Best Of 2021: Here Are The Cars You Think Have The Weirdest Dashboards

Was 2021 a great year? Not exactly! But we did have some posts that got a lot of attention. Take a walk down memory lane with us, as we think back on 2021, a year that will seem much better by this time in 2022.

The third-generation Nissan Quest minivan (curbwatching agrees with me) was full of quirky, weird, ugly, and yet somehow appealing design features. It had sunroof panels for each passenger, toDVD screens for the second and third-row passengers, and an exterior design that was ... something. Best of all was its dash layout. It used a centrally mounted pod that housed the speedo and tach along with an information screen. The gear shifter, radio, and climate controls were sat in a table-like circle that sat at an angle to the driver. There was also a rather strange dash-mounted glovebox that sat near the windshield. Some loved it, some hated it, but it was weird for sure.

We asked readers what cars they thought had the weirdest dashboard designs. These were their answers.

Fiat Multipla, easily. The car isn't just hideous from the exterior (although I find it charming), but the dash is simply grotesque. It looks like a mass of vents, bulbs knobs, controls and everything else that just sprouted together.

Suggested by: edu-petrolhead

Chevy Sonic with the motorcycle dash.

Suggested by: @thejamison (Twitter)

The 1980s Aston Martin Lagonda. It looked more like a video arcade game than a car.

Suggested by: skeffles

BMW i3 — what happens when you put a steering wheel on an Ikea kitchenette display.

Suggested by: FutureDoc

Toyota Echo. It gets stranger the longer you look at it.

Suggested by: SumGai77556H

It's a very simplistic purposeful design but the way the center cluster protrudes out of the dash was both futuristic and cheap at the same time. The gauges over the center stack were added starting in 1986 onwards on V6 models (those gauges were incorporated into the main cluster on 1985 V6 models). You can also see how cheap GM interiors would show with use. I never owned a Fiero where the dash didn't have some sort of separation or bulging somewhere, and eventually, the glues holding everything together would just off-gas.

The "cup holder situation" was cool at least. I've owned way more expensive sports cars with either one or no cup holders or no way to hold a drink, and I'm not one of those people that don't eat or drink in their cars. That's what they make soap and water for; I'm gonna be comfortable and not 'hangry'.

Suggested by: 2ndgear

There is something wonderfully extra about an exposed gear linkage on an automatic car.

Suggested by: Viperfan1

There are a number of center-mounted gauge clusters on this list, and they all deserve it.

Suggested by: jbird_27 & Boris Fedorov (Facebook)

Ever since Car and Driver dubbed it the pregnant dash, I can't see the Previa any other way.

Suggested by: foghat1981