A friend of mine named Mark recently bought a new car, and there was one feature he was lamenting about not being a thing anymore: a CD player. The year is 2025, and turns out he was wrong.
Over the weekend I was in Aspen via Denver and spent time in the 2025 Subaru Outback. Imagine my surprise when I opened the center arm rest and found a CD player sitting in this new car with only a few thousand miles on the odometer. Clearly my buddy Mark should’ve bought a Subaru Outback. Somewhat ironically he was on his second Outback while shopping for his latest car, and he didn’t buy third. Perhaps mistakes were made.
The 2025 Outback I tested over the weekend was a top-shelf Touring XT model, which comes standard with the CD player in the center console storage compartment. The lower-spec Touring model also comes standard with a CD player.
Even more surprising is the fact that the Outback isn’t the only new car, or Subaru, that comes standard with a CD player today.
Both the 2025 Lexus IS sedan and RC coupe come with a CD player mounted on the dashboard. The latter is being discontinued after 2025, the former is getting its third redesign for the current generation as it enters 2026, and both lead to the CD player disappear from the Lexus lineup.
As for Subaru? The Japanese automaker still offers the CD player as an option on the WRX. And the Outback? It’s about to be replaced by a new generation for 2026 and Subaru told The Drive it will not offer a CD player.
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As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.
