Anyone familiar with older GM cars has probably encountered the Delco signal-seeking radios that GM cars began offering in the early ’50s. I recently came upon a very strange 1956 magazine ad campaign for those radios, in which an attractive, affluent woman directs her dorky-looking boyfriend to “Touch the Wonder Bar, Dilworth.”
The Delco Radio division of General Motors, based in Kokomo, Indiana, developed its signal-seeking radios in the late 1940s, and they were offered as factory optional equipment on GM cars beginning in the early ’50s. Cadillac first offered one in 1951, calling it “the most modern car radio available.”
The signal-seeking radio cost about $21 more than a pushbutton radio, and was available with a foot pedal for the signal seeker control as well as the tuning bar.
A Delco signal-seeking radio was also fitted to all 300 examples of the 1953 Corvette.
As far as I could find, the catchier Wonder Bar name (which Delco styled as two words) wasn’t used until 1955–1956. “Wonder Bar” is a pun — wunderbar means “wonderful” in German — which has been used as the name of any number of actual bars, as well as a 1931 Lloyd Bacon Broadway musical, later made into a very odd, surprisingly risque 1934 movie starring Al Jolson and Kay Francis.
As you might expect, early Delco ads for the signal-seeking tuner were wordy and technically detailed, explaining the functions of this “advance-type radio.”
In 1956, however, Delco rolled out a stranger and more provocative ad campaign to promote the Wonder Bar radio. I think these ads might have been the work of Needham, Louis & Brorby, Inc.; as to what they were thinking, well … judge for yourself:
The first four of these ads ran in both Life and The Saturday Evening Post, so this was not a small or inexpensive campaign.
With his oversize glasses and somewhat befuddled demeanor, I assume viewers were supposed to read Dilworth as a Nerd, or at least a Dork. He also comes across as a bit younger than his girlfriend, and while they’re both fashionably dressed, one gets the impression that she is the one with the money. (Note her furs!) I’m reminded of Frank Sinatra’s rendition of the later Frank Drake song “It Was a Very Good Year”:
It was a very good year
For blue-blooded girls
Of independent means
We’d ride in limousines
Their chauffeurs would drive
When I was 35
Dilworth and his girlfriend don’t have a chauffeur, but while the last of the ads implies that this is his car, you’ll notice that she is often in the driver’s seat.
The car, incidentally, is a 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible. Maybe she bought it for him?
Dilworth’s glasses call to mind the ones Christopher Reeve later wore as Clark Kent in the 1978 Superman movie.
There’s a definite, uh, vibe to these ads that also reminds me of the more lascivious moments of the early MAD, like this 1953 parody of Clark Kent and Lois Lane:
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but then again, the theme of each of these ads IS that Dilworth is “playing second fiddle to a radio,” so draw your own conclusions.
The above ad was the last I could find of this series. (It’s a bit smudgy because it was scanned from microfilm, and it took some work to get it as legible as it is.)
I’m apparently not the only one who found these ads a bit odd. I found a contemporary item in Advertising Agency magazine that remarked:
One that seems a little goofy to us in an otherwise superb campaign is for the new Delco car radio, which is featuring its signal-seeker, dubbed the “Wonder Bar.” A page in Life shows a fairly snooty-looking babe getting into a convertible and saying to her date: “Touch the Wonder Bar, Dilworth–let’s see who’s making the news!” We’re not going to editorialize, we’re simply here to ponder.
By the fall of 1956, Delco Radio had returned to more conventional ads:
Signal-seeking Wonder Bar radios were a fairly expensive purchase in the ’50s. The one in the Bel Air listed for $105, which Measuring Worth says has a relative worth of almost $1,675 in 2025 dollars! According to Automotive Industries, 66.5 of 1956 Chevrolets had a factory radio, but I assume many people settled for the much cheaper manually tuned model, which listed for only $64. You could also have a pushbutton radio without the signal-seeking tuner for $85.
Wonder Bar radios were probably more common in pricier GM models like the 1956 Oldsmobile 98 Starfire pictured below, although Oldsmobile charged even more for it than Chevrolet did.
