While writing my CCTV article on the 1984 Corvette, I got to thinking how despised the digital dashboard that the C4 introduced was at the time. Excoriated by the press, Chevrolet had to quickly rush our a revised dashboard for the Corvette in 1995 with a set of “proper” gauges. Yet I’ve never heard any actual owners complain about the digital gauges. No, the rabble rousing came almost exclusively from the automotive press.
The string-back driving gloved editors of the auto press held considerable sway over automakers at the time. Indeed, it is hard to find a better example of the tail of the automotive press wagging the dog of the manufacturer than right in front of your face on your instrument panel.
Most of the arguments in favor of analog gauges don’t hold much water in my opinion. The fact that analog gauges are more readable at a glance don’t make much sense: What could be more readable than two (or three) digits indicating your speed? The fact that needles give you a better sense of the rate of change by the speed of the sweep also seems a little too esotaric to be useful.
Indeed, the fact remains that the vast majority of drivers are better served by digital instruments. They are more precise because they don’t suffer from parallax, and the user doesn’t have to interpolate the distance between hashmarks.
Need further proof? Virtually all scientific instruments now (from thermometers to micrometers) are now digital. Or take a look at any modern Formula One steering wheel, like the example above. What do you see? Digital readouts.
But a few opinion makers at automobile magazines kept this technology from drivers for decades, in a trend that we are only now starting to see reversed.
So what are your thoughts? Are you a digital dude like me, or are you still a needle junkie?
My ’87 Celica had a full set of analog gauges which I quite liked, but I sure could have used a 1-bit digital oil pressure indicator aka ‘idiot light’ when the oil filter came loose and it suddenly dumped its oil. A red light might have caught my attention a few seconds before I heard the engine sounding wrong, looked at the zeroed gauge and quickly hit the key. Too late to avoid a total rebuild.
Gauges are good but we can’t be looking at them all the time. So I believe a combination of analog needles with digital readouts in the faces and red lights for serious problems would be the best of all worlds.
I like the loud buzzer that goes off along with the flashing oil pressure lamp in my mk2 Jetta. As far as instruments in general I like analog, as long as the speedo is in 10 MPH increments.
Although the one time the oil pressure warning buzzer and lamp went off it turned out to be a bad oil pressure sensor. Not having a gauge means you don’t know if it’s a false alarm.
Digital. I’d love to see antique ancient boring static analog gauges go the way of the dodo, the carburetor, and points ignition-they have no place in modern motoring. Their time has passed. And, I maintain, the only reason they cling around like nasty smearings on the toilet bowl after a flush is because of misplaced nostalgia and unwillingness to contemplate something new.
Seriously, with an analog cluster, you’re stuck with whatever the designers thought was best. In newer cars (like my recently departed 2014 Fiesta ST), the speedometer reads to speeds not even the car itself can reach, let alone speeds a motorist will ever reach. My FiST’s speedometer read to 160 miles per hour! What use is that? The fastest speed limit in the United States is 85 miles per hour. That means that literally half the range on that gauge is worthless. If I had unlimited road and no fear of police and no traffic, that car flat-out could only go about 140 miles per hour. So, the gauge literally had a useless section built into it for nothing more than the illusion of sportiness or something.
And gas gauges, a.k.a. the most inaccurate gauges ever devised by man? Garbage. I’ve never seen a vehicle in which the marking for Full actually represented Full. Likewise, I’ve never seen a vehicle in which the marking for Empty represented Empty. Gas gauges are but a vague notion of whether you should find a gas station and rarely give pertinent information about the volume of fuel in the tank. I mean, they could replace the gas gauge with a light that indicates it’s time to find a station and it would be just as useful.
And don’t get me started on temperature, oil pressure, and voltage “gauges” that move to a default spot and remain there no matter what actual condition the vehicle’s experiencing! A curious party messed around to figure out what the default point meant on a Honda Element’s temperature gauge. Turned out that everything from 170 degrees F to 220 degrees F was literally the exact same point on the gauge. If the gauge moved, it was already too late. Could have done the same job with a light at that point.
Digital and modern LED stuff allows configurability. In the newer (higher-spec, at least) Fords, one can configure the IP to display some, all, or none of the auxiliary gauges and information about what music is playing or other information. This is good. They still insist upon sticking a big ol’ needle in the middle to sweep a range of numbers, but they’re getting better.
And the argument that one can figure speed at a glance with a gauge? Sorry, but if you can’t quickly read “68” and relate that to the current conditions in which you’re driving, I’m not convinced you’re meant to be driving an automobile at all.
Digital allows for better, more attractive, more configurable, more customizable, more precise, and more rapid display of information. And, how many companies have had issues with analog clusters going bad? GM had issues with needles going nuts in the early 2000s. Honda had to recall, erm issue a TSB (07-087) for Elements circa 2007 for needles falling off. I myself had to rebuild the cluster in my 1995 F-150 because the gauge faces detached from the backing and jammed the needles in place.
