Future Cabin Refinements?

[appleton]

For me, the space could have been used for something else. It's a personal thing I suppose. I was surprised to see it, but clearly there are a few people who get some use out of the tape deck in 2008. I suspect though, very few.

I guess I'm one of the "very few", mainly because it's easier to just put in the cassette, rather than converting everything to a CDr.

Ok, UNCLE. After digging around in the basement, I came across an old box of cassette tapes that I probably made in High school or College. I was amazed at how good the Carpenter's sounded in the ML ES 350 tape deck. It was amazing enough that the darn things still worked. No 5.1 surround, but pretty good stereo and they brought back some memories. OK... I retract my earlier sentiments. The cassette deck doesn't seem like a silly idea after all.

[SW03ES]

The question is, what would they use the space for?

[appleton]

The question is, what would they use the space for?

Maybe a docking station for an Ipod or a storage compartment for CD/DVDs?

[BaddBoi70]

Agreed - an iPod docking station woud be IDEAL. I think it is safe to say that far more audiophiles would appreciate the iPod docking station vs. a tape deck. IMO. OR a place to hold the key FOB. I don't always like to keep it in a pocket. OR another place for little gadget storage (I.E.: a thumb drive, sunglasses, eye contact case, etc) - this is a luxury LEXUS product, I think they could come up with something creative.

[SW03ES]

More likely it would just be blank space like it is in the non ML cars.

[AZ08LexusES]

More likely it would just be blank space like it is in the non ML cars.

Mine is non-ML, but I have NAV, so no blank space, I have a tape drive. I guess the ones without NAV have the blank space, for storage and stuff.

[SW03ES]

So its tape when you have nav? Weird.

Its not a blank space you can use for storage, its just empty plastic.

[AZ08LexusES]

So its tape when you have nav? Weird.

Its not a blank space you can use for storage, its just empty plastic.

Oh, I thought it would be like my friend's Camry XLE without NAV, there's the plastic hole where you can put cell phone, wallet, etc. I don't remember what the current ES looks like without the NAV. I also think that the non-NAV vehicles have the tape drive, but since there is no screen, the stereo takes up less space, therefore the empty plastic cover or hole to fill where all that empty space...

[SW03ES]

Nope, no hole and no tape deck in the non-nav ES350s. I had one as a loaner last week.

[rjt65]

IMHO better to have the space used for the IPOD (MP3) than having to run the cord out of the armrest storage.

I threw out all my cassettes (2 loaded cassette storage box's few years ago).

I have been reestablishing my old collection of albums and cassettes at your music.com (was 5.99 now 6.99 per CD)

Plus I have a lot of mp3's. when I get some time I plan to put some MP3 in native data to see how that works in the ML.

anyone using native mp3 format?

cheers