How To Turn Your Car's Ashtray Into a Smartphone Dock

Your friend and mine, Jason Torchinsky has created another wonderful, simple car hack. This time, he shows you how to convert the ashtray in your car into an iPhone dock.

The basic idea is really simple: let’s put an iPhone (or Android) dock inside the little drawer-like ashtray. Let’s get it hooked up to the car’s 12V for recharging, and patch it into the stereo. For many old cars, this solves the very big question of Where The Hell Did People in the 60s and 70s Put Their Nonexistent Cellphones? Cars now are full of little nooks and power jacks and phone connections. Old cars, not so much. My old Bug didn’t really even have a good dash-nook to put a phone, or even a cigarette lighter for power. I installed the 12V socket years ago, and this ashtray conversion will take care of the rest.

Jason isn’t just awesome for his incredible mind and illustration skills — he signs emails with this:

How To Turn Your Car’s Ashtray Into a Smartphone Dock on Jalopnik

17 Responses to How To Turn Your Car’s Ashtray Into a Smartphone Dock

caskings (@caskings) on September 7th, 2012 at 2:27 am said:

John, the article content seems to have gone AWOL.

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- John Edgar Park on September 7th, 2012 at 7:26 am said:
  
  Hi guys, you’re right it was late at night! The link was at the bottom of the post, but I’ve also included it inline in the first sentence. Funny that that link in the bottom was hard to spot, sorry about that.
  
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Chief Robot on September 7th, 2012 at 3:31 am said:

Nice headline. Where’s the article?

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Mirko Alessandria on September 7th, 2012 at 3:40 am said:

First rule about how to turn your car’s ashtray into a Smartphone Dock: You do not talk about how to turn your car’s ashtray into a Smartphone Dock!

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ka1axy on September 7th, 2012 at 5:11 am said:

“Where’s the article?”

Cigarette manufacturers don’t want you to read it.

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CallsignBaron on September 7th, 2012 at 6:11 am said:

It was late at night when he posted this article, perhaps he got as far as the title and then fell asleep. **shrugs**

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Wilson! on September 7th, 2012 at 6:32 am said:

Try Jalopnik – http://jalopnik.com/5940897/how-to-turn-your-cars-ashtray-into-a-smartphone-dock

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charleshobbs on September 7th, 2012 at 6:34 am said:

Please switch to the old format… the new look just sucks!
BTW…no article posted recently has any content.

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Ear on September 7th, 2012 at 6:36 am said:

Uh, *what* ashtray?

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Mark on September 7th, 2012 at 4:33 pm said:

I cringe at how much stress this will put on the phones usb connection.

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nurrys on September 8th, 2012 at 7:46 pm said:

love it simple to do easy pictures to look at even the way he drew it yells maker

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benroger60 on September 17th, 2012 at 11:11 pm said:

Haha…What an funny idea!!!
White Label Solutions

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Clive on September 27th, 2012 at 4:20 pm said:

If only my ashtray were higher up so I didn’t have to glance down all the while whilst using the navigation function of my phone.

However, a good use for something that many people no longer use in their car (along with the the lighter – except to power their phone!)

Brides

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