Trod Bogs Sadly – Oddstray's Blog

Our newest vehicle, a 2012 Nissan Xterra, was as lame as our next oldest vehicle, a 2005 Mazda 3, in that it didn’t have either a line-in for an iPod or similar, or Bluetooth. Yawn.

So off I went to Crutchfield and bought a Sony MEX-BT3000P (yep, discontinued, but hey that’s a great saving) and an included mounting kit, and holy crap, after torx woes (I needed a 15 and I didn’t have one) that sucker is connected to our Nexus 4 for Pandora and the iPod for music and saved radio plays. Look, no wires! (and the sound quality is pretty good)

But wtf is the deal with this? No longer can you simply swap out a DIN radio for the one of choice, you have to dismantle the dashboard to extract things like the A/C controls, air bag warning lights, hazard flashers, and re-install all that stuff in a custom panel. Kinda dismisses the idea of standard radio installations.

Never mind, I’m looking forward to rocking out with this setup.

And, oh by the way, bye-bye VW Westfalia