So yeah, I’m really really over the whole analog gauge thing, especially since they’re all the same circular presentation. At least in the old days they tried to design things that looked good too.
Analog gauges are easier and faster to read…this is not a theory, this has been proven by research in the aerospace industry. Many modern airliners use digital displays…they are generally configured as analog gauges for ease of use.
Your 160 speedometer might be so the same cluster can be used for metric dashboards…160km/h is about 100MPH.
Analog gauges are easier and faster to read… If you’re looking for rate of change. If you’re looking for an absolute number, that does not remain true. There are very few situations in an automobile in which you’re looking at rate of change. If you’re accelerating, you need to know whether you’ve accelerated past the limit, and that’s it. Your fuel, temperature, voltage, and oil pressure are not changing at a rate that requires more than a number and an indication of if it’s within acceptable limits. The only gauge that rate of change is more useful than absolute value is RPM.
All that said, it is easier to put a target on an analog sweep, ala the 55 callouts U.S. market speedometers had during the national speed limit days or the “NORMAL” range Ford used to put on their auxiliary gauges.
But, we can very easily, thanks to modern technology, make a display that shows us a graph, or a bar, or a change in color, or a big number readout, and we can do it better than any analog gauge. Hell, modern higher-spec Fords show the tachometer (if you’ve selected that display on the left LED screen) digitally-no physical needle, and no need to have it forever displayed if you don’t care what RPM your automatically-shifted vehicle is operating at.
Also, the Fiesta ST’s speedometer has the same sweep regardless of market. Only the primary/secondary numbering changes, so the metric version reads to 260 km/h in a car that can’t do much more than 220.
Again, some of us have manual transmissions and are bad at doing math in our heads, so gauges displaying rate-of-change information remain vitally important.
Or how about how race cars do it, lights come on insequence and change from green to yellow to red, shift! On my Lotus I can listen to the engine and shift by sound.
+1!
When I was young, my parents drove a 1985 Chevy Cavalier Type-10 with a four-speed manual. That car had two gauges: Speed and Fuel. There was an orange light with an up-arrow and the word “SHIFT” that illuminated to indicate it was time to shift.
Likewise, my Fiesta ST had, in addition to the tachometer, an up-arrow light in the center display that would illuminate if the car believed an upshift was warranted.
If the tachometer had stopped functioning in my FiST (six-speed manual), I still could have driven that car just fine. Mom drove that Cavalier for 99,930 brilliantly trouble-free miles before totaling it in a winter storm (and actually tried to convince the insurance to fix it instead of totaling it!).
Yes, the extra information is nice, but it’s not necessary or really even that important. The Ford display (Mr. X’s 2013 Taurus had it, and his 2017 Fusion has it as well) has configurable screens on either side of a fixed analog swept speedometer. The tachometer displayed in the left screen, when selected, looks like an analog sweep gauge, but also has additional graphics to help make the reading more legible. It literally does the job of an analog gauge better than an analog gauge, and the driver can configure that screen to display things like fuel economy readouts and other useful information.
Seriously, the amount of information we need from a car while driving is minimal. We need to know how fast we’re going, whether we need to shift or not (if driving a manual), whether we need more fuel, and whether any vital system is operating in a critical range. Literally one number readout and a few lights would tell us everything we need to know in a car.
Personally, I like more information, and I think screens offer a host of customization options and configurability that analog gauges can never dream of. I mean, if I decide I want the backlighting to be blue in my truck, the only way to achieve that would be to rip out the IP (which is a royal PITA by the way!), swap the bulbs for ones colored the right way that will counteract the screening on the gauge faces, and reinstall everything. With a screen? Select a menu option. Done.
Ford for awhile on the hybrids had a vine display that would leaf out more as you drove more efficiently. Could never hope to do that with a needle gauge.
I guess I’m old fashioned and would rather have one solid configuration the designers intended. You give me freedom to adjust every little inconsequential setting at the touch of a button I’ll be spending an hour a day setting it up to fit my mood at the time, power seats are bad enough.
For the record Ford also made/makes color configurable full analog instrument clusters too, so that technology certainly exists. I remember their leafy display on hybrid Fusions. I thought it was pretty cheesy. An analog gauge can easily tell you how efficient you’re being without resorting to a hippie guilt inducing animation.
As someone born possibly at the pinnacle(1988?) of the first wave of digital gauges, among other things, so I can’t help but roll my eyes when I hear “ancient” and “Nastalgia” uttered about analog as if the future is here with digital… again, nearly 30 years later. At my age I’m nostalgic about some of those 80s digital gauges.
