The dashboard is one of your interfaces between you and your vehicle. They have a lot of important information to relay to you, the driver. What they don’t have to be is boring. What car has the weirdest dashboard?
While much of the country is baking under an oven of heat, other parts are getting soaked under a deluge of rain. I mistakenly left my first-generation Smart Fortwo parked outside with its windows cracked during my trip to Texas. Unsurprisingly, I came back to a car with a flooded-out interior. Driving this car is a joy, even when it’s soaking wet. Every time I drive, though, it I’m reminded about how weird the dashboard is.
The dashboard’s pad is wavy and covered in a fabric. Sprouting out from various places on the dash are HVAC vents, tweeter speakers, the tachometer and a clock. Smart had a huge thing with putting different interior components into sorts of pods back then.
The seemingly empty space forward of the dash pad also isn’t as empty as you’d think. Under that vast expanse of dashboard is a set of additional speakers. The speakers of the Grundig stereo sound pretty decent, considering their position forward of the driver.
The lower part of the dashboard is also a large shelf of sorts. The glovebox is under the driver seat, so the lower dash is just an open space broken up with a steering wheel and an airbag, respectively. I like how Smart angled the radio and HVAC parts slightly towards the driver, too.
As for the water, I was able to drain it out using the car’s floorboard drain holes. Crisis averted!
What car has an even weirder dashboard? Do you like your dashboards simple or just as flashy as the rest of the car?