Did many cars in early 2000s and l990s have telephones in them?

24 comments

1. No. That was exceedingly rare. It was limited almost exclusivel to premium luxury cars.

   By the 2000s we all had cellphones.

2. That was a very rare aftermarket option from the earliest days of cell networks, most people at the time never saw one IRL.

   By the 00s it would just be a pocket cell phone, not a car phone.

3. Not so much in the early 90s. (About 1990, My sister had a friend who owned one of those early car phones that constantly cut out, we used say “Ann ‘ith ‘he ‘ar ‘one.” was calling. )

   By the time phones got reliable and energy efficient enough to be good, they were also small enough to be handheld, and were just cellphones. Big, brick sized cellphones. 🙂

4. Definitely not common. In the late 90s my parents were gifted my dad’s boss’ old car that had a car phone, but we didn’t pay for service because when my parents looked into it it was shockingly expensive.

5. There was a thing called a bag phone that you could carry from car to car.

   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_bag_phone

6. Only luxury cars

7. Phones in cars were a niche luxury that eventually went away as cell phones got small enough that there was no need to have one built into your car

8. No, it cost extra and most people didn’t see a need for them.

9. They existed, but they weren’t common. I saw all of two irl car phones, one in a car my dad was working on for someone else and one in my aunt’s car when she worked for Cellular One.

10. No. We had cell phones at that point. Car Phones were a thing in the 1980s.

11. 96 Towncar Signature has a phone. Doesn’t work though.

12. My dad had one in maybe 1995, and we all thought it was the coolest thing ever.

    They were not common at all, and it didn’t work well at all.

13. Aftermarket car phones were available, but not common from the late ’80s, but were being supplanted by cell phones by the late ’90s. Some upper-end “executive” cars had factory built-in phones as an option at the time, but they were quite rare.

    When I bought my ’86 BMW 535i in ’92 from the Seattle area, it had an aftermarket car phone installed, which had separate components: the phone/cradle (which was the size of a “Princess” phone), a 1/2″ cable which ran to the electronics in the trunk (about the size of two bricks side-by-side), and then a cable to the antenna on the rear window. Judging from some business cards I found under the rear seat, it’d been owned by a lawyer. We had no interest or need for it, and the monthly rates were quite high, so I removed all of it.

14. They were more of an early/mid 90s thing than 2000s. People usually only had them because they needed them for work. By the late 90s everyone who needed a cell phone like that had one.

    They were an option on some higher end cars and not a particularly commonly equipped one. They were very expensive to use, so it was really only for work purposes and quickly supplanted by cell phones.

15. My mom had one in her car. She said needed it for work but I don’t ever remember her getting a work call on it… mostly personal calls.

16. No. It was not that common.

17. Yeah, most cars where I grew up used to have the telltale pigtail antennae of car phones back in the 90’s.

18. My 2000 SR5 4runner doesn’t have one

19. I only ever saw exactly one. It belonged to my rich friend’s parents. His dad was the publisher of the local paper and probably found it useful to be reachable at all times.

20. No.

    It was exceedingly rare and exceedingly expensive.

21. Not in the 90s, but If you include personal cellphones I would say it was a possibility in the 2000s.

22. I went out with a girl in 83 or her dad had a car phone in his town car.

    Of course he was president of McDonald’s USA at the time. Number 3 in the McDonald’s hierarchy.

    He let me drive it to a Sox game cause he didn’t trust my beater. She called up all our friends as we were driving to the game. Dad got a $1,000 bill. For like 6 or 7 calls.

    No they weren’t common

23. My grandma had a car phone in her Pontiac Firebird circa 1996/98 but it was aftermarket, not standard. She was not rich and – to my knowledge – was not a drug dealer. But they were not common for sure. That’s why I remember the big gray box down in the floor.

24. Had a 1996 Accord with a “Cellular Telephone” built in..