PLUS! Friend just got a Subaru, and it has a USB port in the center console, and it doesn't do anything... No charging, no radio, nothing... Kind of a surprise...
Seriously?! What does the owner's manual say about it? Or the dealer? That's just bizarre.
RE: FM transmitters...
You get the strangest reception using one of those. I was tooling down the road, and got BLASTED over by someone with a Sirius/XM radio on the same vacant freq I was using.
Quality of these things varies more than just about any other electronic device I've bought. I have a 1997 Subaru Legacy--the longer I drive it, the more determined I am to see it reach 20 years for some damn reason. LOL And as the stereo hasn't crapped out yet, that hasn't been replaced. Consequently, I've gone through a few rounds with FM transmitters at this point. And some are definitely just garbage.
The last two I've used were a Motorola T505 and my latest, an iKross. I live outside a heavily populated city; when you look on any of the empty channel locator sites, there basically aren't any channels that rate better than "good" for use with one of these. Varied terrain and too much random weather also seem to change what is and isn't in range on any given day.
Even so, the T505 was rarely overridden by other feeds--static, yes, and radio hiss between songs, but most times, it wouldn't pick up a station or another car's audio so long as it was locked onto one of the relatively empty channels.
The iKross appears to send an even stronger signal. It hasn't been overridden at all yet, used on the same routes as the T505 was. In areas where the T505 routinely hit static, there's no interruption of music from the iKross. Quality of audio is decent--a bit better than radio when locked onto a clear station, but not quite up to CD level.
All of which is to say, *if* you find a good FM transmitter, you too can probably annoy other drivers' enjoyment of their Howard Stern show by your stronger transmission of Nine Inch Nails.
iKross:
http://www.amazon.com/iKross-Multif.../B00I60488G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413143258
Channel search (US) for best stations to use:
http://www.radio-locator.com