Anyone seen the new Cadillac ads on TV? Specifically, the shots of the dashboard. Man, it looks like your laptop screen in there. I guess all the cars are gravitating toward this style/set-up. I was shocked by how much info you can have made available on these things. Pardon me for being a bitter clinger to my mechanical gauges in my old cars. One breaks? It's modular, get a new one, replace it and you're done. What about when this stuff malfunctions, and it will malfunction someday, on these new cars? You'd better have an extended warrantee plan with a l-o-w deductible. And I can't help but thinking all these electronic viewscreens blaring at you while you are driving are a genuine distraction. It used to be you had a cool, sophisticated dashboard setup if you checked off the option box for the gauge package. Those days are long gone and I do miss them.

Speedometer, Tachometer, Volts, Fuel, Oil Pressure, Temperature. That's enough for me, thank you.

 

I find that the new electronics and instrument displays look cool, but are very difficult to use.
There’s been a lot of complaints about the lack of “positive touch” to let you know that you’ve actually interacted with the controls.
I think a lot of people have complaints about looking down too much at their displays instead of just being able to reach for a ****.

I think in the future manufacturers may return to more analog functionality.

 

A friend of mine bought a new Subaru Outback and already had the display replaced because they were having trouble with it. Pretty much EVERYDAY on my way to work at 0530 I see someone driving on the highway without their lights on. I sure can see their dash easily enough though.

 

The world complains about texting and driving while car manufacturers install complicated gadgets that take a drivers attn away from the road.

 

I agree. I hate these new screens as I much prefer old school dials, sliders, and *****. You don't even have to look at them, you can easily feel them. I don't know what the manufacturers are thinking with these screen things.

Although, maybe not too old school. I absolutely love the dashboard on my '66 Toronado but I have to admit that I absolutely hate the windshield wiper switch location when you're driving. Reaching down to repeatedly hit that switch if it's only slightly raining drives me nuts. It's in an awful location. Mounting them on the stalk later on was a darn fine idea.

 

Let's be honest, today's new cars are NOT being designed to appeal to middle aged guys with a fondness for classic cars. Today's cars are being designed by people in their 20's and 30's who grew up with smart phones and the simpler they can make the dash panels look, the better. It ain't ever going back - at least not in our lifetimes.
All the car companies are trying to out-Tesla Tesla in order to appeal to the younger buyer and "tech savvy" buyers with money. I don't know about the rest of you, but that ain't my bag!

 

You are absolutely correct !!!!!!

 

I've noticed a trend in areas of development of cars and that is that there are areas where competition and advancement are more focused than other areas.

In English, I think that post war cars up through the horsepower wars tried to make the whole car better. Once the gas and emissions crisis happened, the thrust was on low pollution and efficiency. In the 90s, we saw a lot of improvements to creature comforts, with bigger cars (SUVs), rear AC, heated seats, power everything, and even the beginning of cooled seats. The 2000s were hybrid power's decade. I think, in the mid teens, we hit the information age. Power, comfort, and convenience is all expected, but it's that display in the middle of the dash that is where the current fight is. Play music off your phone, surf the internet off its hotspot, use its GPS for navigation, call anyone from your contacts, download traffic data automatically, along with all the performance data you could want. Probably some other stuff, too. Oh, yeah, cameras and sensors for parking.

I wonder where the next fight will be. I hope autonomous cars are still 30 years off for mass manufacture.

 

When I had my 54, the dash was one of the most photographed parts of the car. Lots of chrome.

 

On the other hand, I've just resurrected my '70 Cutlass and now I remember how much I hate idiot lights, and they were the norm. I have no idea how the engine is doing until something dies. There's such a thing as too little, as well as too much.

 

My wife's Chrysler Pacifica has one of those displays and the rear camera turns on automatically when "reverse" is selected. Not too bad during the day to ignore ( I hate using these things ) but at night it absolutely KILLS my night vision and I can't really see squat out the windows or in the mirrors. I really dislike that feature.

 

In most cases, todays gauges are basically idiot lights in disguise.

 

This reminded me of a podcast I heard. Two NASA astronauts who were Marine test pilots certified the Space X capsule for flight. To pass the craft had to be flown under manual control at least once to prove the backup system worked. These guys were former Space Shuttle and fighter pilots and Elon's rig is all fancy touch screens. They did what guys like that do - learned it and aced it and that was that.

But I'd imagine they'd appreciate this thread. I hate all that crapola too. My wife's Subaru is like that and really that's all that's on the menu anymore.

 

Agreed, and love the A/G layout. All the extras since have been for fueling new car sales...

