A vehicle rear surround sound audio system for a vehicle includes a plurality of speaker nodes, each of the speaker nodes including at least one speaker. A subset of the speaker nodes are located in a video viewing region of a vehicle. A head unit includes a DVD or other multi-channel surround sound source, a digital signal processor (DSP), an amplifier, and a fader. The head unit selectively implements: (i) a normal audio mode in which a plurality of different surround sound speaker signals are output to the plurality of speaker nodes according to a first mapping; or (ii) a rear surround audio mode in which all of the plurality of different surround sound speaker signals are output to only the subset of speaker nodes located in the video viewing region according to a second mapping such that the subset of speaker nodes are active to output all of the surround sound speaker signals.