Ad and auction listings for cars with these Wonder Bar radios often note that the radio doesn’t work. Before 1957, these radios still used vacuum tubes — the first fully transistorized version was offered in the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham — and repairing or refurbishing them is a specialist job. There are still some shops that will do that (or replace the elderly circuitry with modern electronics), but some owners seem content to leave the original non-functioning radio for its cosmetic value, so modern-day Dilworths out for a Sunday drive no longer need to compete with their radios for their paramour’s attention.
Related Reading
Automotive History: Delco-GM/Bose Sound System – GM’s Greatest Hit Of The 1980s (by Eric703)
Australia’s big three General Motors Holden (GMH), Ford Australia and Chrysler never offered “Wonder Bar” equipped radios. Australians could however from 1958, option push button radios but not with auto signal seeking until they became almost common place from the early 1980s.
However, having said that, and perhaps by direct contrast, Australia can boast having been at least 10 if not 15 years ahead of the USA when it comes to fully transistor radios. The hybrid tube / valve / transistor radios that were typically fitted to Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs until the mid 1960s seemed vintage to Australians who were buying full transistor radios from as early as 1958.
Great article. Really enjoyed it.
Our first Wonderbar radio was in my mom’s ’64 Cadillac. I was 8 and would be left in the car alone or with friends while mom went shopping, etc. On vacations it was fun to just try to find something we liked when we didn’t know the local stations at all. Most of the time though, I was hunting for weak stuff and the Wonderbar missed most of that. Most of the stations that could be found with the Wonderbar were very strong and other than a huge lack of bass, sounded very good in that car. A friend has a Wonderbar equipped Delco radio that he uses on his front porch in decent weather. It’s in a rolling unit that has a couple of decent quality speakers along with a small subwoofer. Mostly it plays baseball games, but one local station that plays classic rock sounds really good on it.
I think the first car stereo that I had that had a search feature was the JVC digital tuner head unit I had put into my ’79 Trans Am about 1981 when the original radio, Wonderbarless, died on FM. AM worked, but I never used it except at night while traveling. I used to listen to Larry King, some British guy who was an egomaniac, and a woman, I think her name was Joan, who used to rage about Ronald Reagan nonstop.
Excellent subject, photos and ad history. To those of us of a certain age, the name “Dilworth” kind of says it all. The glasses and overall fussy demeanor of the character, in relation to the classically beautiful (for the mid 1950s) female model is just icing on the cake. Dilworth is indeed a geeky nerd, from a time before being a geeky nerd would get you anywhere aside from ridicule and perhaps a sand full of face from some Charles Atlas type on the beach. The idea that Dilworth would be hanging out with anyone asking him to touch anything is quite a conceit and thus an eye catching ad from the folks in Kokomo.
I do love seeing those Wonder Bar radios. The ones with the foot-operated switches are particularly cool. I could imagine that they did seem to be a real touch of luxury, especially when contrasted with a radio that you had to tune manually. And even conventional push-button car radios of the time were apparently a pain to tune. While researching an article I’m writing about another auto accessory, I recently came across a manual page for a 1952 Chrysler radio (attached). There needed to be 2 full pages about just how to set the push-buttons…and it’s suggested that the process be completed inside of a metal building or parked “under a viaduct” and ONLY after the radio has been warmed up for 20 minutes (because…vacuum tubes).
“No Officer, there’s nothing wrong, we were just setting the buttons on my radio.”
The Wonder Bar must surely have been thrilling.
“The glasses and overall fussy demeanor of the character”
Today, to some those glasses might be considered nerdy but not by 16-20 year olds. Now those particular frames, I can’t tell if AO, B&L, or Shuron, but they are very typical for the mid-50s. Acetate, which was starting be used in the late 40’s became very popular in the 50’s. Colors being black ivory, and tortoiseshell. So they aren’t nerdy for the mid-50’s.
