The original cassette deck and speakers
The factory system is farily ordinary, consisting of a Chrysler cassette deck, a pair 4"x6" paper woofer speakers up front and a pair of 4.5" paper woofers in the sound bar. The system produced acceptable sound and my only real problems were the lack of a cd/mp3 player and the lack of bass from the small speakers.

Choosing a new cd/mp3 player
I have recently become a big fan of Panasonic. They seem to do a good job of designing and producing their products and have one of the best price/performance ratios available. That said, I was looking for a baseline mp3 capable player that I could either install or have installed for under $200. In the end I settled on the Panasonic CQ-C3300U at Circuit City and they installed it for free.

Thoughts about the new player
I really like it and I was very happy to have it on my 400 mile trip back home. I do have some problems to work on though. The first is with the dash kit. Since there is no support for the rear of the player and the fact that the Chrysler method of attachment sucks, this means that the dash kit does not meet the dash properly. It does not look too bad but there is a gap around the top left corner. I will remedy this soon. The other problem is with the stock speakers. They were fine with the stock player but now they really seem to suck. This will also be fixed soon.

Replacing the sound bar speakers
Stopping by eBay, I checked out the current prices on Infinity Reference series speakers and found that I could pick up a new set of 5002i 5.25" speakers for $50. So I did and I am now waiting patiently for them. More to come ...