What a beauty Blue. My brother had a mint Burgundy 79 Coupe with the 260 back in the 80s. What a great cruiser. If I close my eyes I can still feel what is was like driving around in her. Very comfortable ride.

Yes, but I will tell you this. I had my first car from 1987-2004. And didn't overly worry about this stuff till the Autometer gauge cluster was installed circa 2001. However when I am making a 1/4 mile pass I prefer to go when engine is around 170 degrees rather than 200+ but that's about the only time I worry about actual temp. Guessing while waiting in the lanes and then potentially letting her run too long till the pass happens, frustrates me. Otherwise the extra info can play mind games on some of us... Like making us think they are running too hot while they've run the same since day one...

Here she is Blue, 25 years ago. She was repainted her original color in lacquer in the early 1990s. Sorry for pic quality. Its a pic of a hard pic.

That 85 to the extreme right was mine as well. Great car, V6 with a shift kit, moved better than the original 307 Ys I owned... Sold it for what I bought it for after a couple of years. The Centerlines on 67 came off of the 85. New owners a young couple got a great ride. But when they saw the 67 they were hoping it was for sale.

 

The ability to fit practically every vehicle function into a touchscreen probably saves the manufacturer money by eliminating manufacturing individual controls and the time to install them. Some do not have either a PRNDL stalk nor a turn signal stalk. The turn signal is two buttons in the steering wheel. Zero instruments are in the drivers straight forward "eyes on the road" line of sight, they are all in the centrally located flat touchscreen. This includes the PRNDL indicator and the speedometer.

I'm not comfortable with taking my attention away from what is in front of me on the road for a nanosecond.

 

What a bunch of whiny crybabies!!

I have a 2023 Silverado and a 2024 Buick Encore, and both both have the full computer screen thing for a dashboard. I LOVE them. Very clean dashboard. Very versatile in terms of what you can have displayed. Take a few minutes to LEARN how to operate everything, and it's no problem.

I LOVE the Android Auto feature. I love being able to take phone calls and hear texts without having to actually do anything except talk. Try to do that with a '66 Cutlass.

I'm sure all the old guys back in 1970 complained about the then-new "newfangled" cars and wanted everything to look like it did in 1935.

Some things never change.

 

One thing that these new modern dashboards are going to kill off is the aftermarket audio industry. The audio system is fully integrated into the dashboard. There is no way to remove the radio and replace it with a new one. Not that you'd need to. I suppose you could replace speakers, but everything is so tightly integrated, and the available factory sound options being what they are, it's not likely to be worth it to change anything.

Just like digital cameras destroying Kodak, the advance of technology claims another industry.

 

I am with you !!! Every Nanosecond your eyes are diverted to the center of the dash or elsewhere out of the line of sight of the road ahead is a danger. Windshield wiper controls on a stalk and intermittent wipers are an improvement also.

Not "taking phone calls and text messages" isn't going to change the rotation of the world. "Hands free" calls are important if you are experiencing a medical emergency.

Actually the "Tic Toc Tach and gauges was great. They were in the general line of sight as the road ahead. You didn't need to decipher a digital number to know if things were ok. You knew the "normal" position of the needle. If it was out of that range, you took a closer look. A tach with a "Shift" light is even better.

Not all changes are good. There are many changes that are just that.....changes.
........My two cents worth.

 

^^+1 what jaunty75 says. My 1st experience w/ these integrated infotainment systems was in our '13 Cadillac SRX, the first year they introduced the "CUE" system, which took a lot of press flack for being slow to respond. It didn't take long to learn how it worked (it was different than other, less fancy looking systems), and once you did, it was nice having it auto-connect to my phone and start playing my MP3s via Bluetooth, not to mention the hands-free phone calls. Yes, the NAV maps cost ~$100 / update (I did it about every 3 years), and we did have to have the touch-screen replaced twice (1st time under warranty, the 2nd time was a < $40 Amazon replacement screen that came with detailed instructions + lots of U-tube videos and was a ~2 hour removal & replacement job to make it look like new). CUE was one of the first interfaces that used "haptic" feedback that you could feel when you touched the screen to confirm contact was made, now being adopted by many other manufacturers. Overall, I had a positive experience w/ that 1st-gen CUE system, despite its occasional delays. Unfortunately for the next owner, GM has stopped offering map updates for that model (planned obsolescence?).

