Stereo Upgrades....what to do!?

[gravylegs]

Hi everyone,
This weekend I took delivery of my 2007 RS B package Liftback! Got the lowering springs, door sill protectors, cargo and all season mats, and the power everything. So far I love it!

EXCEPT

The stereo is WEAK. Here are my beefs:

1) The RS comes with an all black interior, even the center console plate. The double din SILVER stereo sticks out like a sore thumb! It looks super cheap as it is just silver painted plastic. The worst part about this is since it is so prominant due to the contrast, it is one of the first things that people look at. Such a shame.

2) There is absolutely no low end to this stereo. To hear any sort of bass at all I need to crank the bass setting up to 3 or 4, and then everything sounds muddy.

3) There isn't much in the way of volume. Driving around with the windows down and the stereo on means I have to crank it up to 50+ which makes it sound like junk.

My questions:

1) Has anyone replaced the stereo with a single din head unit? If so, can I see a picture? Curious to see what you did to fill the space. I'd like to throw my old head unit in this baby. No, it doesn't accomodate 6 cd's, but with mp3 cds, who really cares about a changer?

2) Im thinking to put a subwoofer in this car, but don't want to take up precious cargo space. Ideally I want to build a box with enough airspace to accomodate a 10" that would fit beside the spare tire where there is currently a storage "tray". I used to drive an insight, and a guy had custom made a box to fit specially into an unused area of space. Check it out at http://www.geoff.shepherd.com/xwayland/main.html
Has anyone done anything like this yet?

Thanks for listening to the rant, and for any feedback I end up getting!
gravylegs