We didn't know how good we had it back in the day. The mild inconvenience of popping your Huey Lewis & the News tape out of the cassette player and replacing it with some Spin Doctors was a couple seconds out of your day, and easier to tolerate than all this nickel-and-diming we're getting from music streaming services in 2026, and automakers pulling support for smartphone integration.Not to completely dismiss the convenience of modern technology. We like being able to arrange playlists without having to go out and buy a blank cassette tape. But every time Spotify raises its prices or makes us listen to that same BetterHelp ad for the 500th time, we feel like going back to a simpler time with the last car ever sold in the US with a tape deck, the 2011 Ford Crown Victoria... or, the 2010 Lexus SC 430. The 2011 Ford Crown Victoria Was Fleet-Exclusive Bring a Trailer If you don't remember any car being sold to the public with a tape deck as late as 2011, your memory isn't failing you. The 2011 Ford Crown Victoria was never sold to the mainstream market. Ford pulled the civilian Crown Vic from the market for 2008, pushing the new Ford Taurus in its place, while continuing to sell the classic cop car to, well, cops. The car was available to taxi companies, as well, and it was still sold retail in the Middle East, but not in the US.The 2011 Crown Vic's standard stereo system featured four speakers, a CD player, and AM/FM radio. Believe it or not, the tape deck was not included as a standard feature. Check out some auction listings, and you'll see a CD player, but no slot for cassette tapes. The tape player was actually an upgrade, if you can believe that.Crown Vics were feeling pretty long in the tooth by the early 2010s. The second-gen Crown Vic had already been around for 14 years at this point, it had been off the retail market for the last three years, and Ford was seeing increased competition from fleet-spec cars like the Chevy Caprice PPV. The Tape Deck Doesn't Come Standard, But The Cabin Is Whisper-Quiet Bring A Trailer Ford offered the tape deck less as a killer app than as a courtesy for cabbies and cops who didn't want to trade their tapes in for CDs, or learn how to download MP3s. If you're driving a 14-year-old sedan, you've probably got a taste for the old-fashioned, so the tape player was a good fit for anyone still buying Crown Vics. Ford would finally drop the tape deck for the 2012 model year, the Crown Vic's final year before retirement.The second-gen Crown Vic is noted for its whisper-quiet cabin and smooth ride, so you couldn't ask for a better listening environment for your Hootie & the Blowfish tapes. Lexus Had The Retail Market Cornered When It Came To Tape Decks Lexus As mentioned, the Crown Vic wasn't being sold to the American public by 2011. If you wanted one for yourself, you could either join the force, get your chauffeur's license, or hang around police auctions with your fingers crossed. Or, you could skip all that and treat yourself to a Lexus SC, which was still packing a cassette player as a standard feature up to the 2010 model year.If you're thinking that the cabin of a Lexus would be the perfect place to listen to some tunes, well, the SC430 was a convertible with a V8 engine. It was rear-wheel-drive, too, with a 5.8-second 0-60 takeoff, making it essentially a Lexus take on a muscle car. But, not an ideal place to play your music, given the road noise inherent to a drop-top. Premium Sound Comes Standard In A Lexus SC430 Bring a Trailer Road noise aside, a Mark Levinson premium audio system with nine speakers, including an eight-inch subwoofer, comes standard (as does the tape deck itself), so you're getting better quality sound out of the Lexus than you would be out of the four-speaker Crown Vic.Being able to actually hear that music with the top down at highway speed might be another story, but we can imagine the fun to be had using your SC430 as a portable sound system for tailgate parties and hangouts. What Will These Cars Cost You In 2026? Lexus If you're looking for the most recent available car with a tape deck, our advice would be to go with the Lexus. The Crown Vic will have you hunting around cop auctions, or buying fleet cars, which we typically advise against, given the long idling hours and stop-and-go city traffic they're subjected to. What's more, not every 2011 Crown Vic is equipped with a tape deck, while the Lexus packs a cassette player as standard equipment.Now, if you've always wanted your own cop-spec muscle car, don't let us talk you out of it. Just know that you could be waiting a while to find one with a cassette player. As of the time of this writing, there's an auction on GovPlanet for one starting at just $1,000 with 133,959 miles on the odometer, but it only has a CD player.The Lexus SC 430 is going to be an easier buy. You're getting the tape deck as standard equipment, you can be fairly certain that it wasn't used as a taxi cab, and it's a Lexus, meaning it's made by the most reliable brand on the market, according to J.D. Power. 2010 Lexus SC 430s Are Hard To Come By Lexus At present, we're unable to find any 2010 SC 430s via our marketplace tools, but there are some late second-gen models out there. For the latest version of the car, you're looking for anything from the 2006 model year or later. This is when Lexus added Bluetooth capability and some new alloy wheels. A 91,030-mile 2006 model is selling in North Carolina for $15,999. A 4,355-mile 2007 model is selling in California for $74,495. A 145,315-mile 2006 model is selling in Arizona for $10,550. A 76,263-mile 2008 model SC 430 is selling in Connecticut for $15,806. A 40,796-mile 2009 model is selling in California for $43,985. Based on these numbers, our advice would be to budget around $16,000 for the purchase and look for something with less than 100,000 miles on the odometer. Very low-mileage models, like that 4,355-mile 2007 model, aren't really worth the asking price at $74,495. Like-new is always nice, but a used Lexus doesn't really have too many miles on it until it's well into the low six figures. What Will It Cost To Build Up A Tape Collection? Malcolm Tyrrell via Wikimedia There's one final expense that goes with buying a car with a tape deck, and that's filling out your cassette library. Maybe you had a bunch of tapes growing up, but they're tucked away in your parents' garage three states away, or you accidentally left them in that Toyota Camry you sold 20 years ago. Either way, they're not here now. So, what's it going to cost to build up a new collection?If you want to stay organized, you'll probably start with one of those cassette tape suitcases you can use to keep all your tapes in one place. We were able to find a nice leather-bound 24-tape case on eBay at a Buy it Now price of just $12.99, plus $6.15 for shipping. Meanwhile, we turned up a lot of 11 rock and hair metal cassettes, including Mötley Crüe's Same Ol' Situation, and Queensryche's The Warning, selling for just $24.99, plus $5.97 shipping.If we average that out to a per-tape price of $2.81, multiply that by 24, and add in the cost of the case, we're spending $86.58 for a full collection. Of course, you could just as easily hit up local thrift shops and grab armfuls of old tapes selling for a dollar apiece, and store them in the glovebox, like we did in the '90s.