The funny thing is(was) the cars back then clinging to analog were the forward thinkers, the BMWs and Mercedes, Lexus, etc. and they all made the big three’s digital high tech interiors seem out of touch, just another cynical gimmick for automakers to make an inferior product appealing. It’s no surprise to me at all in our tech worshiping, app saturated present that digital has made a comeback, but none of the pluses and minuses between digital and analog have shifted at all.
The configurable displays frankly remind me of the original PlayStation 1 and 2 Gran Turismo games in in first person view, with generic drawn on gauges superimposed onto the screen. I hated that view, I wanted to see the real dashes of the cars but obviously that may have been beyond the game designer’s abilities at the time. Perhaps, yet again, current car designers played those games and were nostalgic about that view, and are now putting them in the mini TV screens masquerading around as instrument clusters today. At least the 80s displays were honest to goodness digital everything, these new clusters with drawings of analog gauges just look tacky and busy.
The digital gauges then *were* the future. Trouble was, Ford’s initial roll-out of them was into the Lincoln Continental Mark VI, and GM’s was into a Cadillac; they put them into cars where the client audience got scared by them and cars that the left-coasters who thought they were superior to us provincial rubes from parts unknown wouldn’t be caught dead in because us provincial rubes thought they were great.
I mean, look at what GM did with the Riviera’s touchscreen from 1986-1989. They had a ton of functionality and were practically sci-fi when they were new (I had a 1989 Riviera at the end of its life, and even in 2005 it was amazing how much stuff the touchscreen could do!).
Digital gauges from the ’80s were the future. The buyers back then decided to abandon the future. You call digital gauges from then a cynical gimmick. I call using the same ol’ horizontal gauges with a couple lights and a hard-to-read gas gauge cynical. I call circle dial after circle dial, with all them getting obscured in part by the steering wheel, cynical. We can represent everything with a screen and better than the originals could ever hope to, yet we still apparently aren’t ready to let go of our needles despite having had smartphones for over a decade now.
I mean, should we still have the gear indication be a physical needle drug along a track by a cable connected to the gear lever too?
Smartphones need to fit in your pocket, instrument clusters can have the depth of a CRT screen and still fit inside a dashboard. There’s zero need to compact or revolutionize instrumentation, since nothing from a user interface perspective differs between old and modern car to merit a “this is the future” kind of switchover, at least as long as driven vehicles exist. And like I said earlier, outside sources can make them illegible, so it’s not exactly futuristic to me when a futuristic lens coating and ye olde sun prevent is preventing my making out of it.
I did call digital gauges from them then cynical, but I call digital gauges from everyone now cheap. At least I can admit the R&D was probably significant for 80s automakers with the new technology, but now a days it just seems like a way to present a former physical 3D interface on a 2D display to customers via a cheap universal LCD screen. I don’t know about you but I like seeing cars in person more than I do on my smartphone screen, and I feel the same way about gauges and their needles.
It is cheap! with all the low cost tech today, it’s less expensive to implement an all Digital panel than a true analog one. Good Mechanical watches are more expensive than good Digital watches for the same reason.
I would actually also argue the point that BMW/Mercedes/Lexus were the forward thinkers. Yes, they enjoyed (and still enjoy) great reputations, and they had captured the public imagination. Looking at the choices the various companies made, though, GM easily comes out as the most forward-thinking and forward-looking company of the lot. Trouble was that GM misjudged the future and made a number of dramatic missteps in their rush to get there ahead of everyone else. The move to front-drive, big moves toward full automation, the GM-10 program, Fiero the two-seater commuter car, the dustbuster vans, the V-8-6-4-all very forward-thinking. They made a lot of decisions based on a vision for the future that never came to be and they rushed to get there.
Mercedes? They reskinned and refined their well-engineered bits and laughed all the way to the bank. They made their money by sticking with what they had and waiting for the future to show up.
The future isn’t set, it’s a mindset. GM and co may have marketed this technology as the future but under the hoods were iron dukes and other hoary pushrods engines leagues behind the other automakers who were “sticking with what they had”. FWD was a big leap, and a major change in what the average automobile would be from then on, but it’s hardly digital technology marching toward the future, just a mainstream Americanized adoption of decades old technologies in other markets out of desperate necessity. Digital instrumentation was merely a way to entice customers with flash rather than carry on, leaving customers to notice the actual product has otherwise lost much of the identity(and sometimes dependability) their cars once had due to the very expensive rush job to stay ahead.
I like analog better. My one full-time digital experience was with my former ’93 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, which had green digital displays, including of fuel, etc. I found it distracting to drive with; also, the car develop some electronic issues and every once in a while the odometer would go nuts and flash back and forth between the one hundred XX thousand something miles the car actually had to some crazy number like 787,224.
The one thing I did like was the bar-by-bar fuel gauge, it was dead accurate and gave a clear idea of the amount in the car.
I am considerably less fond of the bright colored digital “gauges” used in many cars now. Makes you feel like you’re playing a video game and really too much going on.
