Back in the 80s one of my father's summer past times was test driving cars. Once a week or so he would stick me on his lap in our Dodge Horizon and have me work the wheel while he took care of the pedals and gear shift with a Camel in one hand and a bottle of beer (generic) in the other, Uriah Heap or Deep Purple on the 8-track since for what ever reason those were the only cartridges that 8-track would not eat. Remember taking a car with a setup much like the Inca's for a test drive (I was never on his lap for the test drive but the Camel and beer (generic) were often still with him), no idea what model it was just remember that it had a yoke loaded with controls instead of a wheel and a dash filled with LCDs. Unexpected bit of nostalgia.
I don't think NHTSA ever approved a yoke steering setup for a production car in the US; but a late-80's Pontiac Bonneville or Mitsubishi Galant would have steering wheels chock full of control buttons, and a dash covered in LEDs like the cockpit of a Gundam.
Very possible I am misremembering but it could have been a used car modified by the previous owner or a conversion by the dealer; one of the dealers we occasionally visited customized everything they sold, mostly did conversion vans and hotrods but had all kinds of fun stuff.
Steering wheel is wild
But those kind of dashboard gauges did make it to production. 80s digital dashes from GM were actually super cool. They have a few failure points but there are still some guys restoring them . I retrofitted the S10 model into an S10 blazer in high school and owned a factor Camaro with one. The S10 one was like driving a space ship at the time. Here’s some cool examples
I'm not even sure I would call that a steering wheel, it's more of a yoke (like the ones used in planes). It was kind of ahead of its time, because more and more controls have moved to the steering wheel in recent decades, but if this appeared in a real car I would be afraid of accidentally pressing a button when I just want to turn the wheel. Also, I'm not a pilot but I think an airplane yoke is optimized for small but precise inputs, if you have to turn it around 180° or even 90° (like you often have to do with a steering wheel) you are probably doing something wrong - that's why having "handles" just in the places where your hands normally are makes sense for a plane, but not as much for a car.
>> airplane yoke is optimized for small but precise inputs
It's the opposite. Full left-right deflection on an airplane yoke is about 1/4 of a rotation, a movement measured in inches. Full deflection of car steering wheel is multiple rotations, a movement measured in feet. Car steering requires much more precision than aircraft. The yoke is optimized for rapid full-deflection with minimal control input. Fine control is accomplished through trim systems, which are effectively parallel input methods.
The 1990 to 1993 Pontiac Grand Prix in SE and GTP trim has a steering wheel I love, because it and the steering column are adorned with buttons you can press without moving your hands. On either side of the gauges are even more buttons, making it look like some sort of arcade flight sim cockpit. The final generation Mazda Cosmo also did it, but in a more elegant way where the only giveaway that they were buttons and not trim pieces was the non colour matched black plastic of the bumper controls for the cruise functions on the right side of the wheel.
Looking back on some of those after not seeing them for 20 years is refreshing. Some of those are so bad, but a few of them are pretty cool. The 727/Space Shuttle styled, green cathode touchscreens are amazing though!
Oldsmobile has some really terrific engineers. I know because I attended schools in the Lansing area with their kids. What killed the brand was a series of general managers in the late nineties and early two thousands. Until then Oldsmobile outsold Pontiac and Buick.
This is basically the story of GM for the last 40-50 years as a whole. The engineers will do or propose something brilliant and really great, and then management repeatedly snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. Saturn was another extremely good example of GM building something excellent and then their management just completely drove it off a cliff. The S-series was a really great design when it came out, and was honestly far better than it's internal competitors (like the Cavalier) and was competitive with small Japanese cars; the space frame, plastic panels, lost foam casting for the block, etc were really good engineering, and the car and brand had a deserved cult following. GM didn't like the fact it made the Cavalier look like shit and so naturally it was allowed to wither on the wine and then basically everything else after was just more badge engineered Chevy and Pontiac vehicles. GM's entire management should have been totally shitcanned at multiple points during and after the early 90s for the absolutely abhorrent job they did.
