I firmly believe that Bose really targets the middle age crowd with some hearing loss already in place, AND with little to no experience with real nice audio systems. Then tunes their audio in a way that it sounds "better" to those folks. My Dad has bought several of their Acoutimass set ups for the house and garage since the 90's, and thinks they sound AMAZING!! To me, the bass always sounded boomy yet without decent punch, the midrange was muddy due to it being split between the sub and small drivers in the cubes, and significantly boosted treble.
He has said many times that those systems bring out parts of the music that he's never heard before, though it's not the systems are better at reproducing the sound, but rather that they are tuned in a way that his lack luster hearing can pick up on it now.
Granted, what's going on with the home theater systems don't necessarily transfer over to a mobile installation, but I still feel like the Bose stuff in cars is targeting towards the same kinds of people. It makes sense in something like the Volt as well, as I don't see many younger folks in their 20s and 30s buying these cars. I also had the Bose system in my Camaro, and while it was better than the base Delco stuff, it certainly wasn't anywhere near impressive to me either. Pulling it all out, and replacing it with a mid range Pioneer head unit, Boston Acoustics speakers all around, a single 10" Infinity sub and a small amp just for the sub made a WORLD of difference to me. On the other hand, aside from the additional low end fill, and considerably higher volume, Dad really couldn't tell the difference between the stock stuff in his Ranger and my set up.
In my '13 Volt, I wouldn't consider the factory set up to be junk or garbage as I've seen a few refer to it as, but I certainly wish I could get some more volume out of the thing...there's just some days I want to roll down all the windows, crank up the volume, and rock on down the road.
