MacBook – will Airline Power Adapter work in a car lighter as well

I bought my wife a Sony Xplod (sorry, forgot the model number) and that works really well with our phones. I would assume that all Sonys work equally as well (if not better).

You can use it, but how much actual charging goes on may be minimal. It depends how much power your MBP is drawing (i.e. if you're doing CPU or graphics intensive tasks, you'll draw more power, thus less charging), but I suspect the 45W won't do much more than slow the rate of battery drain. If your MBP is asleep or turned off, it should charge the battery, just slower than the standard charger.