The first Pioneer Heritage Collection install in North America didn’t go into a show car. It went into a 1991 Porsche that a father special ordered and his son still drives. Pioneer premiered the retro line at RADwood NorCal on October 24, and CEoutlook was there for the launch.
RADwood celebrates cars, trucks and culture from the 1980s and 1990s. It began in June 2017 as a small gathering of about 150 cars at a marina in South San Francisco, and it is now run by Hagerty. This year’s NorCal event filled the Gold Bar Hangar at Alameda Point with hundreds of period correct cars, and admission was free.
The car is David Ostberg’s 1991 Porsche 911 Carrera 4, known as the 964 C4. Ostberg won the install through a Hagerty contest that asked owners of retro cars to share their story.
His story starts with his father. “My dad special ordered this car when he was fifty,” Ostberg said. The car arrived in 1991, the year his father turned 51. His father was on the road for work, so his mother drove Ostberg, home from college, two and a half hours to the Porsche dealer to pick it up. He put the first 300 or 400 miles on it at 19.
His father drove the car every day in the Midwest, through rain and late snow. Ostberg bought it from him 20 years ago. His father passed away several years ago.
“It’s just been deeply sentimental,” Ostberg said.
He wanted to upgrade the stereo for years. He looked at other retro radios, but none matched the look of the car. “I wasn’t really finding something that I was really stoked about,” he said. “So this has just blown me away.”
The install keeps the cabin looking stock. The rear speakers lift out so the rear seats fold back up, and a subwoofer sits under a seat with a remote dial under the dash. “You’d never guess that there’s anything aftermarket in it,” Ostberg said.
Pioneer’s Akira Tachikawa said most head units chase the newest tech. This one started from a different place. Classic car owners want to connect their phones, he said, but they want to keep the look and feel of the car even more. A CarPlay screen in a Porsche can take away from that.
“The details were what mattered most,” Tachikawa said. “We wanted people to feel the nostalgia.”
That focus shows up in small things. The knobs click as they turn. The buttons have a hard click, not a soft touch. A cassette door hides the USB and 3.5mm inputs. Tachikawa said Pioneer’s head of service went to Europe, where the radio launched first, to inspect it and test each button. The radio keeps a standard single DIN body and adds three preamp outputs, SiriusXM and steering wheel control support.
This first version targets European cars. Tachikawa said Pioneer hopes to expand to more regions and to Japanese cars if it sells well.
Showgoers noticed the fit too. A young enthusiast with a purple BMW E36 checked out the install in Ostberg’s Porsche. “It looks amazing,” he said. “It fits. It doesn’t even look different.” He said the basic radio in his own car gets the job done but doesn’t show what music is playing, and he wants to upgrade.
Pioneer’s Trace Sato said the project started with how people treat their cars. “People like their own car,” he said. Owners want to improve everything, from wheels to seats to sound, and most of them will spend their drive listening to music, often streamed from a phone. “People love music,” Sato said. “People need to improve sound quality and period correct speakers. That is something we kicked off our project with.”
Pioneer developed the head unit and speakers together, and Sato’s team went back to Pioneer’s own archives for inspiration. The new TS-X40SXT speakers take their look from the TS-X60, released in 1984 as part of Pioneer’s “Lonesome Car Boy” line. The TS-X60 was one of the top rear deck speakers of its day, with four drivers per side and motorized height adjustment that raised the speakers above the headrests. Today it’s a sought-after collector’s piece, especially among Japanese car fans.
The new speakers are a brand new design inside, with that 1980s look outside. “I believe the people love it, and the music quality goes up,” Sato said. The original TS-X60 had a back panel that lit up, and Pioneer looked into doing the same with the logo on the new speakers. But times have changed, and with some states now restricting that kind of lighting, Pioneer decided not to pursue it due to legal concerns.
For Ostberg, the new system changes what it feels like to drive the car his father ordered. “It has changed the whole experience of just being in the car,” he said. The car still looks the way he remembers it. Now it sounds the way he always wanted.
Pioneer says Japanese cars could be next if the Heritage Collection sells well. Subscribe to CEoutlook and you’ll hear it first. Sign up here.
Disclosure: Pioneer covered CEoutlook’s travel to RADwood NorCal.
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