If you keep up with the ins and outs of new cars, you probably know that Lexus is notorious for hanging onto physical media players for way longer than they arguably have to. It was one of the last companies to let go of the cassette deck, and it’s hard to find a review of the current-gen IS or pre-update LC that doesn’t involve at least a short quip about their CD players. But did you know the 2025 Subaru Outback could also still be had with a CD slot from the factory? Yeah, I didn’t either.
This one is less known and a lot less talked about probably because the part is hidden inside the center armrest cubby and confined to just the top Touring and Touring XT trims. And the Outback isn’t the only current Subaru that can be had with a CD player. The now-defunct Legacy Touring XT also came with one right up until the day it stopped being made—so, like, up until a week ago.
The video that brought all this to my attention, however, was made by a Canadian Subaru salesman. And up here, the CD player is actually a $570 CAD accessory you can add to any trim of the 2025 Outback.
According to Subaru Canada’s website, in fact, an à la carte CD player is available for a surprising number of Canuck-market Subies: the 2025 Ascent and WRX can still be had with one for $900 CAD extra.
That doesn’t appear to be the case in the U.S., though, and according to both Autoblog and SlashGear, the only 2025 cars that can be had stateside with built-in CD compatibility are the aforementioned Outback, Legacy, Lexus IS, and RC.
You know what this means, right? With the Legacy and RC being discontinued and both the Outback and IS getting significant reworks for 2026, that I’d be willing to bet aren’t hiding a slot for compact discs in the glove box, 2025 is officially the last year any new car in the U.S. will come with a CD player.
So, pour one out for in-car CDs because the era of enjoying jewel cases, liner notes, and maybe a burned mix from high school while on the road is officially a thing of the past.
Topshot: Subaru
I work at a Subaru dealer in Washington state, and I handle accessories. I can confirm a CD player can be added to any trim Legacy, Outback, or WRX. I don’t know about the upcoming 2026 Outback, though.
In 2002, I purchased a ’99 Maxima. It had a stock Bose head unit with CD and cassette. It had been a *long* time since I had seen any of my tapes. A couple of years later I drove up to my dad’s house so I could use his garage for some maintenance work. He walked out of the house carrying a “briefcase” that I recognized right away as my old tape case!
I couldn’t remember what was in it, but the absolute highlight was seeing THRILLER when I lifted the lid.
Love Tyson’s videos but his dealership not so much. I tried to make a deal with them on a Crosstrek — I live in Victoria and they are in Prince George BC. Couldn’t get them to remove a bunch of the cold weather add ons that I don’t need in a place that almost never gets snow. I don’t blame Tyson for that — it’s the dealership management.
So Subaru will be taking the CD player…Out back? Ha ha
You. You go sit in the truck and think about what you just did.
I am having a hard enough time finding a replacement audio system that will control my iPod via a remote and put the lists on the screen. First replacement worked. Second one was installed about two years ago (cheap) without this feature. Now it’s all “apple stream” or whatever shit there is.
if you’re still using an ipod in car then you basically have to live with the fact that no one is still making headunits with the MFI protocol. You basically have to buy an older unit from 2016-2020 that still had MFI but new enough to have carplay or you have to buy an android based DAP that can interface with newer headunits.
Thank you. I’d rather not stream in a car.
At least there’s still aftermarket, and plenty of cars you can still swap out with aftermarket, for now….
I just yesterday used the CD player in my wife’s 10 yo Audi for the first time ever after buying a disc at a music festival. Maybe if I were better about making sure I actually own stuff, I’d use the radio as something more than a way to channel my podcasts to the car speakers.
Now, my Trooper is completely tricked out with both a tape deck and CD player… Of which I’ve never used either.
I had a 2006 A4 that came with an in-dash 6-CD changer. Neat, but no. I’ve never listened to music from a “carousel” like that.
I just hope it’s not made by Pioneer. My Jeep has a Pioneer unit in it, and it’s had 2 different problems with its CD player. It pretty much self-fixed the first time an issue arose, but now I’ve got a great 15-20 second noisemaker every time I turn on or off my Jeep.
I mentioned a lack of CD player in the 6G Bronco I owned and the lack of any auxiliary inputs and the consensus was to get some form of streaming.
OK, so the solution was to pay again to listen to music I already own….some of which I’ve never heard on the streaming apps. I also find myself in placed without adequate cell coverage. I’d at least like the option and I can’t be the only person.
