I think most people that were into the car stereo scene like I was for a while, have grown up. It was cool for a while, but again, you had to spend time damping your car, and isolating outside noise. Capacitors, crossovers, eq's, getting the perfect soundstage on your dash...you name it. Even back then, say 12 or so years ago, playing my favorites like AC/DC pumping out of an Alpine and two twelve inch Phoenix Golds, I was feeling a bit old hat. I think the breaking point was when I was walking down the street and two college age guys were pumping out the "Spice Girls" in their fancy new Tracker,
that I decided the car stereo industry had finally bit the dust. Or at least good taste and common sense.
On a serious note, I think the audio quality a lot of people have come to expect, since the MP3 generation has resulted a bit in "lowered expectations" and quite a few people are very happy with their car sound system as is. And see no need to upgrade their system to anything other than factory. I personally dislike a lot of factory audio in vehicles as I do most audio quality from places like iTunes. It's all personal preference. If your drive to work is that much worse because of the sound quality and you find it very annoying, I would say upgrade to something decent. If you are just interested in listening to talk radio on your way to work, like me, then save your money and invest it into something greater... like home theater...
