I pulled the not correct fitting radio cassette player from the stock location and now have a hole to fill. I like this idea and will go after one of those amps, but I now need to source a radio to fill the hole.

 

I went a little more extreme with my stock Radio mods.

I had Mike Frenchk at Retro Radio Restorations in Elizabeth, Pa gut my OEM non-working radio and add several new Aurora circuit boards and features.
link here
It is now a very full featured modern radio hidden inside the original shell, with zero visible external changes.
I now have 50W output that drives normal high fidelity 4 ohm speakers, HD radio, Seek/Scan, Bluetooth phone/audio streaming, amp outputs, subwoofer output, crossover adjustments, USB input, and AUX input.
Yeah I went for all the options.
I will plug in a flash-drive stick on the USB input and use that as a "hard drive" with thousands of songs.
The USB input will reside where the cigarette lighter used to, and also be able to charge my phone.
I could plug in an XM Satellite Radio module on the aux input. I may or may not do that.
But yeah I spent a few hundred more than $49. You could stay more "basic". I went all-in.


There is also the 100% exact look Retro radio unit mfg'd by Antique Auto Radio available that is brand new that has some of these features. But if you read the reviews, the sound quality on that one is very mixed, some good, some bad.
There is are several other Retro Radio units that look almost stock, and have good sound quality reviews.
I played Jazz trumpet at one time so the sound quality was the most important thing to me.
I heard this one at Corvettes Carlisle, and with good speakers the sound is very high quality and it sounds terrific!

The stock unit can not drive modern speakers. It has a weird OHM requirement of 10 ohm.
I will go with Infinity Reference speakers or Polk or similar high quality 4 ohm speakers. With a small sub hidden in the back jack compartment.
I am looking for a full ten octave range from 20HZ to 20,000HZ.

I'm planning some long road trips, like coast to coast!

This small bluetooth amp mod is much less expensive, gets you the phone audio streaming, and allows you to run modern high fidelity speakers, and the car still looks 100% stock. And you can hook a flash drive to the USB input.