Life just got easier for those who buy compact sedans and turn them into tuners -- street rods with ground-shaking sound systems. Now Mazda has done the work for them, creating a 'factory tuner' named after a popular music technology.

The 2001 Mazda MP3, a hopped-up edition of the Proteg sedan, is the first-ever car with a factory-installed MP3 player. That means owners can listen to more than 10 continuous hours of personalized music programming without changing a disc. The system plays MP3 files copied on recordable CDs, as well as conventional CDs.