Just a thought I had the other day. How about using one of the products which allow for an aftermarket A/V source (like a DVD player), and connect a night-vision camera mounted in the front bumper instead? Then wire the toggle switch to the day/night button in the dash (just to keep that stock feel; I never use that button and the icon would match the function well). Then, when driving in the dark, one could hit the day/night button and the navigation screen would switch to a forward facing night-vision camera. I think it would be cool, and probably not too hard/expensive (relatively speaking). Any thoughts?

Nice idea, but IMHO, Too distracting to look over at Navi for night vision. Its one thing to glance at the map, but if you were concerned about something in the road ahead, I think you would need to look over at Navi too long to figure out what it is.
Night vision needs to be in a heads up display directly in front of you.

Don't the new BMWs integrate the night vision into the navigation/iDrive screen? I seem to remember it displaying there in my friend's new X5. I could be wrong.

here you go:
http://www.motorauthority.com/flir-p...termarket.html
I guess you can put their monitor anywhere, but they have a warning about just glancing at it

Honda has a night vision setup for the JDM Legend (RL here). I'm quite sure it can be fitted into our cars with minimal difficulty if you can find someone to export the parts to the USA from Japan. No one has done it here, though there's been plenty of talk about it over the years the 2G RL has been out.

http://world.honda.com/HDTV/Intellig...408/index.html shows the basics of the system. Their system has some limitations, though.

On a side note, Honda also has a sweet front side view camera that can be used in tight alleys and such to judge when it is safe to turn.

Honda saves its best toys for the JDM sometimes.

I think I have said this before, but yes they do save a lot of goodies for JDM. The first nav system I was aware of was in the 1982 ish 2G Honda Accord upmarket model. It was black and green screen, and used an aircraft inertial measurement unit under the hood ornament, and relatively accurate...this in the days of non-GPS, claiming to get you within about 50 feet of the destination. One of the major software changes was the deletion of the where you had been feature. They thought this would be useful to find your way back to specific destinations in the arcane roadways of Tokyo. The story goes that the ability of wives to back track to the apartments of their husband's mistresses caused the software to be changed...privacy concerns we would call it today.

This was in an article in one of the car rags, but you would probably have to microfiche it to find the article.