Overall I prefer the vintage analog but in particular the bigger TV/horizontal speedos with fairly big gauge and idiot light displays as both my former ’87 Ford LTD Crown Victoria and current ’75 Olds 98 have. (I think the 0-100 10 mph/increment speedo is almost ideal…for that car at least). I find such displays non distracting and really easy to read at a glance or out of the corner of my eye. Smaller and/or more crowded analog displays are somewhat less effective.
I don’t care if it’s analog or digital as long as it is correct. I find it especially annoying when manufacturers deliberately set theirs much faster than the actual speed on purpose. My personal theory as to why is that they do this to rip off the owner in regards to warranty coverage. “Opps, you’re at 37,000 miles so it’s not covered. Sorry”
I’m especially looking at YOU, Ford Motor Company, for making me think I’m going 65 when it’s really 61 or 62 as measured repeatedly by stopwatch/mile markers. Both F-150 trucks I owned did this.
Speedos are always set to read fast or in the weird countries where lawyers abound you could sue the manufacturer for your speed infringement notices.
U.S. law allows speedometers to read a bit fast, but if they are at all slow from the factory it’s a big deal. Then again, I’m not convinced the mile markers are always right on, either. I’ve seen a lot of “1 Mile” signs that are like 2.3 miles away. What’s the GPS say?
I have had cars with both and really have no real preference from a driver/operator perspective. Aesthetically, I prefer analog on most cars, however I like the accuracy of the digital information.
My ’88 T-Bird was my first car with a digital cluster, and I liked it, but was pleased when I was back to an analog cluster with my ’97 T-Bird.
My ’97 Grand Prix GTP was analog (and red at night), but I found myself using the heads up display which was a digital readout of my speed right there on the windshield. You didn’t have to take your eyes off the road for that one.
Back to Analog for my 2007 “Retro-Stang”… as pictured below, it draws its inspiration from the 1967 Mustang. I love the look, and the fact you have ‘the big six’ (to borrow an aviation term)…
Now today’s fancy clusters are all digital, whether they display analog or not. My new Civic kinda presents the best of both. The speed is presented as a digital readout, while in the background you get a cool analog tach giving you that engine speed at a quick glance. And contrary to what some posters said above about a tachometer being useless in a car with an automatic transmission, I disagree. Especially with the CVT I have in my Honda. I like knowing the engine speed thank you very much. ? ~ Rick
I think some of you analog fans aren’t thinking enough about how digital could work. Tie the speedo to GPS, then as you exceed the limits, it would turn yellow then orange then red. If the numbers were 2″ high I don’t think you could miss it. Also if it was really digital, you could change colors to what ever you want. Move the display around to suit your liking. There is so much more you could do with your display it’s really unlimited.
Agree on the GPS speed display. As much as I love the look of my Mustang’s analog gauges, when I am driving it, quite often, I refer to the GARMIN’s speed indicator which is up on the windshield, held in the center by a suction cup… much like the HUD in my old Grand Prix, I can check my speed without taking my eyes off the road.
If you use the WAZE app, the speed is displayed in the lower left corner, and will light up in red if you are over the limit (see the screenshot below). My GARMIN does the same thing (the speed display turns red when you’re over the limit), but the Apple Car Play in my Honda doesn’t do that with its GPS functionality.
Definitely digital, as while I’ve only driven analog-gauged vehicles so far, the precision of digital is far more appealing.
I’m not a pilot, but I’ve heard that it is easier to learn on analog instruments and then transition to a glass cockpit than it is to do the reverse. The mind is able to interpret what it is being presented with better with the analog instruments.
I actually like that digital dash in the C4 Vette.
I actually prefer digital gauges to analog. The ability to quickly glance at the speed the car is going is great (especially when I live in an area with a lot of money grab speed traps.
I had to drive my 1995 Deville for a while and got used to the digital speedometer. The Devilled did not have a tach function but I was able to go into the setting menu and enter the setting code for a 95 Eldo and I got a digital tach readout.
That’s pretty cool! I didn’t know that was doable. ?
Well…it would depend on when you asked me. When my grandmother bought a new ’80 Continental Mark VI Signature Series sedan with the digital dash/message center (and it also had the Keyless Entry System), it was like the future was finally here in some small way. Especially when it ran through it’s systems check! I later had an ’86 Thunderbird elan with the digital dash, and liked it to.
But…the bloom has been off the rose for a while. I like analog gauges for the quick reference points to better understand the current status of engine temperature, fuel remaining, etc.
91 Chevy Blazer. Digital, legible, intuitive. Readable at a glance. Analog gauges aren’t modern. Does your cell phone have an analog clock as standard?
Mine doesn’t, but it does have a flathead straight 6 with a carburetor. And it’s only two years old! Thanks Samsung! ?