Ok I've known about all the little anti theft mechanisms that they have been using over the years are all designed with the idea that you can't steal the radio and use it in something else. Ran across a stock mustang 4x25W amp once for example where the speaker output in the connector (8 pins) were arranged in such a way that you simply wouldn't get anything through to the speakers if the amp and car don't match. Piece of cake to defeat, open the amp, trace the outputs to each chip, rearrange pins as desired.
Things only get more complicated from there as each year's next model comes out. Great. All fine and good. I've never bothered to really try and find out why exactly all of this effort takes place, even 20 years after *I* found out about it. But, with the advent of this thread, I'm gonna go ahead and throw it out there...
Who the @#&$ steals a STOCK car radio? I used to be in the car audio biz (how I found out about the scheme mentioned above), and I can indeed confirm that there is in fact an entire underground where regular stereo "exchanges" take place. NEVER did ANYONE mention stealing ANY make, model, revision, spacecraft or any other kind of stock radio. You could throw a pile containing every stock car stereo out on the side of the road in any neighborhood (even THE hood) and come back 6 months later and find that the only thing that has changed is that none of them would work anymore. Not because of an anti theft mechanism prevented it. No. Because rain got in the damn things and ate the boards up. Every last one of them would still be sitting there. So where does all the paranoia in the manufacturers minds come from for this stuff?
Maybe stock car stereos only get stolen in Detroit?
Steve