I bought my car in the year 2002. It is a Kia Rio. A small car with good gas mileage. Most of my coworkers chided me on the fact that I got the car without any accessories. Heck, it doesn’t even have a clock.
Needless to say the car came with no radio. That was fine with me. I got used to not listening to anything while driving. I did that for a full year. But then I got an iPod as a Christmas gift. Now I wanted to listen to my iPod while driving. I discovered that my car did come with speakers.
So I opened up the center console and found the wiring harness that included sound and power for the un-installed radio. To hook my iPod to my car all I needed was an amplifier. But I could not find one that would fit in the space of a standard car radio. It seems most people want big, powerful amplifiers that are usually installed in the truck. Another aspect of modern amplifiers is that they are very pretty, using shiny metal and interesting shapes. All unnecessary for my purposes.
So after searching the internet I found a kit 12-volt amplifier that was tiny. Featuring 22 watts I figured it was more than powerful enough for my application.
In place of a radio my car came with a blank faceplate. I drilled some holes in this face plate for an on/off switch and a pair of phono plugs. I also got the correct corresponding wiring harness to connect the new amplifier to the car’s power and speaker connections. The final bit was a noisy reducer from Radio Shack.
Now I plug my iPod directly into my car and listen to my tunes wherever I go.