I bought a Sirius car kit last year, the kind that clips to your AC vent, you run the antenna to the roof, and use a cassette adapter. While it wasn’t too pretty, it worked well. I chose Sirius over XM because Sirius has more news/talk channels, and XM didn’t have NPR at all. I found myself listening to NPR Now and BBC World News most of the time. (Oh, and the 80s channel.) I still switched back to the regular Sacramento NPR station for the drive home each day, because the Sirius NPR station doesn’t have All Things Considered.

Shortly before buying my new car, I heard that Toyota had recently begun selling direct Sirius integration (they’ve had XM integration for a few years now), but Toyota’s site had no information except for a small marketing blurb, and I only found a few people in forums talking about it.

After buying the car, I started asking around. Reno Toyota said while they haven’t ordered any yet, the installation instructions on the TIS (Toyota Information System, essentially something like MSDN, but for Toyota techs) look nearly identical to the XM installations, which they’ve done. They said they saw 2 parts, one for the receiver itself, and one for the “fit kit”. Together they were $450 (ouch), and installation would be another $180. I got the part numbers and verified them against some forums through Google.

Then I found this site, which lists the exact same parts for $270. Again, I’ve found very little info about this (earliest date I’ve found has been 2007-04-27), so I wasn’t sure if everything in those 2 items were complete (antenna, etc). I took a deep breath and pulled out the credit card. 3 days later, today, it arrived.

I busted out the camera:

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Everything needed seems to be there. It even came with a printout of the TIS installation manual. The instructions are straight forward, but I would need tools such as a drill, deburring tool, nylon panel removal tool, etc. I then made an appointment with Reno Toyota to get it installed. $180 is worth it to not risk messing up your car that’s only a week old.

I took a lot of pictures, just in case someone who is in a similar situation needs more information about what he’ll be buying.