in place, which were quite visible from a distance. He never installed it.
I got a digital clock kit that allowed me to remove the mechanical dash board clockworks (which was inaccurate from day 1), and replace it with a quarts movement which kept the time. It amazes me to this day that they made such a think so model specific (Dodge Omni 024, and Plymouth TC3), on such a item that many would just live with and ignore. I also amazed me the 5 or so small gears that were use to set the clock, just 5 tiny gears or so in a straight row for the purpose of transfer the setting stick to the setting mechanism.
(Raises hand.) Me, too. And that’s a long story. 
Most Fords of that era had a big D-shaped cutout in the center of the package tray where you could drop in a factory/dealer rear defroster. I became the favorite child when I found one at a garage sale and installed it in my mother’s '68 Mustang, saving her endless mornings of wiping the rear window clear or using other inefficient techniques.
It eventually crapped out, but in restoring the same car I found an even better one with an integrated heater, and that’s going in as soon as I assemble the interior. 
Car alarms, anyone? I spent a couple of years in that industry before (lousy) factory systems marginalized it.
JC Whitney had pages of all sorts of novelty horns. I probably bought half of them for one vehicle or another. My best had a train horn and a seperate novelty rig that could play *La Cucaracha *and 4 other tunes.
I was the right age to see lots of aftermarket under-dash air conditioners as a little kid. By the time I was old enough to wrench on cars those were dead and gone.
I also remember seeing “necker knobs” but those too had died out before I was driving.
A much later aftermarket kludge was the stereo aux input device in the shape of a cassette tape with a trailing pigtail.
Still use one. :rolleyes:
I once had a 1948 Chevy pickup, and I guess they did not come with turn signals. Mine had an aftermarket thing that bolted to the steering column, with blinkie lights and everything. Aftermarket turn signal “cans” bolted to the four corners also.
A “Traffic Light Viewer”. Basically, a dash mounted fresnel lens that let you see whether the light was red or green when you couldn’t see it by looking up.
Dipstick engine heaters still around?
Remove oil dipstick, insert heater shaped like dipstick, plug in. Never tried one.
‘Moon’ ‘hub caps’ (actually wheel covers).
Sheepskin seat covers.