AJT123

I always thought they were cool. Like super-duper cool, as a kid. I get they are totally outdated but they did make cars look upscale back then.

GMs always quit, so did Fords. I had a '97 Maxima that had a high quality one that never broke. It even looked nice extended, and would retract when you'd turn the tape or CD player on. American brands' power antennas just stayed up regardless.

LeX2K

I have two cars with working power antennas wired a switch in the glove box so I could disable the antenna since I never listen to terrestrial radio. I guess a power antenna was seen as a prestige item at one time?

AJT123

It was a nice option for sure! All the high end cars had power antennas, if you remember.

You could also differentiate trims on cars....that Maxima I had, not all of them had the power antenna, just the loaded ones.

mmarshall

Back then, having a retractable power-antenna was one of the ways of getting around a favorite prank of kids.....bending or breaking antennas. Unfortunately, when built-in antennas (and GM's windshield-wire antenna) replaced the old masts, kids then took up keying and stealing emblems/logos and spring-loaded hood-ornaments.

RA40

iTrader: (6)

An additional PITA when they break too. Those rubber antennas became popular as one didn't have to worry about kinking the mast nor the motor dying. In the days I did audio installs this was fairly common to put one of those in or a single fixed version. The '80 Celica has the Am/FM antenna integrated into the front windshield.

Motorola

That shouldn't have been an issue if your retractable antenna wasn't broken and actually collapsed as intended whenever the vehicle/radio was off.

Nowadays if kids want to cause thousands of dollars in damage to a car in one motion, all they need to do is kick the radar sensor or camera.

AJT123

I liked how the W140 had a short and slanted antenna. E38 didn't have one. LS400 lost it in 1998. Q45 had it until the end, I think.

mmarshall

From what I remember (and I grew up with those cars) some of the power antennas were, as you say, automatic when the radio went on or off, and some had a separate UP/DOWN switch you pressed to activate.

Toys4RJill

What an odd thread/shout out to a feature. We had one on our LX470 and it had a manual switch to lower and raise to any height you wanted. Very odd. I do remember when they were the cool thing. Cadillac had them on a lot of their cars.

AJT123

That was for off roading! The 80 series had that feature too.

Toys4RJill

Oh right. Never considered that

LeX2K

I disabled mine because the JVC head unit I run isn't smart enough to send power to the antenna trigger only when the radio is on it sends power no matter what source is being used. The factory stereo did it properly. What really kills a power antenna is cold weather the nylon cord breaks. And they rust internally, the aerial snaps off. Seriously failure prone part.

AJT123

I think domestics cheaped out, too. Half of American cars’ power antennas didn’t work after a year or two it seemed sometimes. Jill was right, Caddies had them but they were broken half the time. That’s something I would have fixed on my car that nobody bothered with back then.

That Maxima I drove well into 6 figures, never an issue with the antenna. Great car. They obviously put more money into the engineering. And durability.

GFerg

Lol at this thread! Also had a 97 Maxima and I swear that antenna was indestructible. Took it through an automated car wash , never snapped off (caught it midway getting pummelled but never bent),never froze in winter either. Its a shame, the antenna outlasted the rest of the car. Lol. Ran it up to 250k miles and it was such a (dangerous) rust bucket, but antenna was always shiny. Lol.

SW17LS

I remember my dad's cars had power antennas, he would forget to turn the radio off at the carwash and they would get destroyed regularly, they were on the trunk so he never saw them. I remember us replacing them in the driveway ourselves several times. My Explorer had one on the front.