Another one considered nerdy today is seen below. Yet, in the early 60’s it was everywhere and many a movie used them such as Catch me if you Can. Called the Shuron Ronsir Zyl. Two political science professor patients love that frame. The wives hate it. I have one buried somewhere in the house. Have a collection of 40’s and 50’s frames from a senior to me Doctor of Optometry who passed away 20 years ago and to this day there are those who want them from me. Me, I am in my 45th year now.
I think the youngsters are reacting to those rimless “Please dear God don’t notice I’m wearing glasses” glasses for vain aging boomers that became such a cliche…
Ah, the Ray-Ban Clubmaster. While growing up back east with light gray-bluish eyes, I went through a succession of cheap sunglasses. When in my mid-late 20s, I was warned by a colleague, in her late-40s at the time, who had similar eye color, that it was imperative that I started wearing proper sunglasses ASAP. She said she never did, and ended up need cataract surgery by 45.
I took her advice to heart, and when I soon moved to Southern California, made it a point to buy proper, high-quality sunglasses to hopefully avoid this fate. I’ve been a Ray-Ban aficionado ever since, figuring if I paid decent money for them, I’d take care of them better.
I’m now 45, with creeping presbyopia, in part due to my 25+ year career in the data mines, and just the ravages of time. But I am cataract-free, and grateful for that advice.
It also was my first step in realizing that personal accessories were, to me, worth spending money on. This continued into watches, but led to to a fairly large collection of Ray-Ban sunglasses. If I am awake, I have a quality (but not excessive) watch, like an Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch, Tudor Black Bay 58, or the world’s-most-accurate-timepiece (+/- 1s per YEAR), a Citizen Eco-Drive 0100. If I am outside, I’ll be in Ray-Ban Aviators, Wayfarers, or Clubmasters. The Clubmasters, not dissimilar to the ones worn by the protagonist(?) of these ads, but with brown lenses, tortoiseshell plastic, and antique gold wire frames, are some of my favoriites.
I find that, as much I love cars, having some small luxuries like these in my life, add a measure of satisfaction that I can enjoy even when not behind the wheel.
Grandpa’s 1953 Roadmaster had a signal-seeking radio. It worked well, but I doubt that Grandpa used it. He wasn’t much of a radio listener. The gadget was fairly common on home radios in the late ’30s.
Mercedes-Benz advertising for the R129 (1988-2001) roadster in the factory’s Sicherheitsorange (safety orange) used for test vehicles. The play on words used the German wunderbar (“wonderful” and pronounced vuhn-dah-baah) in a context the audience would construct as “wonder bar”. Although in 1988 there was not yet a world wide web and thus no “pop-ups”, quickly the press dubbed the apparatus the “pop-up roll bar” which was for English-speakers more manageable than the factory’s automatischer Überrollbügel (automatic rollover bar). Activated by a control unit that triggered an electromagnet to release a stored spring tension, the bar was designed fully to deploy in less than a half-second if sensors detected an impending rollover although the safety-conscious could at any time raise it by pressing one of the R129’s many buttons. This was a time when the corporate tag-line “Engineered like no other car” was still a reasonable piece of “mere puffery”.
“Touch the Wonder Bar, Dilworth!”, said nobody ever. Dilworth in these ads didn’t code as “nerdy” to me – those glasses were fashionable at the time (or so it seems, this era was prehistoric for me), and he is relatively attractive with his hair nicely styled. The woman, as in much advertising of the time, comes off as strangely passive (can’t she just press the Wonder Bar herself?) The ads curiously don’t close with “available in General Motors cars” but rather “look for them in most really modern cars”. Were Delco radios available in non-GM cars as well?
I think that Dilworth was what a young Don Draper would have come up with as nerdy. Definitely not entirely unattractive, but decidedly nerdy for the market that GM/Delco was shooting at would think.
I recall reading that Packard had the first availability, due to their contract with Delco. This led to it being offered in Studebakers after the merger. Hard to imagine, but you could actually have one in a Lark!
I agree – the model portraying Dilworth is handsome and well-dressed in every ad. Pulling off the oversized glasses would make this even more apparent. It seems to me he more an example of a somewhat younger, less experienced, upper-class boy (nerdy if you wish) that she is ordering around for her amusement. Even the name suggests upper class – think Dilworth vs Chatsworth Osbourne Jr. on Dobie Gillis minus the braggadocio and womanizing experience. And that radio was pretty expensive for its time – a $145 option on Corvette in 1953 is real money – so they were appealing to a wealthier audience? Just my take.
