Just take a look at this relatively rare MG Y-Type four passenger tourer. Its interior is in the classic British sports car/tourer idiom. Let’s take a closer look, as well as the inviting cockpits of some other classic sports cars.
I can’t imagine driving this car without a huge smile on my face. Look at that interior, it so simple, yet there is something there that just looks fun. The leather, the real wood, these cars have character.
This Morgan looks more expensive, but follows the same formula. Simple functional, and classy.
Here is another early MG, a TD, which was developed from the Y Type at the top of the post.
A very classic and expensive Mercedes 300SL; German luxury, sports car style.
The Porsche 356 interior is much more basic. What more do you really need to have fun on a twisty road?
This Sunbeam Tiger has a Ford V8 under the hood, and a more modern but still British interior.
The interior of this Fiat 214 Spider looks like a pleasant place to spend the day.
While not the most inviting interior here, this Alfa Romeo looks like a serious tool for fast driving.
I love the simplicity of this Porsche 914 interior. This car just looks like it must be fun to drive.
Modern cars are safer, faster, and better in most ways, but for pure driving excitement, I’ll take something a little older.
I suppose the old practice of putting important gauges directly in front of the passenger (or at least far away from the driver) made it easier for manufacturers to make both LHD and RHD versions. But to me it’s still awkward, un-ergonomic, and potentially unsafe. Glad it’s no longer done (well, there are still a few exceptions….)
These interiors are so small, nothing seems far from the driver. One quickly gets accustomed to center-mounted instruments, so they are not an impediment .
One advantage is one is freed from having the steering wheel as an obstruction to viewing the instruments. The wheel can be smaller, fatter or positioned differently.
I can speak from experience, the hardest thing to get used to is the green arrow for the left turn signal flashing somewhere off to your right.
The interior of the 300SL is as gorgeous as the exterior!
The seats and seat fabrics in the Alfa look too modern to be original.
Hate to be a spoilsport but most of these cars don’t look very safe to me. No proper 3-point seat belts and lots of sharp/hard interior surfaces. Better hope during your fun ride that you don’t have an accident. I suppose that’s part of the thrill of driving one of these things.
Took a ride a year or two ago in a friend’s ’57 Olds hardtop and felt the same way – no proper seat belts of any kind, and lots of shiny, sharp bits in the interior.
Having said all that, the Porche and Mercedes interiors do look nice.
No worse than a motorcycle, and likely a similar use case except these are even less likely to get daily-driven due to short service intervals and a need to order perts from abroad.
Particularly since the owners likely live, or store the cars, somewhere near some sort of low-traffic country roads.
At least with a motorcycle you’re wearing a crash helmet. Can’t see too many drivers of these cars wearing one of those! Ha!
I think this the reason that so few old cars are used a daily drivers. Lots of guys talk about how they would love to drive around in a ’63 Mercury because old cars are so much better, but very, very few do so. Modern cars are just much more convenient.
And, your point is?
I’ll take ANYTHING that is not sanitized, desensitized and sterile. Frankly, I’m not in the habit of driving my cars into immobile obstacles and I prefer to avoid oncoming people who are texting, rather than to stay in my lane and allow myself to get hit head-on by some yuppie or millennial who’s numbed by the amount of safety built into his/her little cocoon on wheels.
I’ll take that Maxwell Smartmobile, thanks very much! (the Sunbeam 🙂 )
Ah, the typical scapegoats!
I find your overconfidence much more disturbing than the idea of a distracted driver.
I’ve seen what happens to the couple in the Datsun 2000 Sports in Cars that Ate Paris. I’m with Frank!
Lbgpop, you wind-up artist. ? No one could be that angry in real life.
Volvo’s biggest furstration ever.
When Volvo started to make cars safer and seriously look at safety in statistics the death toll by people that drove Volvo’s did not drop dramatically.
The reason was a simple one : People were told a Volvo was safe so they took more risks behind the wheel of a Volvo.
If I see the idiots on the road day in and dah out here in the Netherlands, this investigation was right, so many people take the mist stupid risks because nthey have not got a clue what happens if it goes wrong and many times they are saved by the electronics of their car, not even realizing it.
I can tell you plenty of stories of people who were drivers like kings, but are no longer with us .
I still see the smile of a German guy overtaking me in a a VW passat exactly like mine in a snowstorm on the autobahn, he thought he was a driving god.
Half an hour later there was a hughe traffic jam and his car covered with a white sheet over the drivers position in the barrier half turned over the sheet meaning : dead but we cannot remove the body here.
People are still the weak link, people who talk on their smartphone or send text messages or cut in front of a hughe truck because they are too rude to merge in a normal way.
A car never killed anyone, it’s the idiot behind the wheel who scares the sheit out of me !
I such a sucker for the old school British interior treatment. Nothing looks better or feels more “right” to me than a dash that’s actually a “board”, with simple legible gauges set into drilled openings. It’s one of the primary reasons that I still pine for a Triumph Spitfire. Aside from the obvious charms of the car itself, I have the fondest memories of sitting in the cockpits of the MGs I owned 30 years ago, cars that one wore more than sat in.
Great photos. Nice to see a focus on dashboards for once! Hard to pick a favourite, though the Y-Type’s is perhaps the most interesting, as I hadn’t seen one before. The 356’s is pretty strange. I thought there were two radio sets one atop the other before I clicked on the pic.
Having owned a 914 Porsche I can testify that indeed it is fun to drive.
But like others here, I think vintage British sports cars have THE best instrument panels.
You forgot one – kudos to who guesses the car!
Kharmann Ghia. Pretty, but purposeful.
Fun write-up and photos. I have a ’52 MG TD, with an interior similar to the one in the photo except the dash is not wood grain but instead a shade of green, similar to the seats. A very nice place to be, and yes, I almost always drive the car with a big smile. The car has a very direct and mechanical feel to it, with a very responsive throttle, easy clutch, precise gear shift, and a big steering wheel, all located perfectly (to the right size person, anyway). A great exhaust note just adds to the fun (the sensation of speed is much greater than how fast you are actually going). There are no seatbelts, collapsible steering columns, steel door beams, etc. Yet MG’s slogan was “Safety Fast!”. Cars and their interiors, and advertising, have certainly changed over the years.
Tim Finn made such a good start on a survey of significant dashboards that I foolishly attempted to finish the story…
…but I only made it from the ’36 Cord to the ’62 Facel II. A more exhaustive, comprehensively-photographed history appears in David Holland’s “Dashboards” from Phaidon Press (1995). If you’re curious about the view from the driver’s seat of a BRM V16, a Mercedes 300SLR, or even a sleeve-valve Minerva, this is a good place to look:
very nice ! .
i’ve owned several of the cars pictured and indeed, they’re designed so the cockpit is a fun place to be .
remember : sports cars are not necessarily fast as they’re designed for fun not racing .
any open car is a deathtrap as is any older vehicle . if his scares you, fine ~ no need to tell the world you’re risk adverse (afraid) .
i recently didn’t see gravel/sand on a corner whilst riding _below_ the speed limit and managed to ride into a granite mountain going 40mph .
bike is totaled, i’m more crippled than before and am thinking if i can begin walking again before thanksgiving, i might be able to have another one road worthy by christmas, you enjoy your fully enclosed plastic safety bubble =8-) .
-nate