I've Stumbled Upon The Most Niche Car Community On The Internet

The automotive world is a rich tapestry of communities that spans as wide as "things with four wheels" down to the most esoteric of subjects. Covering this space means I get exposed to almost every type of niche automotive community you can think of, but I think I just found one that blows them all out of the water: Reddit.com/r/RCD_330.

What we've got here is a community dedicated to hyping up, discussing and installing Volkswagen's RCD330 head unit in other Volkswagen products it didn't originally come in. Basically, it's a community of people who want to upgrade their car's head unit to something a bit more modern, found that this gives their VW a really clean — near OEM — look and then got very excited about it. I can't blame them, because these installs do look factory-fresh. Kudos to Volkswagen for keeping its interior design language consistent for years.

There are apparently companies that will pull these 6.5-inch head units out of Golfs, Jettas, Passats, Tiguans and Polos, among other VW products, in Asia (where they were originally sold), update their software to run Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and then sell them all around the world. There's even a whole collage industry of companies building replica RCD330s to meet demand. It's fascinating, man.

I was lucky enough to come across these wonderful people completely by accident. You see, as I often do, I was scrolling through Autotrader thinking about the next car I wasn't going to buy, and I decided to focus in on the Volkswagen CC. I love that car, but it's infotainment screen is, well, lacking. So, I was curious, and decided to look up what sort of upgrade options there were for it. Bing, bang, boom. r/RCD330.

Since then, I've spent the day scrolling through pages of the "Volkswagen VW Radio RCD 330 Enthusiastic Reddit," as its description reads, and I've been so wonderfully surprised by what I've found. Yes, there's plenty of the requisite car nerdiness and even some snark that comes pre-loaded on Reddit, but overall, it's such a lovely welcoming community.

Keep in mind, though, when I say niche, I mean niche. The top post of all time has just 79 upvotes, and the community — while being around for nearly six years — has just 4,000 weekly visitors. You could be 4,001. 

In stark contrast to a place like r/cars, so many people here just seem to want to be genuinely helping and welcoming to their RCD330 brothers and sisters — helping guide them on which model to pick, what brands to stay away from and how to get through the installation process.

There's even a ton of support once people get their RCD330s installed, which is just so heartwarming to witness, and the folks who do the installations always seem to be more than willing to walk commenters through their installation process — answering questions, no matter how mundane. 

In a world that can be so cruel, especially online, it's just so nice to see a community of people coming together to celebrate and work on something, even if it's an infotainment screen fitted to cars in the mid-2010s. Even if you're not a VW owner, it's just a nice place to spend some time. However, if you do drive a Volkswagen and are looking to upgrade your interior ever so slightly, there may be no better resource in the world than r/RCD_330.