Recall seeing the wonder bar radios on some Cadillacs and high end Buicks and Olds. Pretty rare option, as they were quite expensive. They actually had a motor in them that would whir as it moved the dial from left to right. I think Ford had a similar unit called the Town and Country and Chrysler had the Golden Touch. They disappeared in the seventies as full electronic FM stereo radios with seek and scan became more commonplace.
I remember seeing old ads from before my time that described the luxury of the Wonder Bar. My 63 Cadillac had one, but it didn’t work. I replaced it with an AM/FM unit from another 63 Cad. I was kind of disappointed that the signal seek didn’t work, but then there was a dwindling amount of decent music on AM even in 1979.
Something tells me that Dilworth is more into Wonder bread preferably with the crust cut off by his mother.
Thanks for putting all these ads together. I first ran across the Dilworth ads a few years ago while I was researching an article on radios, and I remember being surprised at the time that they ran in general magazines. Definitely memorable, but a bit odd. I don’t know what feedback was from the public or corporate types, but the fact that these ads ran for only a few months before Delco Radio transitioned back to more conventional ads tell me that the feedback wasn’t all that positive.
But still great fun to look at now!
My first look at a wonderbar was when new people moved in across the street in 1973. They had a 1969 Olds 88 with one, by then with FM also, but not stereo.. It had a small 3 position slide switch under the bar to adjust the sensitivity for weaker stations.
Leaving it to the left allowed it to latch onto only strong ones.
Went from “65”, thru “71” with no car radio..lol Would not have even got the concept of ‘signal seekng”, @ that time.
Aside from power steering and aftermarket lap belts, the only option the first owner of my ’64 Bel Air went for was the push button AM radio. Since there is literally nothing to listen to on AM today, I’m tempted to put in the blank plate but keep the very cool, very very long whip antenna and see how long it takes for anyone to notice the paradox.
“Nationally advertised in leading consumer magazines” in the last Dilworth ad is a strange claim to make. Really, you paid to have these things advertised? In a magazine for consumers? Wow, that means they must be good!
Not really, in context. The last ad was from Automotive News, which is a trade publication primarily read by people in the automotive business: auto executives, dealers, salespeople, vendors. Its advertising was aimed at that audience, not at a general readership, and making the point that a product was getting a big push in mass-market publications was not an uncommon theme.
I missed that is was in Automotive News, but also “consumer magazines” made me think of Consumer Reports and Consumer Guide, neither of which ran advertising.
The factory radio in our family’s 1956 DeSoto had a radio with a search/seek bar.
Had a Wonder Bar radio in my 1958 Biscayne, liberated from a wrecked Oldsmobile of similar vintage. Speaking of Oldsmobiles radios, a friend had a fancy 1958 98 with a radio that could be pulled out and used as a portable. Just the thing for those early transistor days, although I do not know how it was powered outside of the car–batteries I suppose.
Pontiac called the removable radio “Sportable”, not sure if other divisions called it that. Removable radios reappeared and were popular in the ‘90s, some factory but most aftermarket, but so you could pull the radio out to prevent it from being stolen; don’t think any told these had speakers so you could listen to the head unit outside of the car. Many people found that too inconvenient and left the radio in the car where it was easier to remove than a standard radio. Later on, removable faceted replaced these. Later still, non-interchangeable audio systems built into the dash and touchscreen reduced stereo theft
Gotta love the kitsch aspect of self seeking radios .
Most of the basic 1960’s Delco radios will still work fine and sound good if you replace the crappy lo fi original speakers .
You had to have been there to grasp how big a thing FM radio was back then .
I was recently pleasantly surprised to find and original BENDIX “SAPPHIRE II” AM/FM 6 volt VW radio for my ’59 Beetle .
It came from a old 356 Porsche that was being up dated to 12 volts .
-Nate