It’s 8-track or nothing at all for me.
I remember when this current generation WRX came out they also had a CD player as a dealer installed option, was that recently dropped? Also before the recent refresh Honda Odysseys with the rear entertainment option could pay CDs by way of the Blu-ray player. But the Blu-ray player was removed in favor of just an hdmi and USB port
I thought the answer would be the Dodge Durango simply because it’s such an old design, but it actually dropped the CD player in 2015. Who knew.
I’m bothered the CD player is in the console so you can’t easily change the CD. Granted cars used to have CD changers in the trunk, but that gave you 5 or 6 to choose from. My Saturn that we had from 2002 to 2017 had a,combo CD and cassette head unit, and I still have cassettes from the 80s. My kids play my cassettes now, because they have old cars.
Which is another reason why I am keeping my 2015 Fit.
I wouldn’t mind having a CD player back in my life. I still have a bunch of old CDs I can’t bring myself to throw out. Best sound quality ever. Years ago I had a Taurus with the Mach 360 system and a 6 disc changer in the center console. It was like loading a musket but I loved it.
You’ll get my CD player when you pry it from my cold dead hands!
full disclosure: own a 2015 Outback with CD player
I read the heading and immediately thought hey cassette tapes are having a come back. You disappointed me so I will nickname you Ptuooey the sound one makes when spitting. Cassettes were the easiest medium to make your own traveling sound track. Sure you can burn a CD with thousands of dollars of investment, or you can join a music platform and pick your Genre and songs but very little control and a premium subscription package but the Cassette Tape $29.99 for a cassette recorder and about $1 a tape and you were a radio DJ.
They actually ARE making a comeback though. A lot of weird indie bands are doing boutique cassette releases. It’s not on the level of the vinyl revival but it is a thing that has started happening.
Can attest the FB Walkman repair page is very active.
Burning a CD “mixtape” requires time but the equipment is cheap. A burner and blank discs are under $100, and burning software, ripping software and audio editing are available for free.. You can even get the Nero editor to make jewel box inserts. Heck I even got an Ion turntable for $20 to rip records
CD burner? You can get an external USB CD burner for <$50.
And if you pay for a premium subscription to a music service, you get FULL control, not “very little.” I literally just tell my head unit what to play, and it does it, all while building custom playlists based on my likes.
TBH I am not up to date on what is available currently. But are any of these devices able to copy from anywhere? A cassette recorder you could tape in your room, car, the beach, or even at a concert. Although it was not voice activated. Actually to this day I just turn the radio on and listen to whatever is playing if I don’t like it I hit seek. I haven’t had a CD in the player in over a decade.
…and everything would sound like you recorded it with a can of beans.
I avoid the radio because I hate ads, and the radio stations only play the “hottest” hits and the most overplayed oldies.
As for being able to “copy from anywhere,” I have no need to do that anymore. I have a stack of like 300+ CDs, not including the mix CD’s I made with a burner back when cars had CD players. If I wanted physical media, it’s still around. The only reason to use tapes (or anything that came before tapes) is for the nostalgia, because it’s definitely not for the sound quality or selection.
When getting my brand-new 2002 Golf TDI I specifically wanted (& got) manual window cranks (just less to break than power windows, lol) and the sales rep mentioned that 2002 was the last year they were offering VWs in the US with manual crank windows. Later I found out that ’02 was also the last year for VWs with CD players as an *option* and that the next year would see US-spec VWs with CD players as standard equipment.
When my kids became teenagers they were happy that our Golf had a cassette deck instead of a CD player because they already had portable CD players and we had a surprisingly good Aiwa adapter from the 1990s for them to use with their portable CD players. They could play music from both of their collections of cassette tapes and CDs in our Golf whereas they couldn’t do so in their friends’ cars equipped with only a CD player (this was right before Bluetooth.)
After our Golf was totalled by a rear-ender after a solid 14 years (RIP) my kids & I salvaged the cassette deck from the Golf for future projects. Yeah, they’re of the mind that Lexus was on the right track holding out for so long in offering cassette decks. The kids are alright, indeed…
Good kids
“Cd player cassette adapters” really takes me back… Love it!
As much as I like having a CD player in the car, losing the CD player option has got to be the least offensive change for the 2026 Outback.
So other than the graphic at the top of the post this has nothing to do with ripping CDs?
