B&W Name Change Theory

Mark Levinson never made car stereos. He sold the company to Harman International who took one of their Harmon Kardon designs and put a Mark Levinson label on it.

Ignoring the fact that HK does make decent car stereos; if you bought a Lexus because it had a Mark Levinson system in it; then you have fallen for the same market hype that Joe Consumer falls for when he buys a car because of the Bose system.

The cars that are hardest to sell are at opposite ends of the spectrum. They are the ones fully loaded with every option (too expensive) and the ones that come bare bones (no options).

I can remember getting a deal on a Corolla back the in 80s because it did not have the AM/FM/Cassette/4 speakers system that everyone wanted even in an economy car. It only had AM/FM and two cheap speakers in the lower dash. I took the car down to a car audio outlet, and with the savings put in a system that made the better one Toyota gave you a joke in comparison.

I like them using Bowers and Wilkens. The initials probably do sound too much like BMW. Now they can put a Richard E. Lord (REL) subwoofer in the trunk ... :-)

Yes, the speakers are probably Bose, the hardware whatever they usually use depending on car brand. I doubt Bose makes car stereos. They don't directly sell them after market.

There are some real nice after market car stereos out there.
The Creek C43 Audiophile Tuner and the Cambridge Audio T500 clone used a car stereo chipset. Michael Creek said he used it because the reception was much better than anything else he could come up with.