The above video reminded me of that time in the early 80s, when car makers knew, they just knew, that in The Future, every car was going to have digital gauges, and dammit, The Future is NOW!
So they started putting not only digital gauges in cars, but they also made them talk, because that’s cool and futuristic too!
The above clip is from an Audi Quattro, and seems to be some sort of worst case scenario … like they drained all the fluid they could to make it “speak” through the entire list, or perhaps that’s what the system does when you hit the test option: Literally going through every sound warning it possesses.
I remember back in 1985 I was at this party, and this guy I knew from college but hadn’t seen in awhile showed up. His name was Matt, and he was a great car guy. Good amateur racer and for a while he had a real thing for Fiat 124s. For Matt, working on cars was great fun, so Fiats were a perfect choice.
He showed up at this party with his brother-in-law’s new 1984 Corvette.
He’s in the driveway, showing the car off to a bunch girls (Matt was one of those guys that, although really bland and normal looking, always had three or four beauty queen type girlfriends at any given time). I saunter up to the drivers side and notice the full-on Star Wars dash.
“Jesus! Real subtle instrumentation!”
“Yeah, I know. Watch this.” Matt turns off the car. “See? All black!”
Matt starts the car up again, and I notice that the tack shows more of a spread down towards idle then right near redline. “What’s up with the tach?”
“Yeah, I don’t really get that either,” Matt said with a shrug. “It’s like they got the tach exactly backwards for what you need it to do on track.”
We left it at that, although we both agreed the car was quick, if somewhat less then subtle.
And as it turns out, auto makers were wrong about the future being all digital, with Bitching Betty voices to warn you of impending mechanical doom … I wonder just how dated dashes like this will look in 20 years.
Hat tip to BoingBoing
You may also enjoy:
