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.
>> I associate more movement (of the controller) with less precision.
Think of a microscope. You have a course adjustment that moves the focus quickly, then a fine control that moves it more slowly. The former is less precise than the latter.
I think maybe OP meant that the airplane yoke is normally moved by very small amounts, unlike a car wheel which is normally turned even full rotations e.g. when making a tight turn.
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.
I have often heavily questioned GMs sanity. Building their clunky cars and thinking they are competing with Lexus and BMW. I remember a Bonneville ad from the 1990s where they were comparing it to a BMW. It would have been funny if I wasn't so blindsided by their astonishing level of disconnect.
Are you sure you're not confusing the 60* V6 family that was around in GM vehicles in the 80s (the 2.8, 3.1, and 3.4 and their predecessor engines) with the Buick 90* V6 (of which the 3800 was a part of and dated back to way before I was born). Otherwise that's pretty fascinating...GM vehicles are always so strange in so far as that the "lower end" marques and lower trim vehicles always seemed to be better designed, more durable and way more reliable. It's hard to believe that Olds didn't just use an SBC derivative like the LT1 for the Aurora given how much better those engines were (and everyone knew it) than the Northstar, which was basically a flaming expensive pile of shit from day 1.
You're right that I got the two confused. The 3800 Series II was descended from the 1960 aluminum "Fireball" V6 and used a block derived from it's successors, but if I'm remembering correctly was part of the engine family that started in 1978 and was part of GM's downsizing to combat gas prices. The Fireball and 235 used a 90° bank and was 3.8L but with the switch to FWD in 1982 the new LK9 used a 3.0L (I was wrong about the 3.6L displacement, I apologize) 60° layout that grew in displacement until the late 1990s.
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.
There's no way to win that argument, the LLM will take control of the vehicle and refuse to let you make any decisions at all after that point. If you're really unlucky, it will really go rogue and make its own decision to veer into oncoming traffic.
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).
For a while I kinda wanted to buy a used Buick Reatta as a project car because it had the same CRT touchscreen technology. It's extremely cool if you're into the 80s retro futuristic vibe.
The Subaru XT Turbo was a nearly as weird futuristic car that they actually made. I had one and it was fun… a great little sports car with a futuristic design, that with the touch of a button lifted high in the air and was also great offroad- with real center diff lock 4WD.
Incas is a weird name. I can't see it other as the plural of Inca, as in that historic people of South America. If such a name is used for a product, it's always singular if the product is singular: e.g. Jeep Cherokee, not Cherokees. A box of chocolates shaped like aboriginal characters could plausibly be Cherokees (issues of offensiveness aside).
When I see this, it always fascinates me how cars are one of the things that remain consistently boring -- there's so much room for different enhancements, styles of steering wheel, and so on ; and yet the most we've been able to do is stuff a computer in the dash (yes, I understand autonomous cars are a thing too, but I'm focusing on cars we drive).
I'm no car guy at all, but even I can see the faults with the doors (driver gets wet when the passenger jumps in while it's raining), and with the steering wheel (imagine trying to do a hand-over hand turn without accidentally pressing one of the buttons!)
More car makers are better, and engineers should be allowed to have a bit of fun, but concept cars are almost laughable sometimes in their basic flaws.
True. I can understand the argument that a 'better' steering system would remove the need for hand-over-hand turning, but I have a hard time believing that people can adapt to a turning system that doesn't react in a liner proportion to the distance the 'wheel' moves.
As a kid I played computer racing games that had proper 'proportional' turning of the steering wheel, but only if you used an analogue joystick. I used the keyboard, and suffered accordingly.
Yeah, it would be awful. A normal quick ratio steering setup will still turn around once. If turning the yoke 90˚ meant turning the wheels fully, it'd be really hard just to stay in your lane. Was already annoying enough in my ex cop car.
If you remember the average age of Oldsmobile customers (and remember Oldsmobile) you know this would never have sold well, even if they had switched to a more conventional interior. This is something Pontiac might have tried, though.
US auto manufacturers could coast for 50 years on reissuing the classics upgraded for fuel efficiency and crash safety. Instead we get soulless, gaudy, plastic bullshit that falls apart the moment the warranty expires.
Great taste but bad execution. It makes a ton of sense IMO to put all the controls on the steering wheel so that the driver never has to take their hand off of it to do something. Physical buttons like this are also great UI for critical controls (unlike touch screen). My only gripe is the layout they went with. Its very disorganized.
