Why did dash designs go to pot in the 70's?

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

In AD7-1344 Stephen Remington asks "Why did the dashes of Italian cars start 
to be so awful in the mid 1970's? Robert Brady mentioned in the "The Best 
GTV" thread: "The '72 gets the bigger engine, but also gets the ugly 
interior, ugly grill and cheapo dash" I may have a bad memory but seems 
everyone wanted a GTV assembled with a 60's look and 70's mechanicals."

Reverse the question: how and when did the dashes get to be good?

One of the persistent typographic cliches of instrument design in the fifties 
and sixties was radial numbering - the number in the 12 o'clock position 
vertical, the numbers in the 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock positions laying on 
their sides, and the numbers below them flip-flopped so their bottoms are to 
the outside of the dial; thus a tach with x100 readings from 1000 rpm to 8000 
rpm might be numbered 01, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 08. (Take a look at the 
tach on a Giulia GT Veloce for a clear example). Conceptually questionable, 
and no aid to clear reading.

The dashes and instruments on most 6C 2500s were heavily infected with Art 
Deco styling cliches, bakelite waterfalls and the like. The 1900 Berlina had 
(like the following Giuliettas) polychromed steering-wheels with two drooping 
spokes, deep chromed bezels around polychromed layered instrument faces with 
the numerals in a radial array rather than vertical, speedlines, (as on 
Giulietta radio blanking plates) and heavily stylized typography. Some models 
of the general period were better (or less worse) than others, but the 2600 
Berlina, for one example, had an asymmetrical instrument cluster with a round 
tach (with radial numbers) on the right, a horizontal strip speedometer, 
rectangular instruments below the strip, two-tone delta-spoked steering 
wheel, and (remarkably) a simple white-on-black clock that didn't match 
anything else on the car. The Giulia TI had a trapezoidal instrument cluster 
with an asymmetrical layout, strip speedometer above three small rectangular 
gauges, and a dinky tach off to one side, all mounted in a dashboard with 
channels echoing the exterior panels, behind a gull-wing spoked steering 
wheel. Some vintage people who like the Arte Moderne funkiness of the tailfin 
era enjoy the TI dash, but the round instruments of the following Giulia 
Super looked a lot better to many, albeit still with the radial numbering. 
Not until the Giulia Nuova, well up in the seventies, did the Giulia sedans 
get upright numbers in white on a black ground, even if it was around a blue 
center.

Giulietta instruments - well, look at them. Not squeaky clean. At some point 
they went white-on-black, but even the Speciales and Sprint Zagatos had the 
radial numbering. The Tubolares had straight-forward white numerals on black, 
upright, and the TI Supers may have- don't remember- but the Giulia Sprint GT 
Veloce still had radial numbers in instruments with deep bezels in a 
flagrantly vinyl "woodgrain" dashboard- neatly done, but no paragon.

Which brings us (almost) to the dashes of the "The Best GT" thread. The 1750 
GT Veloce and Berlina were almost the first production Alfas to have classic 
white-on-black instruments with upright numbers, and in dashboards with 
simple forms and minimal arbitrary decorative flourishes. The Duetto's Jaeger 
instruments beat them to it by twenty-two months, but not in very large 
numbers- about six thousand Duettos versus 155,000 1750s. Still, give 
Pininfarina credit.

And then came the 2000. The 2000 Berlina, the most numerous of the breed, 
reverted to the earlier norms, with radial numbering on more complexly 
colored instruments in a fussier dash; the 2000 GT Veloce kept upright 
numbers in white-on-black, but in an instrument cluster and dash which was 
appreciably less simple and pure than that of the 1750.

So I would suggest that it was not that Alfa dash design started to be awful 
in the seventies, as Steve Remington suggested, but that the 1750s 
represented an  exceptional high-point in a series which had never before 
been exemplary.

It would be interesting to know just who designed the 1750 Berlina and GT 
Veloce dashboards, which are much more closely related in form and concept 
than any previous or subsequent pairs- the 1600 coupes and sedans, the 2000s, 
the Alfettas, any/all others. The Berlina, like the coupes before the 
Alfetta, is attributed to Bertone, but Bertone as an organization was an 
umbrella encompassing many individual talents. I would assume that the 2000 
variants were in-house Alfa designs, but the source of the 1750 detailing is 
an open, and interesting, question.

John H.
Raleigh, N.C.

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