QOTD: Dig That Digital Dash?

Thanks to tech advancements in the field of digital display, we live in an age where today’s cars have beautiful, flowing digital gauges. Audi’s MMI system and its Virtual Cockpit, as an example, is a 12.3-inch master class in design.

Not too many years ago, though, it was completely different. Prehistoric electronics, combined with a race by manufacturers to out-spaceship each other, led to more than a few sets of gauges that had to be studied like tax forms.

The pictures in this post are credited to the absolutely fabulous site Joost which, it must be noted, should be clicked upon at one’s own peril. Why? Well, if you enjoy odd digital dashboards from the ‘80s and ‘90s, your personal productivity will be zero for the rest of the day. It’s a fabulous page.

Anyway, there are absolutely psychotic examples from the era, such as the hasn’t-worked-in-forever gauge set in an Aston Martin Lagonda, just about anything from Citroën, and the fighter jet-inspired Subaru XT instruments. Our very own Murilee prefers the “big-nosed climate guy” in the Cordia/Tredia cluster shown at the top of this page.

One of my favorites from the car concept circuit back then was the 1985 Buick Wildcat. All the digital gauges were contained in a fixed circular well around which the steering wheel moved, displaying a bizarre rainbow-shaped tachometer and a circle divided up into quadrants reporting on fuel level, engine temp, oil pressure, and system voltage. Fantastic.

Back in the real world, there were plenty of strange sets of digital gauges in mass production. I’m partial to some of the Ford efforts, like this strangely italicized cluster found in the 1989-1992 Probe.

But when it came to offering a variety of gonzo gauges, no one outdid GM. Digital sets which were supposed to vaguely mimic analog faces. Hybrid indicators which threw together new-age numerals and old-fashioned needles in a terrifying shotgun marriage. And who could forget the attempts at hammering a set of digital gauges in a space designed for a ribbon speedometer?

My own favorite from an era when GM experimented with mystifying instrumentation is the set of digital gauges for the Chevy S-10 pickup and Blazer. The combination of vertical and horizontal bar graphs is absolutely fabulous, and it was surprising to find a spaceship display in an agricultural truck. Adding in dot matrix numbers, mismatched colors, and GM’s insistence on using three partially filled circle-shaped hieroglyphics for the fuel gauge just seals it for me.

Of course, technology of the day practically assured most of these clusters permanently winked out of existence three days after the warranty expired. What’s your favorite set of digital gauges? Modern or aged, there are plenty of them out there.