Dekay sure LOL, cough cough, shoved in just right on the underside of the case. Denatured wood alcohol & q-tips to clean the heads. And the hokey vinyl covered cases for them that looked like cheap luggage. Anything detroit built had 6x9's in the rear window deck. You knew when you bought a double length tape like Allman Bros Fillmore East it was surely going to be short lived. Nostalgic and fun times.
Welcome to Hell, here's your 8-Track
Neil Postman once said,
"Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided."
I'm pretty sure that we know that the 8-track was more bad than good.
Question for audiophiles here who might know -- was there anything good about 8-track technology that was lost when it went extinct? And what was that good, audio-wise, specifically?