Comment by caseyy
Now shark fins are in vogue again because they house multiple antennas — FM/AM, DAB, GPS, and recently more importantly, 4G. Maybe even WiFi — weird as it sounds, I saw some strings for WiFi antennas in a popular stock media/head unit’s firmware.
Though you are probably right and many cars with just FM/AM and DAB still put them in windshields.
I’m not sure about that 3+ antenna claim for FM. Do a fact-check there. ;) I think most diversity antenna systems that you describe use 2. And they are still considered “premium”. 3 is a bit overkill for FM, FM is very resilient against obstacles.
If I’m wrong, would be interesting to see an example of a car that uses 3 or more. Probably far outside of my pay grade to say the least.
I'm going by the BMW E90 (Top HiFi option) which has 3 physical FM antennas FM1, FM2 and FM3, all in the rear glass, and a fourth "FM4" which is not a physical antenna but a combination of FM1 and FM2.
They really didn't want you losing signal!
This isn't even mentioning the festoon of other antennas for DAB, mobile (which has a backup too and phones home in a crash: in case the shark fin is broken in a crash)