When I first picked up the Corolla it had an original OEM AM/FM Cassette deck that the previous owner had meticulously put together from pieces of other units as I was told. The drive back with the car told me that one rear channel worked pretty good, and the other three not so much. The Cassette portion didn’t seem to work at all, but to be fair I only had a cassette adapter and not a real cassette to test with. So I yanked the Alpine 7801 out of my MR2 and put it in the Corolla. The 7801 was made in the early 90’s and has honestly seen better days. It had a lot of wear on it. Couple that with some audio issues, and it was only a temporary solution at best. I began the search for a new “vintage” solution, and was sometimes shocked by prices, and often shocked by condition for that price. Eventually I found this Alpine 5902 on Ebay. It took quite a while to finally get together with owner to make the deal but eventually I did, and a few long hours later it was installed.
Why such a long install? Well the 5902 was from a past time. I believe this was actually the second CD player offered by Alpine (although I haven’t been able to confirm). It was designed to communicate with amplifiers through a DIN cable, as well as to another head unit in the same way. This means this is a CD player and only a CD player. Although I don’t miss AM and FM, carrying around CD’s is a bit awkward. Luckily I was able to use the auxiliary in to add a bluetooth adapter, and give me a bit more modern option for the long trips.
Other than one small cosmetic issue, and a bit of a scratchy volume knob this is about as close to period correct perfection as you can get.
