The evolution and progress of the car from its first days to recent time is simply impressive and very entertaining and read about. But the progress and evolution of the motor is nowhere more evident and impressive than the dashboard itself. The shock when you dig into the oldest photos of automobiles you can find and compare them to the newest, latest generation dashboard your own car actually has is fascinating. To see how much of a growth the dashboard has gone through for only a handful of decades is amazing and this is why today’s article will walk you through the dashboard memory lane all the way back to 1913 and right up to recent date.
1913 – The Beginning with Model Ford Model T Speedster
This article just wouldn’t be a real car dashboard memory lane without mentioning Ford’s Model T. The significance and importance of Model T in this aspect are really noticeable and, in fact, Model T has influenced the car industry in many positive ways. If you do not know by now, Ford Model T is regarded as the world’s first affordable automobile and here is how the car’s revolution started back at the beginning of the 20th century. In addition, Model T is considered as the most influential car of the 20th century! Much like the rest of the vehicle, Model T’s dashboard is truly a work of art and something unseen and unexperienced by its time. It is such a shame that dashboards like this one are not produced anymore – the beauty of the wood-carved dashboard with its stunningly crafted gold trimmings are a real masterpiece!
1942 – Ford Super Deluxe
Only less than three decades after the car dashboard revolution and the original dashboard is shifting from wooden to plastic and other materials that are made to mimic wood. This is the time when more dials were also introduced to the dashboard and more information was displayed to the driver.
1962 – Mercury Monterey
The introduction of the 60’s Mercury was the time when even more controls were introduced to the dashboard. The prominent display of the car radio controls get even more mainstream by this time despite it was introduced to the drivers years before that. Trying to achieve a “wooden look” of the dashboard started not to be that popular too by this time, this is why 60’s Mercury introduced new materials to its dashboard, featuring chrome heavily.
1990 – Ford Scorpio
The most noticeable change in the appearance of the 90s cars’ dashboard was the shift to a design mimicking leather and even an imitation of the wooden look again. A large number of controls were still central to the dashboard and more digital controls appeared as opposed to the analogue controls.
2001 - Ford Focus MK1 Zetec and 2004 Jaguar X-Type
The most noticeable changes done in the 2000s to the car’s dashboard were actually once again to the design and this is the time when the dashboard saw a strong shift back to all materials and styles ever introduced back in the years. The most popular style by this time was the mixture between natural leather, imitation leather, imitation wood, chrome, analogue and digital controls.
2011 – Ford Edge
Back in 2011 to the present day, the car’s dashboard has seen a major drop from analogue to completely digital dials and the continuing of mixing different materials and achieving different styles.