It wasn’t too long ago that the average car radio would eat up cassette tapes to play U2’s Joshua Tree or your latest mixtape. A company called Fusion is taking that principal and applying it to the iPod. Yup, you shove your iPod into like you once did with Eddie Money’s No Control. Of course a modern twist applies here and the face falls down on the CA-IP500 to reveal a large hole off-center to the right. Using pieces of plastic to accommodate your particular iPod, called the sleeve, you’ll be able to use any iPod touch, 5th gen classic (30, 60, 80GB), 6th generation 80 or 160 GB as well as 7th generation iPods (straight from Fusion’s web page). All but the first generation nanos are supported.

Like pretty much any car stereo with iPod integration, you’ll be able to browse your genres, playlist, artists, and songs. Pretty much like any other car stereo with iPod integration, artist and song listings lag and are worthless if you have a lot of songs and artists.

The full dot matrix OLED screen looks pretty nice with two lines of information displaying artist and song information nicely. The 4 channel with subwoofer output, AM/FM, RDS, AUX input unit pumps out 50 MOSFET watts times four. SRS Wos sound shaping helps enhance the sound and two selectable colors helps you decide which is better for your mood.

Fusion’s “world first internal iPod dock” is an interesting addition to the growing number of iPod car stereos available and may start a new trend in after-marketing head units.