I had a carputer in my Scion XB for a little while. It was cool for a while, but I just don't think you can beat a purpose built car stereo piece like the Z1. So I now have that and can't even think about going back. Everything wasn't the easiest to use even with a nice touchscreen VGA monitor.
I have my music on my ipod and it probably is faster to use the carputer for that but still not the greatest. Video storage would definitely be better on the carputer, but I don't watch that much.
To give an opinion on your question, I think it will look bad without a VGA monitor. Anytime I