A Traumatic Bus Ride and The Personal Story Behind Cars 108’s Brand New Jingles

When I was a kid, I fell in love with radio while riding the school bus. At the time, life was not great. I was being picked on at school, bullied at the bus stop, and dealing with sexual abuse from my babysitter. The school bus became my safe place.

How A School Bus Ride Started A Radio Obsession

I walked to Robert Kerr Elementary School every day. After being in regular classes from kindergarten through second grade, I was moved into Durand’s Gifted and Talented program heading into third grade.

READ MORE: Cars 108 Thanks Flint for 40 Years

It might sound impressive, but honestly it did not feel that way. A lot of kids at school treated me like I was weird or different just because someone thought I might have potential. Kids can be brutal.

Discovering The Magic Between The Songs

Things changed for me on a shuttle bus that ran from Durand to Lennon. While the other kids were singing along to the songs on the radio, I was paying attention to everything happening between the songs. The DJs, the pacing, the jingles, all of it fascinated me. That is when I got hooked.

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The more I learned about radio, the more obsessed I became with jingles. I found out that big stations in places like New York City, Los Angeles, and Dallas would commission custom jingle packages. Smaller stations would often have those same jingles re-sung with their own station name. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world!

A Full Circle Moment At Cars 108

Years later, I actually got to do it. I have had jingles produced for stations I was running in Flint and in Evansville. I even helped with a custom jingle package made exclusively for Cars 108 around 17 years ago. And now, in one of those full circle moments, I am back at Cars 108 and they put me in charge of commissioning new jingles for the station.

Bringing Classic Cars 108 Radio Jingles Back

Not only did I get to bring back some classic jingles from the past, I asked for the new ones to feel like the originals. I wanted something fresh that still had that nostalgic sound people remember.

We are even using some of the old jingles alongside the new package so everything blends together. So from one jingle nerd to another, take a listen to the old packages and hear how they line up with the new sound.

READ MORE: A Big Change is Coming to Cars 108 - We Think You'll Like It

Here is a taste of what came before what you hear now in 2026. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. This is the jingle package that truly got me into radio. The station had most of the jingles commissioned in 1991. Since the package was so popular, they got the remaining cuts in 1993 to obtain the full package. Remember these?

After a spectacular run, management retired the KVIL package, Cars 108 commissioned a new package of jingles in the Mid-1990s from Thompson Creative, a company that recently went our of business. They're great jingles, but didn't really have that same fun sound of the original KVIL '90 package.

In the late 1990s, we switched jingle companies once again to JAM Creative. Since George McIntyre had worked with this package when he was doing weekends on Q95, it wasn't a hard sell to get them on Cars 108 when he took over as Music Director. These jingles were awesome!

After all of the new packages, and more jingles packages since, I thought it would be awesome to go back to the KVIL sing that everyone in Flint sings when they think of Cars 108. Here's what we came up with:

We hope you are enjoying the new.. and the nostalgic sound of Cars 108!