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.
The 7000rpm tach is amazing! It appears to be for an LG4 305, because it redlines at 4500 ????.
My van’s speedometer stopped at 100 mph. I got it to 95-96 once, but I’m told Ford trucks are governed there.
I think that’s a reasonable excess of speedometer max vs. actual capability, just a small margin for, say, steep downhills. Obviously someone will find a way to go faster, but for the average person, probably not.
I do dislike it when cars give you a ridiculous top-end on the speedometer.
To my Prius’s credit, its digital speedometer only has the two segments to do a “one” in the hundreds column…which it can actually do.
I don’t know what a Prius would be like at 100 mph. But it makes me smile that you got to find out!
That could actually be a fun series for someone to write… “What is this car like at VMax?” I had a classmate who let me take his silver spoon ’74 MB 450 SEL up to 125 mph on a straight as an arrow straight, but undulating, country road my last year of high school. It soaked up every imperfection and undulation as if it was on a perfectly flat set of rails. 12 years later, I took my new, but broken in, ’86 Accord on the same road and got it up to 115 before I chickened out, because the stuff the Merc took in stride was scarily upsetting to the Accord. And, honestly, I don’t think it was going to get more than a couple more MPH no matter how long I matted the throttle. At more rational speeds, that Accord was fine.
I’m seein double here, four needles
Now I think I understand why every Camaro owner I have known is bi-polar. Business in front and party out back…
Motorcycles were affected by this rule as well. My Honda CX500 Turbo came with an 85mph speedometer. Honda engineered in a magnetic clutch so you could pin the speedometer without worrying about breaking a cable.
Such a wild and crazy bike for those days!
That was one I wish I never sold.
I already posted this in another thread, but the Torque Test Channel did a great parody of that SNL sketch. https://youtu.be/2QUum9NymZY?si=tKvIBpqN28Zf3EBD
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.
My 2024 Odyssey handles well above 85. Well above.
Mine did too when it was new back in ‘ought-nine, but 160 mph was always….optimistic.
And to be fair, my ’17 Accord V6 also has a 160 on its dial, but I’m pretty sure it COULD get closer to that number than the Corolla. I believe it’s governed at 129 mph. I never tested it and don’t intend to.
I’m not sure why any car in the US needs to get above 100 on public roads.
And to be clear, I’m not advocating for the nannification of our cars. But DJI drones “know” where they are in airspace and won’t go places that could get their owners in legal deep doo-doo. I imagine a modern GPS equipped car could also figure out whether they are on a highway or a racetrack and limit or de-limit itself accordingly.
A few years back, there was a pursuit of a Hellcat stolen somewhere in Houston and that car was able to outrun the pursuing Texas DPS Chargers AND a Eurocopter AS350 (max level speed ~152 mph/246 km/h) until it ran out of fuel. To me, that’s just insane.
I only bought the V6 in Texas to get around tractors and other slow pokes quickly and hence, more safely and more importantly, it came with 6A transmission instead of the four cylinders’ CVT.
Just do it, it’s a rental!
I had a rental Corolla last year and when the service desk person gave me the keys, they said “don’t even try to outrun the cops, you won’t get far.” And I remember thinking a combination of “no shit” and also “that’s a weird thing to say to a guy who just brought in a Prius for work.”
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.
I had the needle of my ’82 Subaru to the M in MPH a number of times in my misspent youth. Yee-hah!
I also managed to do that in a 45′ coach once on the flats of IL, but that speedo only went to 75. The power of the mighty 8V92T Detroit is not to be messed with, especially when the governor is a little bit off in the right direction and it’s old enough to predate the “double-nickel”.
That Jimmy must’ve been screaming ! They make such glorious sounds
They do indeed, and yes it was. Though being 40′ behind me, not particularly loudly.
My ’83 and ’84 would do “P”, which was redline in 3rd (auto) or 4th with the 5 speed (top speed was lower in 5th).
My ’82 had no indicated redline on the tach, amusingly. But it wouldn’t spin much past 6K. Tough mechanicals in those old Subies, but zero rust resistance. It definitely went faster in 4th.
Dumbest move in my first year of driving? Sliding the thing sideways into a granite curb trying to do handbrake turns – had no idea said handbrake worked on the FRONT wheels. That one was a tad hard to explain to the Old Man.
I identify: being used to air-cooled VWs, the first (only) time I tried to do a J-turn into my gravel parking area I my 82 Subaru GLF was a definite Code Brown moment
I noticed it the similar way, but in a parking lot, so I was just flummoxed by the even greater understeer. I figured it out shortly after, but I can’t recall if it was by looking or reading in the repair manual (pre internet). I over revved the ’83 to a little over 6k and I remember thinking: hm, if that isn’t valve float, I don’t know what is. Rust killed them both (with the assistance of half an oak tree that fell on the ’83 while driving down the street), but the engines were very robust. I tried that 0W-20 or 30 when it first came out because I was dumb, especially as I had a bad leak from the rear main and that crap runs easier than water. Couldn’t find anything but 2-stroke oil where I was camping in VT, so I didn’t add oil and drove home 3 hours in the very upper end of the rpms to arrive at an auto parts place near home to get oil. Ended up, I had less than 1 qt. Still drove it another 20k or so before the tree insisted it was time to look for something else. Cars today are wusses. Sure, they’re far more powerful and efficient, but I can’t imagine too many shrugging off a quarter of the abuse I put those and my EJ22 Legacy through and certainly not current Subarus.
