Now that I'm back in the professional world, the old cop car was not cutting it. My employer gives a car allowance and there is an (unspoken) expectation that the car is decent enough to entertain customers. The police car was great, though. Big, comfortable, and super reliable. Nothing but routine maintenance until I traded it with 150k miles. It had been a police car for the first 60k miles, so it saw some heavy use and idling time, but the thing was still strong.

After a lot of deliberation, I ended up with a Ford truck. I got last year's model for a huge discount. There are lots of rebates and discounts on last year's vehicles right now due to the poor economy. I normally buy cars a couple years old, but when I ran the numbers (estimating the usable lifetime by me), this was a better decision.

Anyhow, I'm without my empeg for the first time in a long, long while. The Ford came with Sync, and it plays mp3s off of a USB drive, though the navigation of the USB drive is an abomination to anyone who has used an empeg. It can also control an iPod and stream music from the iPhone via bluetooth. None of those options are even a shadow of the functionality of the empeg, but ... I'm starting to think they might be "good enough".

The problem is that I don't want to break all of the integration to the phone control, weather band, satellite radio, voice control and steering wheel controls, which are all actually pretty slick. On top of all that, the dashboard would need some major hacking to get the empeg to fit in. Behind all that fancy dash console, the factory unit is double-DIN, and there is an installation kit available, but I'd lose the factory head unit, and with it all of the integration. I can't find a kit that allows me to install an additional DIN device and keep the HU. The system has a line in, so I'm thinking the answer may be to install the empeg in the center console and play it through the line in with an A/B switch (so I keep the dashboard 1/8" line in jack for portable players). The center console on the truck is a great design that holds hanging file folders, so I'd have to figure out how to install the empeg and keep that nice feature.

What makes me sad is that I have the occasional thought that it might not be worth it. That, as much as I love my empeg, the iPod/iPhone/USB combination might just be workable.

Whatever I do, I'm a empegbbs member for life!

Jim