Navi?

It's only been available for a year or so, I think. It my also be so expensive that few dealers order it because they want to keep the sticker price lower.
I assume it is the same unit used in other Fords.

Its the same unit. I've only ever seen ONE in person. It was just this week in a GT500. It looks really good. It fits the interior really well. They even chromed the edges of the dials to complement the IUP. Maybe or maybe not worth the money, but for a custom fit, I'm gunna buy it when I order my Stang!

Updates are generally not available for factory Navi units. Its generally more difficult to bypass factory navigation. Then the biggest gripe is of course, the price. Factory navi is $2k. I paid $699 for my avic-d3. The i-pod integration alone make it far better than the factory unit.

The only thing the factory unit has over aftermarket units is fit and finish since it fills the entire opening.

Personally, I think the navi in nearly any car is a waste of money. Its worth it if you are new to your area or often go to unfamiliar places, but other than that you never use it. My girlfriend got it on her new G35 coupe, and we were new to our area. We used it for a month, and never use it anymore. Think of it this way - its Mapquest on steroids in your car. Do you really need to spend $2000 for mapquest?

stangdude2000 said:

Personally, I think the navi in nearly any car is a waste of money. Its worth it if you are new to your area or often go to unfamiliar places, but other than that you never use it. My girlfriend got it on her new G35 coupe, and we were new to our area. We used it for a month, and never use it anymore. Think of it this way - its Mapquest on steroids in your car. Do you really need to spend $2000 for mapquest?

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When I am near home I don't use it since Chicago has a grid layout with a great numbering system. When I get into the burbs things get tricky. Besides that, the POI's are great when you are looking for something specific.

I drive around a lot on the weekends for fun. I look up restaurants in the area and I get directions and a phone number so I can place an order.

When I go out of town I can set the hotel as my home destination and I won't be afraid of driving around and getting lost.

Then again I never would have paid $2k for it...

I'm in agreement with Stangdude2000. We bought an 05 Avalon LTD new in May of 2005. The Phoenix Toyota dealers sold the LTD in basically two configurations, one fully load which included the Nav and Remote Start, the other without these features. I had talked my wife out of this expensive options as it was another $2500 but one evening we got lost coming back thru an area in Sun City where the streets do follow the normal North, South, East, West grid layout and run in circles. So because of that one night we got the Nav. We used it when we when to California and it worked nice in getting us to our hotels etc on the busy freeways where if you in the wrong lane your screwed in getting back on track. But around town in Phoenix we hardly use it. A handheld device would have been just a good to use and much cheaper and can be taken from car to car. I think I've used the remote start more than the Nav - its great in cooling down the car - runs about 10 minutes before shutting its self off. Also use it as I leave my daughter in the car while I go into the store for a quick trip when its very hot outside.

One thing about the Toyota Nav is the input control. It is very hard to use. I wish it had an interface to allow down loading of route points, addresses, etc via bluetooth or some other interface. You have to manually input into it and it is a pain. Definatley play with the it before you buy. Another thing - ours is a DVD based unit which means it had a DVD player in the trunk of the car which hold the DVD data disk. It is about $150 to upgrade the disk with a new one for the latest info. We have never upgraded ours and sometime find our selves on newer roads which shows us in the middle of nowhere on the Nav screen. You cant use the DVD screen for anything else, like being a monitor etc.

I'd like to find a navi that uses a hard disk and can play DVDs on the screen while driving. I found a HDD navi in the new Lancer GTS but you can't play DVDs while the car is in Drive. It's so the driver doesn't get distracted or something. I think its crud. What if my passengers want to watch movies while I'm driving on a road trip? Is there any good after market DVD/Navi systems that can fill the whole gap in the dash and fit well?

Pioneer has one that also has great ipod controls, satellite radio and other options. And it is much cheaper.

i have it in my car as well, and at first didn't want it but it was already in the car so I did it anyway. I like it alot for the reason of going new places all the time....I got the car 4 weeks ago and already have 5600 miles on it but got back from a 3300 mile trip last week and it was great to have for the reason of finding restraunts and hotels for whatever area I was in. It has it's pros and cons, if i didn't drive alot it would be useless IMO. Now my wifes wants one for her explorer