every frickin year i go into best buy and look at new car radios for kicks. Pioneer, Alpine, all those guys, they come up with new designs each year. What kills me is that the bottom end Pioneer that sells for like 120 bucks has a much higher quality faceplate, display, and buttons than even the best stereos on even some of the most expensive GM cars.
And they can afford to redesign and add features and update them every year and still sell them for peanuts.
Yet, if you ever have to replace a factory radio in your car they try to tell you its like 500 bucks to do it.
GM, Ford, whoever, must be spending like 5 bucks each on radios because of the complete POS these things are. The handheld LED football game I played when i was a kid and i paid like 18 bucks for back in 1981 or whenever had MUCH BETTER display, much better faceplate, and higher quality buttons.
I CAN'T FRICKING BELIEVE IT WILL PUT GM INTO BANKRUPTCY TO MAKE A CAR STEREO AND CLIMATE CONTROL WITH EQUAL QUALITY TO EVEN THE MOST BASIC AFTERMARKET CAR STEREO.
How fricking pathetic is it to have to see garbage like the climate control and stereo in a Malibu or G6. A group of 20 people labored hours and hours at the behest of some stuffy ass beancounter to see how cheap they could make one million of the cheapest looking radios with super cheesy buttons that no one wants to touch or look at and has no business being forced to compete with nice looking units in the Accord and stuff.
Even look at the radio in the new Impala. It is a definite upgrade FOR GM. It is bordering the bounds of acceptable. It still don't win no prize for being a super quality looking piece. It still has a cheesy look to it. Ford's current radio bunch looks DAMN cheap. Ford's radio are unacceptable.
Would it really mean the end of the earth as we know it if Saturn redesigned the door panels in the Ion to have a decent design and reasonable looking plastic?
Did chevy have to use that cheap horrific looking cloth in the their new Malibus for like 3 years?
How many million of those awful miserable cheap ass T-bar shifters has Pontiac put in their cladmonsters in the 90's and early 00's? ARRRRGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, that's enough, I need to go f-ing smack something before I stroke out