Also, a CD slot facing up in the center console seems like it’s just asking for miscellaneous stuff to fall into the loading slot. Perhaps Canadians in general are more fastidious than the ones I know.
it looks like the CD is actually covered by the center console arm rest, so it’s all good.
As the owner of a 2020 Subaru Outback Touring XT, I can confirm this. All is good indeed.
That said, I’ve never used my CD player and would prefer the additional center console space, but I’m also not complaining. It’s a fun quirk/feature if nothing else.
Yeah, I’m curious if the Outback has the option to copy the CD to an internal harddrive so that it can be played anytime. My 2009 Journey has that option and it’s been pretty nice, I’ve copied 30 CDs to it. It doesn’t recognize any album that came out after 2008 though so all those will just say unknown track/genre/artist but you can rename the album at least.
We live in a weird timeline where cassette decks are suddenly more useful than CD players, because you can at least play a Bluetooth adapter through the former
That’s a fantastic point. The older I get, the more I prefer older but structurally flexible tech over the latest and greatest that works flawlessly…until it doesn’t and there are no workarounds.
When were CDs ever more useful than Cassette players?
When CDs were the dominant form of physical media, because cassettes themselves are annoying
Cassettes are sonically inferior to everything but 8-track tapes due to the narrowness of the tape. Each track (there are 4 on the tape), is not wide enough for the full spectrum of waveforms and tape hiss is still a thing (slightly reduced with Dolby technology). Plus there is wow and flutter. Cassettes are convenient to make (but quality goes down with each generation) and easy to carry, but not for serious listening. Modern car stereos will expose a cassette’s weaknesses more than the audio systems of the 79s.
Well if yo have a cd burner..,
When the cassette player ate your tape and then ate the next one just to show you it wasn’t just the tape.
When it’s time to skip to the next song, or go back a song. Or when you want to store a bunch of them in a small stack. Or when you prefer your music not sound like a running faucet in the background.
I could use a CD player and a cassette deck, as I still own over 700 CDs and some of my old cassettes.
I do not have anything Bluetooth (other than my laptop) to play in the MGB. I just use the FM radio and cassettes.
CD players still have some appeal to me, since a number of the smaller bands I like still seem to distribute primarily on CD, and it would allow me to listen to new releases right away, instead of having to wait until I can sit down and copy them over to my phone, but its an increasingly minor convenience
CDs and other physical media are also good in that they encourage you to listen to the entire album, not just the one popular hit. That’s the real downside of streaming – it can expose you to a lot of different music, but less so to stuff by a single performer.
Wow I can’t beleive the Canadian version was so expensive. An off the shelf PC CD/DVD drive was like $20, and yes this is neater and probably more rugged there was no way it was that much to make.
And nobody mourned.
Unlike AM Radio – Which seems to have its main fanbase among the geriatrics in Congress.
AM radio has been taken over by right wing talk radio and religious broadcasting in most of the country.
That may ba a factor.
Those AM stations are now lobbying the FCC for permission to turn off their AM transmitters and just use their FM repeaters, which seems somehow more likely to be granted now than a year or two ago
Lots of places FM doesn’t reach that AM does.
That’s also true of analog vs digital TV broadcasts, but it didn’t stop that
I wonder what percentage of TV watchers get their signal from broadcast vs cable or internet? I’m less than 40 miles from at least 3 broadcast antennas and still have to have satellite or cable TV for any TV.
I get my TV from the antenna. So it’s not zero. Probably just really close.
You better not take my CBS Sunday morning, my local real estate show and car talk reruns or I will write a strongly worded letter.
Okay Chuck Schumer…
Amen brother those people don’t listen or read and make assumptions and then cast aspersions. Never have an open mind.
What’s wrong with AM radio? You get better sound and reception driving through the heartland of America.
I got amazing sound and reception crossing the country streaming music and news while getting live traffic reports via Google Maps
YMMV.
Even on the major interstates, cell phone coverage is occasionally spotty. Just finished a 5000 mile lap of middle America and was astounded by the 3 bar and better reception in the middle of nowhere Texas and the one bar or less in other locations on I-80 and I-40. (One bar is not very good for streaming).
So why can’t AT&T provide better than one bar of reception at my house in a community of >25,000 people?
Yeah, but a taxi with whatever they do to taxi alternators knocks it out.
WNYC AM is great , except near cabs. It was better before Gulianni of course.
As was Earth.