LOL – after my folks gave me my ’82, I didn’t check the oil for a good six months of beating the ever-loving piss out of the poor thing. There was none showing on the dipstick. Took rather more than two quarts to fill it back up, and they only held four. oops. The old man had never told me that both of them needed oil adding now and again (they had an ’80 DL hatch as well). Tough indeed. And never ANY mechanical issues with them, not that they managed THAT many miles before the tinworm ate them – maybe 120K.
Rust killed both of them, of course, though the “Rusty Jones” rustproofing on the ’82 meant it lasted two more years than the ’80 did before it was junked. That first one failed inspection for rust and needed welding when it was only *3*. But having to junk that hatchback in six years meant they never considered buying another one after the ’82. I sold the ’82 in ’87 to my college roommate and he got another few years out of it before it was unfixably rusty and was junked.
At one point there were *11* of that generation Subaru in my extended family, but nobody bought another one after they all just dissolved.
It was such a shame. They weren’t the fastest to rust, but they were a top contender. Rusty Jones was a running joke for all the rusty cars they were found on. My ’83 hit something like 145k, of course running fine when it was junked. For a whole summer, I drove it with a cracked radiator that externally steamed under pressure and dead cooling fan (oak tree) all summer, pulling over and shutting it down in traffic when it got just under the red, giving it a few songs’ time to cool down, then driving off again. As long as it was moving and I kept dumping coolant in it (just threw water in at that point), it was fine. The ’84 was somewhere in the 120k range, but had probably 300k+ worth of abuse. That one also ran, but I think it had a bad HG at that point, which—long story—was absolutely excusable. I had been starving for months prior to returning home and the car even held on a few months longer as if waiting until I had enough money to replace it.
I didn’t actually want the Legacy, but couldn’t find another Ax that wasn’t a hideous color and automatic (they were getting scarce even in the junk yards by the late ’90s), never mind the hardtop I really wanted. I never liked the EA82s with the twin t-belts, so I skipped that gen. The Legacy ended up being the best car I’ll ever own.
Those cars made me a die hard Subaru guy, but they stopped building Subarus like that (at least rust protection got massively better). I suppose most marque enthusiasts could say something similar.
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.
Same person who uses a sticker to cover a CEL?
https://jalopnik.com/the-ford-mustang-svo-had-a-hilarious-but-possibly-illeg-1847033278
So, that was actually illegal of them to do. The letter of the law said no graduations past 85. They just happened to get away with it.
That’s where I saw it!
Early 1960’s Chryslers still win at the analog speedo game
I’m partial to the rolling drum in early Toronados for sheer oddness, but that jukebox is glorious.
I like the horizontal 70s ones where 0 is in Arizona and 120 is in Georgia.
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.
Your humour will require some calibration before you can expect mass acceptance.
Guess I should’ve looked more closely at the metrics.
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 actually saw a pressure gauge like that once. It was for some sort of liquefied gas. Apparently they needed pretty granular markings and ran out of space in the first 360. Confused the hell out of me. Especially when I was told it wasn’t even that high pressure.
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
I remember this as well, apparently all it would take was changing some gear or another.
Probably not practical in 1983, but with 3-d printer technology today, it sounds like a cool weekend project.
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.
That’s interesting. I hate analog clocks with a passion.
I don’t see how seeing the first number is “2” doesn’t tell you “it’s not 3 PM yet”.
2:14 is not quite as alarming as 2:59. Knowing you have 46 minutes v.s. 1 minute can make a big difference.
I dunno. I just feel like it takes me way longer to calculate what exact time it is looking at an analog clock, whereas the numbers of a digital clock just “say” it to me.
Trying to just read the big hand could still be a big margin of error.
Because you have to read digital. A simple glance at the big hand gives you an idea how much more time you have. It’s just intuitive. That’s why digital tachometers aren’t really a thing.
The aftermarket Pioneer head unit in my car has a combination digital and analog tachometer. It’s actually pretty nice, because the analog display goes up really high since the design is meant to cover most vehicles, but the Prius redlines around 5,000 or 5,500, I believe.
But it still tells me what I need to know digitally.
In one of my semi trucks the tach broke, but the rpms could be displayed digital. And since unsyncronized transmissions need to be put in gear at precise rpms, it’s kinda important to have a tach. You cannot time shifts with a digital tach.
The US air force did a study on this decades ago and indeed positional and relative indicators are faster to read. Especially when you have a cornucopia of gauges in front of you. You can tell if something is off even from peripheral vision.
I have a well trained map of dial points on my speedometer for the common road speeds I encounter. For instance, straight up is freeway limit. Never have to think about it unless something unusual is posted. Same goes for my tachometer. I really don’t recall my optimum shift RPM, just the angle of the needle and engine sound.
Back in the day all the serious air-cooled 911 guys I used to see at the track, had their gauges rotated. First time I saw it, it made sense to me. My tach is off by about 30 degrees, but 6000 is straight up. When the needle points up I shift.
I rotated all of the gauges in my race car so that “normal” values are at 12 o’clock.
I flipped the digital speedo upside down in my Scion.
Tachmeter doesn’t rely on absolute values, but on relative ones. A dial makes more sense.
I feel that speed cameras care more of my absolute value.
THIS.
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.
You can rotate analog dials so that a noteworthy reading (such as the desired shift point) has the needle pointing straight up. There are things you can do with digital gauges, too, but it’s a fun trick.
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.)
They match pretty well- id put a picture but…
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.
Not so cool is the 7k tach with a 4500 rpm redline.
My ’02 Mustang, even with its relative to the Fox Bodies high-revving engine, still has a giant red arc across the tach. It always cracks me up.
The Saab 900 turbo had a similar redline.
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.