Oldsmobile at the time (around 1990) had a reputation for being the car of the not-quite-well-to-do middle aged. Cars that were positioned upmarket like the Delta 98 and Cutlass Ciera were very cheaply and poorly built despite having standard features that were high end options on a Chevrolet or Pontiac or were exclusive to Oldsmobile and Buick.
Oldsmobile was one of the brands that decided not to participate in the 3.6L 60° V6 development program headed by Buick (that ultimately became the legendary Buick 3800 Series II), as Oldsmobile had been in an internal rivalry with Buick since the early 1970s and were instead championing their 2.3L inline four "Quad 4" which they showcased in the 1987 Aerotech concept that set a world speed record.
While Buick, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Cadillac, Opel/Vauxhall, and Holden all switched over to the Buick V6 as the default Oldsmobile stubbornly stuck it out with the Quad 4 and racked up a ton of development costs, eventually convincing GM upper management to put the Quad 4 in the volume selling Chevrolet Beretta and Cavalier and the Pontiac Grand Am to let economies of scale reduce the costs.
Oldsmobile, faced with an aging customer base and an engine that was costing them money, decided to break from GM's internal structures in 1990 and develop a flagship car that would knock down Buick from the second highest slot in GM's prestige hierarchy and allow them to ditch their entire lineup for something new. This first car would ultimately be the 1995 Oldsmobile Aurora, based on a concept from 1989 called the Tube Car, and which was the head project in development for the GM "G" platform. A platform which GM dictated that Buick also use for the upcoming eighth generation Buick Riviera, Buick's rival flagship car, in order to reduce costs. But Oldsmobile made a mistake in dictating that the Aurora have another unique engine, the 4.0L L47 V8. While it was based on the Cadillac Northstar V8 family, Oldsmobile modified it extensively -- fatally. The Northstar V8 in it's first few years was already fragile, and the L47 made those issues worse, damaging the reputation of the Aurora because of reliability issues.
By 1993 Oldsmobile was in full swing towards the reorientation however and was already focusing on their second car, the Oldsmobile Intrigue. The Intrigue was meant to reduce redundancy in the lineup by being the only mid-size car in Oldsmobile's stable, replacing three different cars. Oldsmobile's plans for yet another unique engineering project were interrupted however as it was mandated that the Intrigue use the same in-development second generation "W" platform as the Pontiac Grand Prix. Pontiac engineering essentially dictated the design of every W-body car of that generation, leaving Oldsmobile with little to do outside of styling.
Thus Oldsmobile turned to the Alero. The Alero was meant to be the volume seller, designed to compete in benchmarks with the BMW 3-series and and Lexus ES. By this time (1995) GM had begun heavily questioning the existence of Oldsmobile and heavily limited their autonomy on the development of the Alero. In a repeat of what happened with the Intrigue, ultimately by late 1995 Pontiac had taken the lead for the engineering of the second generation "N" platform vehicles, and the Alero (along with the Malibu and the quite literally rebadged Malibu sold as the Cutlass) ended up as a mechanical clone of the Grand Am, to the point where most parts are interchangeable. It was a foggy mirror of 1982 and the mistakes Roger Smith made of repeated and rampant badge engineering.
Oldsmobile spent the period from 1998 to 2000 marketing the Intrigue and Alero heavily, including the Intrigue Saturday Night Cruiser showcar, Alero OSV concept, The Alero California showcar based on the designs of then-current racing touring cars, and the Profile concept that was supposed to be a preview of the upcoming updates to Oldsmobile's design language. Ultimately this failed, and by December of 2000 GM had become fed up with eating the losses of Oldsmobile's engineering pet projects and announced they were shuttering the brand come March 1st of 2004.
I apologize that this is so long. There was so much internal dysfunction in GM between 1975 to 2008 and it affects everything so much that being concise is almost impossible even when talking about a single thing over a short period.