For things which are symmetrical within the car (door lock/unlock, windows up/down, turn signal) they should be symmetrical on the wheel as well. Critical elements to driving like the windshield wipers, defrosters, horn and turn signals should all be extremely self evident at a glance whereas amenity controls like radio and AC should be off to the side.
True, controls should be in range without taking the hands of the wheel, but putting buttons onto the steering wheel is only the second best option. I think a better choice are "satellites", as used by Renault or Nissan, behind the steering wheel and below the turn indicator and so on. Those are always at the same position, regardless of the steering wheel's rotation, and I can find and operate them without looking and without taking the hands of the steering wheel. I guess there are some issues with those, too, because they haven't been generally adopted.
Honestly wish there was more experimentation in automotive human-UX besides the current "Just put it all in touchscreen LOL" design rut we're in. A car today functions almost entirely like every car that's existed since the 1950s: Big, transparent window in front, a handful of "critical" gauges and displays underneath that window, a steering wheel that hasn't changed in a century (besides the addition of buttons), accessory devices/entertainment in a center stack on a central console, a glove box or some other storage in the passenger side. Any time a manufacturer deviates from the norm, even slightly, the result gets derided as weird and ugly, and we revert back to the 1950s. Have we really settled on objectively optimal controls?
> Have we really settled on objectively optimal controls?
The cost of retraining the whole user base in a dangerous environment will likely dwarf any small gain from making "better" controls.
As a case in point, the car in the article is so alien to what I'm currently using that I wouldn't feel comfortable driving it, knowing that it challenges significant parts of my driving routine which are not conscious.
I miss my quad 4. Those things were a blast to drive.
I like how the flip-top cockpit in this concept compliments the fancy joysticks and display to give the impression you're driving a luxury fighter jet.
Example of bad UX: controls where your hands already are is great (curse you, idiotic touchscreens) but gear controls for an automatic transmission aren’t used while in motion, so put them elsewhere.
Forgivable, as it’s a concept car, so just give people an idea.
The other issue is that once you're turning the wheel more than about 90 degrees your hands are no longer on the controls and at 180 degrees the sides are swapped (and upside down) so it can be disorienting.
Though perhaps you shouldn't be manipulating anything and instead concentrating on navigation while the car isn't moving straight? Hmm, perhaps those controls should be disabled when the wheel is (say) 15% from straight?
This headline would be much less effective if it told you the truth, that the car never existed:
“Unfortunately for us, Oldsmobile never went ahead and produced the Incas. They made a slew of other wild concept cars as well, but none of those saw the light of day either […]”
How does "that you've never seen" not convey that sentiment? Sure it is hyperbole but that hyperbole seems well founded since the only people who have likely seen it are those which followed concept cars of the 80s or stumbled onto an article like this one.
The point of clickbait is that the link will get reposted to all kinds of places online, with a headline that intentionally misrepresents the article to those readers and fools them into clicking.
(Original headline was “The 1986 Oldsmobile Incas Had The Wildest Dashboard You’ve Never Seen.”)
The car absolutely did exist, just not in great numbers. The article even has photographic proof of its existence.
Concept vehicles like this are typically built one-off and showcased at manufacturer auto shows. Some of them later go into mass production, and some of them don't.
That would be an excellent point for a headline that says, “This Never-Sold Concept Car Had The Wildest Dashboard You’ve Never Seen.”
Obviously, such a truthful headline would get much fewer clicks.
The actual headline intentionally wants us to think they’re going to show us the “Wildest” Knight Rider car that people were driving in the 80s. (Maybe they were rare, maybe you were too young to have seen them, but we have pics! Click here!)
Nothing about the headline stated or even implied it was a production vehicle. It literally does say, "You’ve Never Seen" it.
I immediately presumed it was a concept car from the headline. If you presumed otherwise, that just might be your unfamiliarity with the subject matter.
Of course a clickbait headline does not literally lie.
A clickbait headline elides, omits key information strategically, deliberately creating a far juicier story in the minds of readers than is justified by the actual post-click article.
Key information like the fact that no one ever bought and drove this car on the road.
I don’t think a headline gets immunity from being called clickbait if it successfully dupes only those people insufficiently familiar with its particular subject matter.
Clickbait gets under the noses of such people by design.
