In April of 05 there was an April Fool's thread about Nakamichi being back in business. Well, from a search it appears nobody has updated anything. I e-mailed Nak about the ease of which I could swap out my CD 400 (still working perfect over a year later, a good sign I think) with a CD 500. I also asked them if they are back in the states or if I am stuck buying from Canada. They told me they are back in the US. I know I'm excited, anybody else? They seem to make the only option for someone who wants a built in amp in a head unit that doesn't look like garbage (the only other non-garbage looking unit being McIntosh, which doesn't have a built in amp).
Nakamichi never went out of business, although they were in bankruptcy for a couple years. The subsidiary Nakamichi-USA, which was their US distribution company, is now only a series of service centers, so they are no longer directly distributed in N. America. But the parent was never out of business, just sold to the Grande Group in Singapore/Taiwan (Akai.) Nakamichi car audio is still available, their amplifiers and the CD-700II are still built to the original Nakamichi designs, I am not sure about what has happened to the rest of the cr audio lineup in terms of design.
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