In the speedometer community, it’s generally accepted that American cars from the 1980s represent a sort of low ebb. That’s because in 1979 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) updated the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 127, Speedometers and Odometers, to mandate that speedometers only have a maximum speed of 85 mph and must have 55 mph notated on the dial. As a result, all cars were required to have 85 mph-max speedos, even if they were capable of far more speed.
For most cars, this meant some pretty boring and uninspiring speedometers, especially in sports and muscle cars, where the speedo serves two important functions: one, to indicate current speed (duh), and two, to inspire and excite, to ignite dreams of irresponsibility and illegality with simple digits on the speedometer dial, promising dazzling speeds of 120, 140, 160, even if those will never, ever actually be reached. They’re just there to make life feel more exciting.
The 85 mph rule only officially lasted until 1981 or 1982, but the 85 mph speedos stuck around on many cars for a good bit longer. This is also why in the movie Back to the Future the production team had to rig up a digital speedo so they could show the all-important speed of 88 mph, because a stock DeLorean speedo tops out at 85:
But I’m not here to talk about DeLorean speedometers. I’m here to talk about Camaro speedometers.
Yes, Camaro speedometers! Specifically, third-gen Camaros made between 1981 and 1984, which took the restrictions imposed by the 85 mph speedo and turned it into something magical. Specifically, this:
See what’s going on there? Instead of just recalibrating the numbers to fill the entire dial like most boring-ass dash-designers did, the Camaro team decided to have some fun: they made the usual needle a double-ended needle, and put the kilometers-per-hour scale on the other side!
It’s so clever and unexpected; I can’t think of another car that has a double-needle speedo like this, certainly not a mass-market American car.
Look, here it is in a video:
I like this video because it also shows the gleefully bonkers Camaro interiors of this era:
That’s not some unhinged custom interior, either; the CAMARO-shouting interior was a factory option:
There was also a variant of the double-needle instrument cluster that didn’t have the tachometer, and instead had what might be the only metric-English fuel gauge I can think of:
Look at that! We have double double needle gauges! It’s rare enough to get an analog fuel gauge that actually tells the number of gallons in the tank, but this one also tells you how many liters! Or, in the case of this gauge, litres!
Also fascinating are those three idiot lights in the center for coolant temperature, oil pressure, and battery charge, which are just simple red lights but are set into circular housings with hash marks all around them like they’re actual gauges, which they very much are not. It’s so stupid, I love it.
The really amazing thing about these double-needle gauges is that in a lot of ways, I can’t think of a car that would need them less. The Camaro was an American car by both birth, and, generally, habitat. These weren’t being exported to Europe in huge numbers. By far the vast majority of Camaros were built for the American market, which did not give a brace of BMs about metric anything.
I remember being in grade school and every year being told that the US would probably be moving to the metric system next year, and of course that never happened, and eventually teachers stopped even pretending.
For whatever reason, we’re really married to our idiotic system of weights and measures. You’ve seen the SNL sketch, right?
I guess a lot of these ended up in Canada and maybe Mexico. I bet this was very appreciated in those markets, at least.
Anyway, I love the double-needles, looking like a pair of see-saws teetering as you drive. So wonderful and weird.
A few years ago, I noticed the speedo in my rented Toyota Corolla maxed out at 160 mph. What an aspirational goal!
Same thing in my odyssey. It handles weird above 85, it would probably disintegrate around 120 or so.
I liked the 85mph speedo on my Chevy Celebrity, no dial, like the cars of yore the needle crossed the numbers sideways and when you went past 85 it buried the needle.
Mine goes to 86. Well, it’s one faster, isn’t it? It’s not 85.
I think it was the Mustang SVO that solved the 85-mph rule. On that speedometer, the numbers only went up to 85, but the hash marks went well beyond 120. Some enterprising owner even made little number stickers and added them on.
Early 1960’s Chryslers still win at the analog speedo game
Rather have a normal speedo. Some literally pegged, but I’ve seen the Brat pointing down.
