QOTD: How Do You Setup Your Gauges?
Yesterday, I picked up a press car. And like so many cars these days, this one -- a Honda Pilot Trailsport -- gave me options on how I'd like my gauges to read.
With the flick of a roller knob on the steering wheel, I could choose what info I wanted to see inside the tachometer. Fuel/range, radio station, nav info -- there are several options. I chose fuel and range.
This is one of the simpler setups -- some Jeeps let you change the entire view of the gauges entirely with a couple of button pushes, for example. Some cars put Google Maps/Google Earth in the gauges.
So, I ask you, what setup do you prefer? Put the nav in? Fuel info? Put the tach away if you can, or vice versa? If you own a car with customizable gauges or have rented one, or otherwise have driven one, how do you do it?
Sound off below.
[Image: Jeep]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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I wish they were more options to customize these digital gauges - I want a real temps displayed not some gauge which is just an idiot light in disguise. On my C7 I normally use the Sport display and have oil pressure and oil temp always shown. On my Santa Cruz I have the digital MPH and then flip to current mileage. It has a nice feature where it gives you 3 trip odometers: current drive (since starting), since last fill up and overall accumulated which I reset only after oil changes. These all show miles, MPG and time. The stock speed-o goes to 160 (why?) which means less resolution in the normal speed range you drive, so to be precise I like the digital speed display. I've gotten used to the digital speed thanks to the HUD on my C7 so I rare look at the analog speed anymore.
MK VII Golf doesn't offer much on ongoing use. Usually it's either the next nav turn, or just the default compass when NAV isn't running. When driving in US, I put the speed up in MPH (gauges are only metric). Only other thing might be distance to empty, but I can usually gauge that off the trip ODO, since it's pretty much 800KM to a tank no matter how I drive.
On my Merc I have Avg Fuel economy (which resembles a rev counter), radar cruise, and Spotify on my main screen, navigation on my Centre screen. Speed and fuel levels are always visible. I played around with different settings at first but I’ve settled on these rather non-traditional options. I do love the MBUX interface.
Tachometer on the left side, set to run in the background if there’s something else running. (Normal physical analog speedo on the right—Honda didn’t make the entire IP a TFT display, even at the mid-cycle refresh in 2021, though they did put a digital speed display at the bottom of the cluster; 2018-2020 Accords will only display that if the alternate speed measurement is active, i.e., km/h on US models.)