I’ve owned three iPod’s since its inception and each one has served me wonderfully whether it be at home, traveling, at the gym or in the car. There are numerous ways to get your iPod to play over your car speakers but my preferred method is to utilize the line out on the iPod and have it tap directly into the auxiliary input in my car audio system. I much prefer using the line out rather than the headphone jack since I get a much cleaner and more robust signal. Fortunately there are a few third party manufacturers that sell iPod car chargers with built in line out for just this purpose. So back in 2004 I found this:

Manufactured by SiK, the “imp” fit my needs perfectly. I was able to keep my iPod charged in my car and also play my audio out through my car audio speakers. I still use it to this day with my iPod with no problems.

Having upgraded to an iPhone and using it as my primary iPod, logically I would like to do that same thing. Unfortunately the imp doesn’t support line out on the iPhone, though it charges it just fine. Funny enough I haven’t been able to find any other manufacturer that makes something similar. Plenty of car chargers, just no line out. Very odd. I’m almost tempted to simply purchase a dock which has a line out built right in and use it in my car, as cumbersome as that would be.

My guess is that Apple has made utilizing the line out on the iPhone not as trivial as it was with the iPod. I haven’t given up yet so feel free to send over any suggestions or input you may have and I’ll be sure to post any follow-up developments.

UPDATE: I e-mailed SiK to see if they had any intentions of updating the imp to support the iPhone. Their response:

“We expect to begin shipping an all new, iPhone/iPod touch compatible, imp this Fall (hopefully early November.)”

Very nice! I’ll post a follow-up once I receive mine.

UPDATE 2: Apologies for the greatly belated update. The new update to the imp is called the “pimp” and you can get it here. While it doesn’t say it’s compatible with the iPhone for line out capabilities I did get this response back from SiK customer service:

Pimp will work with iPhone even though it doesn’t currently carry the “Works With iPhone” badge.

I’ve had it since April of 2009 and it works great with my iPhone 3GS. Don’t hesitate to get one for yourself.