A few years ago, a CD player was standard equipment in just about any car. Today it's an option that costs nearly $450 — and only two models in the entire US lineup still offer it. The 2026 Subaru WRX and Ascent remain the last mainstream new vehicles in America for which the manufacturer offers a compact disc player: it costs $449.95 for the WRX and $450 for the Ascent.
And this isn't some leftover infotainment system nobody bothered to update. Subaru's official 2026 accessory catalogs plainly list a single-disc CD player for both models. The WRX gets separate versions of the device for the manual gearbox and the Subaru Performance Transmission, and the player itself is installed in the center console.
The installation location says everything about what's happened to this technology. The WRX's dashboard is already occupied by an 11.6-inch infotainment system with smartphone services, so the physical disc player simply didn't have anywhere else to go — it got pushed into the storage compartment instead. That's the paradox: buyers pay an extra $450 and lose usable console space in the process. All for discs almost nobody listens to anymore.
A year ago, the list of holdouts was longer. According to Cars.com, CD players were still available on the Subaru Outback and Lexus IS, but the 2026 model years lost them after the Outback's generational redesign and the Lexus refresh. Setting aside Rolls-Royce's bespoke commissions, the WRX and Ascent are now the last mass-market US models with this factory-supported option.
How many buyers are actually willing to pay extra for discs? Subaru hasn't released that data. What's more interesting is whether the CD player survives another model cycle at all. The answer will show up in next year's accessory catalogs — and they'll reveal whether the WRX and Ascent remain the CD's last refuge, or whether it disappears along with them.
