Before automobiles, a “dashboard” was a wooden panel on carriages that kept horse dung from becoming one’s evening attire. As carriages became horseless, the dashboard separated engine from occupants and provided a convenient place to hang volt meters, speedometers, radios, climate controls and, eventually, touchscreens.
Buick’s 1986 Riviera transformed dashboards by using a monochrome CRT touchscreen for adjusting the climate, audio and computer. GM shared the system with the two-seat Reatta and installed a colorized version with integrated cell phone on the Oldsmobile Toronado. In the same era, GM debuted digital gauges, head-up displays (HUDs) and reconfigurable instrument clusters. We were seeing a glimpse of the sort of driver controls that are now becoming common.
BMW beyond iDrive
