It used to be the car manufacturers put low-end car stereos in their cars.This had a serious drawback: It meant that most everyone would upgrade to a "real" stereo (Alpine, Kenwood, etc.). More of these high-end stereos would get stolen out of cars, so insurance rates rose for lots of cars. This meant that the affordability of the car (monthly car payment + insurance + gas) went down because the insurance was higher.Car companies quickly realized that they could charge more for the cars if they had high-end equipment pre-installed in every car (people would see the value of paying an extra $300 if the car came with a built-in nice stereo), and the insurance rates would drop because fewer cars would be broken into.Honda tends to use Sony equipment, Acura uses only Apline equipment in their cars to solve this problem.