Favorite moment with music in your car.

Current Tesla S Model....best fidelity i’ve had in a car (for a car that is!) with the lowest noise floor. All the coal rolling junk 30 years ago sounded like a screeching banshee coupled with all the obnoxious cabin noise...no thanks, no nostalgia there, certainly don’t miss it!

Oh there’s been so many! I’ll go with this one…

1978 and I’m driving from OH to a new job and life in CO. I was in my Le Car in which I’d added 200 watts of stereo complete with 6x9s in the back and some small boxes bolted to the doors. Driving through the night I was listening to Jean Luc Ponty’s Cosmic Messenger as I contemplated the stars and my future…

Happy listening. 

One evening, high school ‘70, and the 5/8” thick homemade plywood boxes with 5” round speakers in my VW bug’s backseat well (dampened with plexiglass lathe shavings) somehow harmonically synced to ELP’s “Lucky Man” and the whole car seemed to shake…only happened that once!

A close second involves, back in the day, thinking of a song, turning on the radio, and it’s playing!

Happened more than once.

The year was 1977, and my buddy and I were in his 1968 VW Microbus nicknamed "Old Blue" driving down Black Mountain in Kentucky, after leaving a gig in Cumberland.  He was the drummer in our pretty successful regional rock band, and "Old Blue" was used to haul his drum kit.  It took just about the entire Microbus for his drum kit, because he had a Slingerland set that was identical to Neil Peart's drum kit on Rush's "2112 Tour" -- including Wind Chimes, Wood Blocks, and a freaking Gong.  What...didn't every High School drummer have a Gong in the 1970's? 😂  His dad was an Electrical Engineer and as a side business he owned a popular musical instrument store in town that also sold Hi-Fi gear.  So we had access to some pretty fancy gear for our ages.  We rigged up a set of JBL monitors in the middle of "Old Blue" (all the seats except for the front two Captain Chairs were removed to make hauling space), strapping them in where the middle seat normally bolted to the frame.  Had it wired so we could play a Jensen car AM/FM Cassette Deck through the JBL using a hefty A/D/S amp.

So there we were, the end of January, at 2:00 a.m. in a blinding snowstorm, creeping down the mountain, following the tail lights of the other band members.  We weren't playing any music, because my buddy was freaking out trying to concentrate on driving down the mountain and had wanted it quiet.  He finally said, "Man, put some music on so I can calm down!", and I told him I had just bought Pink Floyd's new release that morning and before we left my step-brother had burned me cassette copy while we were loading the gear.  Needless to say, hearing "Animals" for the first time in that situation and in those conditions, was one of the few life-altering moments I've had in my life.  We actually felt like we were tripping during "Dogs" -- the head lights reflecting off the snow in front of the VW appeared to be flickering in tempo with the voice echoing "Stone, stone, stone, stone...".  After it finished, we both just sat in silence for what seemed to be half an hour.  Finally my buddy just said, "Play that again."

I've listened to "Animals" hundreds of times, own the original pressing, a Japanese pressing, the Remaster, the Remix, several bootleg live recordings -- but nothing compares to what I felt hearing it for the first time in that blinding snowstorm, not knowing what was real or imaginary.  To me, that is the magic of certain music.

@allenf1963 +1

Your VW van story was great.

I had a used ‘62 VW camper van that was electrically 6 volts, so I had to buy a 6V to 12V converter which bolted under the dash and powered my Tena 8 track tape player.

With four people in it, going uphill, the underpowered 40 HP engine meant I’d have to drop down to second gear to move at all.

One particularly long, uphill interstate stretch so stressed out the entire van that half way to the top the converter couldn’t take it anymore and just blew up….freaking us out and robbing us of tunes…but, hey, it wasn’t the engine.

Wish I could remember what tape it was.