Mind my wrx pegged at 126 mph iirc while it had numbers to go. I topped 155 as a m3 dropped back some. Tach still reporting reality is nice. Slow down for a corner and see tach decline while speedo stays still.
Remember that episode on Star Trek where the Enterprise travelled to the Metric System? I forget who the guest stars were, but one of them played a weird ruler.
Picard, his head in his hand.
I recall pinning my Starion. The 85mph mark was about SSE on the dial, but the pin was straight South. My guess was 100mph. Fun!
My track car is a 1980 Firebird. Long ago someone asked me what speed I was getting out of the Carousel. I responded, “85mph”. It took them a second before they started laughing.
Pretty sure the pin is near 85, surprised I haven’t broken the speedo by now.
I have wondered for a long time why no engineering-minded supercar company has ever made a 360 degree/360 km/h speedometer. Double points if it actually starts out pointing to the right and sweeps counterclockwise like a unit circle.
Maybe I’m just the right kind of nerd that would appreciate that symmetry.
I remember Car and Driver suggesting that you could tweak the speedometer drive to make the metric side read mph. I don’t know if anyone tried this
Digital speedometers are such an improvement over dials.
Never trying to interpret your speed between lines or where the needle actually is vs parallax.
Long ago I heard a college professor say that watches don’t need to be digital, because you don’t look at a watch to find out what time it is, you look at it to find out what time it isn’t. Oh it’s not 3pm yet? I still have time before I have to depart.
I don’t need to know I’m going 74, I just need to know I’m keeping it under 80. Analog speedos are the way to go.
Well put. To me, the benefit of analog setups is they tell you about continuous relationships, not discrete events. And that can be really useful for hand-eye-brain coordinated activities like driving as it takes advantage of our innate ability to understand connections/patterns.
I find it easier to gauge, er, visualize other vehicles’ speeds on the road, and speeds/space I’ll need to overtake using an analog speedo, esp if I’m worried about traffic enforcement.
Boo & Hiss. There doesn’t need to be a better. I’ve got both, and like certain aspects of both. My ’97 Grand Marquis has the full digital dash with VFD numerals. I like setting cruise control to an exact digit, plus VFD’s look cool as hell. My Volt has a screen, which shows lots of good information. However, I vastly prefer the look and feel of sweeping analog gauges.
That is cool! But quick thing- the delorean in Back to the Future, the stock speedo was changed to go up to 95. How? Was it custom? From somewhere else? No, they changed it from starting at ‘5’ mph to ’15’ and adding 10mph to each marked speed. Movie magic!
Or did Doc make these adjustments? They should have made them more home-made looking.
(Disclaimer: I have not looked at the movie’s analog speedometer before.)
There’s a low class joke about double double gauges to be made.
Aw, I thought you were going to say the needle(s) continued past 85, giving an unlabeled indication of actual speed. Dudes could brag in metric. “I got it up to 22 kph!”
Not as cool as this, but the Mustang SVO speedo was 140 MPH, they just didn’t label the increments after 85.
https://bigiron.blob.core.windows.net/public/items/46acf82ce5f743fab89759aba71a88a0/1986fordmustangsvo2-doorliftbackcar_2d8c296c651a4443967f448f504a1e4f.jpg
I never knew about the base gauge cluster and the double gas gauge needle. What an amazing way to confirm your peasantry.
I drove my 1989 Firebird (which does not have a double needle) into Canada in ’93, was only there for a couple days. By the time I had fully trained myself to look at the kph dashes on the speedo, I was back in the States.
Not quite as cool, but I also like how the tach is configured so the redline is pretty much right at the top/when the needle is vertical. Nice race car touch.
Actually if you look close at the speedos they used in BTTF, they altered them to read up to 95. They pasted new numbers over the old ones.
Yep, I’ve closely looked at one of the movie cars at the Petersen Museum and the speedometer overlay is peeling off. 15 MPH on the overlay is about where 0 would be on the original speedo. I actually have a photo of it on my phone that I would post here if I had an easy way to upload somewhere.
I had that cluster in my ’84 Camaro in high school. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.