Cybertruck vibes on how much of a takeoff this was. Engineers who get ideas like this sold to the upper management always have my props (as long as they don't compromise the product too much that is)
EDIT: jumped the gun on this one and confused some memories. This was just a prototype, with obviously different requirements for "selling" the idea but there were some actual production cars with ahead-of-their-time graphical terminals like https://youtu.be/Lkaazk68iGE?si=_qpkZaVobI6zK-Cs&t=305
In the upcoming version you'll have to argue with an LLM over voice about the optimal temperature, before threatening to drive into opposing traffic unless it sets it to 70.
As a non-American, let me say never has a brand name been so out of sync with a car design. That thing is anything but an "Old"-smobile.
Looking at it I also thought how cool it would be if the dash were entirely modular a-la Framework laptops. "Standard" electrical, electronic and mechanical interfaces to which modders could fit all sorts of weird and wonderful interfaces. And I mean the whole physical dash as well. I know it'll never happen, but somewhere in a parallel universe...
Whoa, with this amount of 7 segment LED displays, it's a total mid-80s car UI dream! It definitely has its major flaws, but that's also common for mid-80s digital car UIs.
The exterior looks like the love child of 70s wedge design and 90s rounded corners.
"The dash display is almost completely digital—strangely, they left an extra analog speedometer and tachometer"
This is common even today, even on 100% digital screen dashboards, they'll have fake analog speedometer and tachometer displays. My 2023 Mazda CX5 is 50/50, half the dashboard is analog and half is digital. And I like it that way.
I’m never a fan of digital speedometers. I still have to think about how far a number is from my target. I’m sure if I used them long enough instead of only seeing them in rentals I’d get used to it.
One of the first things I learned during my electronics apprenticeship was that changes in a value are much more intuitive to read with an analog pointer (or a digital replication of one).
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But, the NHTSA doesn't approve designs before they hit the market. For example:
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-yoke-steering-wheel-nhtsa-st...
https://drivemag.com/red-calipers/the-definitive-collection-...
It's the opposite. Full left-right deflection on an airplane yoke is about 1/4 of a rotation, a movement measured in inches. Full deflection of car steering wheel is multiple rotations, a movement measured in feet. Car steering requires much more precision than aircraft. The yoke is optimized for rapid full-deflection with minimal control input. Fine control is accomplished through trim systems, which are effectively parallel input methods.
I apologize that this is so long. There was so much internal dysfunction in GM between 1975 to 2008 and it affects everything so much that being concise is almost impossible even when talking about a single thing over a short period.
EDIT: jumped the gun on this one and confused some memories. This was just a prototype, with obviously different requirements for "selling" the idea but there were some actual production cars with ahead-of-their-time graphical terminals like https://youtu.be/Lkaazk68iGE?si=_qpkZaVobI6zK-Cs&t=305
https://jenson.org/tesla/
As a non-American, let me say never has a brand name been so out of sync with a car design. That thing is anything but an "Old"-smobile.
Looking at it I also thought how cool it would be if the dash were entirely modular a-la Framework laptops. "Standard" electrical, electronic and mechanical interfaces to which modders could fit all sorts of weird and wonderful interfaces. And I mean the whole physical dash as well. I know it'll never happen, but somewhere in a parallel universe...
At one point, they had an advertising line, "This is not your father's Oldsmobile".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNewkCV7-pc
It was named after the founder, Ransom Olds. I get it, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynDCCXNg0Cc
Wonder if there are any css/ui kits for this sort of analog retro style?
price point is a little higher than the cybertruck, but hey, probably worth it.
The exterior looks like the love child of 70s wedge design and 90s rounded corners.
This is common even today, even on 100% digital screen dashboards, they'll have fake analog speedometer and tachometer displays. My 2023 Mazda CX5 is 50/50, half the dashboard is analog and half is digital. And I like it that way.
I do like a digital cruise set speed.