Honestly, I think the Empeg's biggest barrier to success was the fact that it wasn't re-branded or adopted/bought-out by a name brand car stereo manufacturer. If these things were the "Alpine" or "Kenwood" MP3 Car player, I bet they'd be selling like hotcakes.

It's stupid when you think about it.... but the majority of car audio fanatics are big on brand recognition. I've had a number of car audio nuts look at my Rio and comment that they were extremely impressed by what it could do, but they'd still rather "wait for Sony or Kenwood or someone" to release a more "professional" version of the same thing.

Perhaps part of the problem was the casing/front plate design. Honestly, multi-colored displays are in-vogue right now, so a single-color flourescent screen gives a bit of a dated appearance. Also, the pull-out design feels dated to some people. They want a unit with a removeable face or something.... Trying to explain that this method allows it to be used in the home doesn't cut it for them. They just think the part that gets removed should be a seperate CD-changer like box in your trunk then, but the head-unit part should stay put.