Silverphile
by John Kuhn Bleimaier
 
Dash It All!
 
Whether it’s a vintage classic or a contemporary sports car, our impression of an automobile is principally based on its external appearance.
Independently of aesthetics and aerodynamics, how a car looks on the outside is also important to most purchasers, because the outward image announces to the world the persona of the driver. The message conveyed can be sporty, prosperous, rugged, or sensible.
But there’s another important aspect of car design that deserves particular attention. The interior of a car is, after all, where we as drivers spend most of our time. The part of the automobile that we constantly see as we travel down the road is the dashboard, or fascia panel, as the British refer to it. The dashboard on a classic Mercedes can be a thing of beauty to contemplate.
The earliest dashboards were nothing more than the driver’s side of the firewall to which were attached rudimentary instruments and controls. As the motorcar evolved, the tradition of a flat wooden surface for gauges persisted. Fine automobiles often had fascia panels made of exotic woods. During the 1930s, Mercedes used a filet of mother of pearl around the instrument cluster for some 500K models. Notable postwar Benzes also used beautiful wood, from burl Circassian walnut to Birdseye maple, to ornament the dash. But with the advance of safety consciousness, soft padding came to first surround and then replace splinter-susceptible wood in the cockpit. In the 21st century, dashboard wood is usually confined to small patches of veneer at the periphery. Sporting models sometimes dispense with that and substitute aluminum or carbon fiber inserts in place of richly grained wood.
Of course, the dash must provide basic information that is conveyed to the driver by legible instruments. Because we live in a highly regulated automotive environment, the speedometer is crucial in order to avoid unwanted run-ins with the constabulary. American automakers had a brief flirtation with digital speedometers, but public demand dictated that the speedo should be an analog instrument. It actually is easier to perceive vehicular velocity looking at a gauge that shows a continuum as opposed to a mere numerical display. There is also something to be said for the romance of watching the needle sweep across the dial toward its perilous upper reaches.
While circular or semicircular analog speedometers have become the norm, I am fond of the vertical or horizontal thermometer-like speedometers that Mercedes installed in some of its sedans during the late ’50s and into the ’60s.
My 1965 Mercedes Finback has a vertical ribbon speedometer where the color of the ribbon starts out yellow, becomes yellow and red striped, and goes over to all red at higher speeds. It’s easy to read and is very compact in the center of a raised instrument binnacle that includes fuel gauge, engine temperature, oil pressure, and warning lights. With its color coding and gauges in a raised position, this particular dashboard display stands out in my peripheral vision. It’s one of my favorite instrument clusters.
To tach or not to tach? That is a revolutionary question for the designer of automotive instrumentation. Obviously very useful is a rev counter, where a driver selects his or her own gear ratios with a manual transmission. The torque curve of the engine can be used to maximum advantage when carefully matching cogs to engine speed. With an automatic transmission, unless the driver overrides it, the unit will attempt to optimally balance torque and power based on its internal program with no operator input except at the loud pedal. So, with an automatic tranny, a tachometer is really not necessary.
However, here image comes into play. There is a widely held notion that sporting vehicles should have a tach, even if the driver never has serious occasion to look at it. Interestingly enough, in the old days, many Mercedes sedans, even those with manual transmission, dispensed with the tachometer and had hash marks inscribed on the speedometer dial corresponding to the engine’s red line in each gear. With reference to these indicators, experienced drivers familiar with their engine could program themselves for just the right shift points, sans tachometer.
What other instruments are necessary to keep the driver well informed? That’s a very subjective matter. Early Volkswagen Beetles didn’t even have a fuel gauge. The driver was expected to keep track of the mileage between fill-ups, and there was always the gas-tank reserve lever, which would provide an extra gallon after the motor sputtered to a halt. Do we need separate gauges for coolant temperature and oil temperature? Is an ammeter or voltmeter a needless luxury? Must we monitor boost in a turbocharged engine or manifold vacuum in general?
My contemporary C-Class Mercedes has steering-wheel-mounted buttons that enable me to display various items such as engine temperature, elapsed time, average fuel economy, and other information on a small screen inset in the speedometer. I can also use this system to show my speed as a digit. This latter feature is very helpful in SCCA time-speed-distance rallying.
Manufacturers of Italian exotic cars have on occasion gone overboard when it comes to gauges so that the driver feels as if he or she is in the cockpit of an airplane. In the interests of safety, it is important that the automotive instrument panel not attain overkill. If there is too much information conveyed on the instrument panel and it begins to look like a video arcade, then there is the potential for driver distraction and consequent disaster. I’m a little skeptical about modern dashboards that include a display for satellite navigation systems. As a traditionalist, I prefer fold-out cartography and a discrete map light for the navigator.