MODERN INSTRUMENT PANELS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 42, 13 November 1936, Page 13

MODERN INSTRUMENT PANELS

Their Importance to the Industry

Once upon a time a novel design for a radiator provided the sole inspiration for a new car. To-day the instrument panel is the motif, having designed which, building the car round it is, of course, quite a simple matter (states the “Motor”). The importance of the instrument panel is shaking the industry to its foundations. Somebody discovered that to mount the instruments in a row was utterly out of keeping with modern motoring. With the aid of compasses, set squares, and artists’ celluloid curves, a oom plicated geometrical pattern was evolved in which the dials overlapped and some were squeezed into odd corners, aud people wrote columns of praise about such ingenuity. That started a fashion which threatens to drive managers of service depots into an early grave. For you see, if your oil gets mixed up with the petrol supply, or the water thermometer registers in amps, you cannot take out just one instrument to rectify it, but have to dismantle the lot. And so prolonged board meetings are being held to discover the lost art of mounting them separately once more. Which they have been doing in America for the past 12 months.

Noise, Please! While in many parts of the world the motorist’s life is becoming an anxiety because the horn must not be sounded, in Venezuela the motorist is soon in trouble if lie does not do so, and loudly, too, at every street intersection. Incidentally, the late Dictator granted a monopoly of horns to a member of big family who believed in the policy of makir : one’s presence known.