IPod for your car - VW factory connection

Question

Hi all,
I just recently bought a 2006 VW Jetta, and I wanted to be able to hook my 3rd Generation iPod up to the car's stereo system. Unfortunately, the dealer couldn't tell me much about the Volkswagen connection system, and they didn't have one hooked up for me to check out.
It costs about $200-250, which is a little expensive. But it sounds like it could be a very cool system, since it plugs into the dock connector, recharges the iPod while you have it hooked up, and allows you to control the iPod from the stereo console.
My question is, has anyone actually purchased or used one of these? Can you give me some feedback on what they're like, and how well they work? I read an unattributed (read: unreliable) comment that the radio only allows you to access your music in a handful of song folders. Any truth to this? Or does the stereo interface look something more like iTunes?
Thanks for the feedback, folks.
G3 iBook, PowerMac G5   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

Answer 1

I purchased one for a 2006 Toureg. It's certainly not worth the money, for the following reasons:
1. It does not display song information on the dash. I've got the vw nav system, which displays song info for the radio, but this adapter shows simply track number.
2. It only shows the first 6 playlists on your ipod, and there's no way to get to the others.
3. iPods generally have a "Purchased Music" playlist which does not appear to be deletable or renamable, and that screws up having the lists you want available in the car.
4. The order of the playlists on your ipod is not the same as 1-6 on the car, which also makes it confusing, especially as you add more playlists to the ipod and wish to understand how that has affected what a specific playlist is on the dash. Especially more difficult because the name of the playlist is not exposed.
5. Installing it bypassed by cd-changer.
6. Skipping between songs takes a long time, and repeats part of the song you're on before skipping, which just ***** for this kind of money.
7. From time to time, it just stops working - unplugging, rebooting and replugging the ipod fixes.
8. From time to time, it just kicks out of playing and returns to the radio.
9. From time to time, it prevents the rear view camera from working on the toureg.
10. It doesn't recognize on the go playlists until you save them, and each time you save one it's a guess whether or not the list will even be accessible between 1-6 on the dash. Of course, for long drives where you may want to create a few different playlists along the way, this proves to be completely unworkable.
11. When plugged into the adapter, the ipod is unusable. There's no way to simply use the ipod to manage the music and output it directly to the stereo. Frankly, that would be a vast improvement over product as it stands today.
12. Oh yeah, and if you download videos from iTunes and sync them to an ipod video, your "Purchased" playlist contains these videos, which is really pointless in this scenario, since there's no way to watch them while driving. So if you do this at all, you're not going to get 6 music lists to choose from - you'll get 5 music lists and 1 video list.
This is by far the worst ipod accessory I've ever purchased, and sadly, the most expensive one as well. Returning it isn't really possible, since it involves labor to put it in and take it out.
VW has an aux in port for the ipod on the toureg, and I should have just stuck with that, though they should really locate power in the same hidden space as the aux in rca ports. I couldn't figure out a better way to wire everything up without cables running all over the place and getting in the way.
I had an alpine ipod-ready deck in the car before this, and that worked better, though scanning through tracks was somewhat slow -- though lightning fast compared to the VW factory offer.
I am very disappointed that Apple promotes such a badly designed and feature-poor adapter.
I love the iPod, and I love my toureg. But this thing between the two just simply *****.