That car's replacement ('25 Genesis GV80) has a single 27" wide touchscreen for DIC in front of the driver + an area easily accessible by the passenger for whatever else is needed (NAV, music, etc). There is a separate screen for climate controls, but there is still a **** there for temperature adjustment (in addition to touch screen and steering wheel controls for the same). That car still has a turn-signal stalk and wiper controls. Its even better than CUE was for phone integration (Android Auto), and the camera views are phenomenal (when tapping the turn signal to change lanes, a view from a side-mirror mounted camera pops up on the DIC to help ensure nobody is in your blind spot). Yeah, the gear selector is a **** and took some getting used-to, but I'm sure the early '60s "Push-matic" Mopars had a similar learning curve. My '25 C8 is similar, multiple screens and switches for selecting gears, but a huge functional advantage over mechanical gauges and controls. I'll add that steering wheel controls for audio (skip, volume, etc.), which all 3 aforementioned cars have, is a godsend if you are afraid of taking your eyes off the road for "one nanosecond".

Would I want that type of digital interface in my '68 Cutlass? Heck NO! I LOVE the deeply-recessed gauge pods in the '68-'69 Cutlasses and wouldn't trade them for anything. Instead, I've wired up an "invisible" wiper delay box (DIY built from a Radio Electronics article from back in the early '80s) and have used a $13 Bluetooth adapter that transmits audio on an FM channel and gives hands-free access to your smartphone + MP3 playback through your existing FM radio. That gets me as far into modern tech as I need (I still use a windshield mounted Garmin for NAV in my older cars.......when I have to).

 

You don't have to now! With the modern displays, you can set it to display a tach as an analog gauge OR as a digital readout.

 

No one said it was going to. But it does make life easier, and there's something to be said for that.

Back in the day, automatic transmissions and hydraulic brakes weren't going to "change the rotation of the world," either.

But they were adopted, anyway.

 

In the case of an actual emergency, there's a 99.5% chance that you've already pulled to the side of the road, making the "hands free" point moot. I've taken many phone calls on the road via hands-free that were not emergencies, but were critically important. I'm not going to sit in a rest area waiting on these types of calls to avoid holding my phone to my ear due to lack of hands free capability in my vehicle.

 

They were good improvements.

 

Staying with the hands-free phone calling and texting, we've been told since the beginning of cell phones and then texting not to talk on a cell phone or text while driving unless you're doing it hands-free. Well, many people still do it WITH hands, and they always will. If we can make it a little easier and little safer to do these things while driving, it's worth doing.

 

While I agree that digital number readouts are not as easy to read as a dial gauge, its a bit of a strawman to pretend like modern dashes are only numeric displays. They aren't. Most have digital displays of dial gauges as one of the options, if it isn't a forced selection. And lets also not pretend like all old-school dashes are easy to read in a split second either. Modern digital dashes with analog-style tach and speedometer displays are infinitely easier to read than the speedometer and tach in my 68 Cutlass. The tic-toc-tach is nearly useless in actual driving compared to a real tach (even in digital form), even if I didn't have to work around the steering wheel to get a full view of it. Lets also not forget the early Toronado rolling speedometers - that is essentially the same thing as looking at a digital number as there is no needle sweep. Don't get me wrong - the tic-toc-tach and barrel speedometers are cool, but they are NOT easy to read at a glance.

I hate the look of these screens that are just stuck on the dash, with no effort whatsoever to integrate them into the design. But I also hated the analog gauges on my TJ Jeep. One of the ugliest analog gauge panels ever. Well integrated digital dashes work just fine and can look great. I hate burying key functionality in a touch screen. But good designers don't do that, and there are some out there (almost all of the climate and radio controls on my daily are physical buttons, despite the touchscreen and digital dash). Point being: good design is good design and bad design is bad design and the use of analog vs digital dashes does not guarantee one or the other.

That said, all else equal, give me a well designed mechanical gauge over a well designed digital gauge any day of the week.

 

The 1st time I sat in the wife's '24 Equinox I said give me the key, she just laughed and said, there isn't one. Bells, whistles, yeah it's got 'em.
I'll stick with my '07 GMC until it quits and start daily driving my'76 El Camino. The new stuff is comfortable but stupid expensive to buy, and when it breaks, fuggetabouttit.

 

Since I OWN a '66 Toronado, I KNOW how poor a the rolling speedometer is !!! The size and location of the speedometer is terrible.

My current "Daily Driver" has needles and gauges. They are placed conveniently and mostly readable. It also has a V-8 engine. Rocker switches for heat temp, heater fan, Cruise on, cruise off, cruise set, Cruise resume, Wipers, high beams on the turn signal stalk.. Optional digital dials would be ok.

I kinda know what you mean. I have a 2008 Mercury Mountaineer and it has that goofy touch screen in the middle. You really have to look to see if you are hovering over the correct spot to activate what you want.