For drivers, the steering wheel is our closest and most permanent connection to our cars. We might not pay much attention to them, but they set the tone for our relationship with the vehicle, from how they look to how they feel and the tactile sensations they provide. Some are delightful, some are bland, and there are some we wish we’d never seen or touched. Here’s a selection of memorable wheels from the ’50s and ’60s, the most creative and interesting era of steering wheel design.
As a concept, the steering wheel has been so successful for so long that it’s easy to assume they’ve always been there. Not so — some early cars had tillers instead:
Then, other ideas were tried. In the ’60s, Ford experimented with a new steering concept called Wrist-Twist:
More recently, the 2022 Tesla Model S Plaid had a steering yoke instead of a wheel.
Mostly, though, people expect their steering wheels to work pretty much as they always have — and most people expect them to be round. So, overall, steering wheel development has been evolutionary and incremental. Of course, there are good reasons for that, from available materials to steering hardware (with power steering reducing the need for giant wheels) and force of habit. Drivers can learn to use all-new types of controls, but why should they have to?
Every so often, though, a combination of new technology and plain old exuberance leads designers and engineers to try something new and different, even with tried-and-true features like steering wheels. And few steering wheels were as unusual-looking as those of the 1950s and early 1960s. After all, would you expect a car that looked like this to have a normal, boring steering wheel?
Nope, and it doesn’t:
Admittedly, some of the designs of this era were rather impractical in real use, but that doesn’t take away the fact that they’re eye-catching, novel, and fun.
Keep in mind that this post is not meant as a comprehensive list of steering wheel designs, just a selection of particularly bold concepts that showcase the era’s optimism and daring. Feel free to add any suggestions I may have missed in the comments section.
First, though, let’s step back a bit to establish where this all started. In the late 1940s, WWII was in the rear-view mirror, civilian car production was once again up and running, and auto designers were itching to put some of their latest ideas into practice. However, there were still a lot of sober prewar designs, like this 1948 Chevrolet Fleetmaster woodie wagon.
With its two-tone plastic and horn ring, the wheel goes nicely with the dashboard, but it still looks like a product of the ’30s, and there’s nothing flashy about it.
One of the first automakers to inject some bolder ideas into their postwar designs was Nash, with its 1949–1951 “Bathtub” streamliners:
Not a wild wheel by itself, but the column-mounted “Uniscope” instrument pod was novel, and had a Buck Rogers-ish vibe to match the car-of-the-future aerodynamic shape.
If the Nash Uniscope added a touch of sci-fi fantasy to an otherwise down-to-earth interior, this 1953 Kaiser was a strange mixture of styles, with its Art Deco instruments and “Bambu” textured vinyl. Kaiser-Frazer claimed this was “the world’s safest front seat,” with a padded dash, pop-out windshield, and recessed instruments. If you got in an accident, you could use that shiny chrome horn ring to signal for help.
Kidding aside, Kaiser put a lot of effort into providing elaborate, lush, unusual interiors. After 1955, though, its passenger car days would be over (except in Argentina). Kaiser Jeep would survive, but Jeep steering wheels were the definition of utilitarian, and outside today’s scope.
Another independent that tried hard with its interiors was Packard. This 1956 Packard Four Hundred hardtop has a tri-tone interior with a two-tone steering wheel.
Tucked behind the steering wheel rim, on its own steering column pylon, was a pod with pushbutton controls for the Twin Ultramatic transmission. A neat toy to pretend you were preparing to launch your photon torpedoes at an enemy spacecraft.
The 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham had no photon torpedoes, although it had almost every other feature known to Detroit. There was a lot going on on the dashboard behind the wheel, but the steering wheel itself seemed almost delicate, with its thin chrome spokes and horn ring. The hub had very thin vertical ribbing.
Two-tone paint jobs were popular in the ’50s, and so were two-tone interiors. This 1957 Dodge Custom Royal Lancer is turquoise and white on the outside and turquoise and white on the inside, down to the two-tone steering wheel. Dodge, to my eye, had the most bling of the Pentastar offerings in that era, and this lavish steering wheel seems to bolster that idea. The ribbed metal doesn’t say “Flash Gordon” so much as “Kelvinator” or “Frigidaire” — it looks like something you’d find on a high-end home appliance of the time.
Here’s another turquoise car. Just about everybody loves the 1955 Ford Thunderbird, and it seems to have an infinite number of interesting details to look at. The turquoise steering wheel with its ribbed spokes would be fun regardless, but look at the steering wheel hub:
The chrome emblem seems suspended in mid-air by the transparent plastic dome.
This was a rather unique design piece, but it was a one-year wonder, replaced with a more conventional design for 1956.
Over at Mercury, the 1957 Turnpike Cruiser was like a show car you could take home. Mercury called the instrument panel the Monitor Control Panel.
Mercury called this a “full-vision safety steering wheel,” since it was shaped so it wouldn’t block the instruments and had a recessed hub. The flat top made it look a bit like a leaking balloon.
Meanwhile, after the muted reception of their pricey and stylistically restrained 1956–1957 Continental Mark II, Dearborn went all bells and whistles with the Space Age 1958 Mark III. The two-tone wheel was round, but the thick chrome spokes made it look like a modernist sculpture of a gymnast or a diver.
The 1959 Continental Mark IV kept the elaborate TV-like instrument panel, but added a new yoke-like steering wheel.
Does that wheel look familiar? Oldsmobile used a similar yoke-like horn ring for the 1966 Toronado:
Meanwhile, Edsel, trying hard to find a reason for being, arrived for 1958 with every gimmick in the book, including a three-dimensional speedometer with optional speed warning light (which glowed ominously red if you drove faster than a preset speed) and “Teletouch” pushbutton transmission controls mounted in the steering wheel hub.
The brochure breathlessly proclaimed, “You can drive an Edsel—park it—reverse it—rock it—without lifting a hand from the wheel. … The Teletouch button sends a signal to the rugged, precision ‘brain’ and it does the real work smoothly, surely, silently, electrically.”
In use, many drivers disagreed with the brochure’s insistence that the buttons were “correctly placed in the center of the steering wheel.” Teletouch was neat in the showroom, but it was a chore to use while driving and very trouble-prone. Unsurprisingly, it was gone for 1959.
Meanwhile, back at the Chrysler Corporation, things were getting a little delirious in the Plymouth interior design studio, whose steering wheel and dashboard designers served up something new and wild every year.
The squared-off “Aero Wheel” on the 1960 Fury was novel, but that chrome gewgaw on the hub looks like it should be on a signpost over a Googie diner somewhere in ’60s Los Angeles. (There have been lots of Googie diners whose interior design was just like that red-and-chrome dashboard.)
This brings us back to the 1961 Plymouth wheel we saw earlier:
Fancier looks and fancier materials, with a sparkle clear oval steering wheel. Turn the key, press the Drive button, and get ready to visit Alpha Centauri — or at least your local Safeway market.
The senior Imperial didn’t call this an “Aero Wheel,” just an elliptical steering wheel, which the brochure said was “shaped to fit your hands naturally and comfortably.”
The dual gauge cluster was a one-year-only offering for the 1960 Imperial, but the elliptical wheel returned for 1961 with a new hub design.
The V-shaped dashboard pod looked like a more lavish version of the 1959 Plymouth dash, making it seem like the designers were starting to run out of ideas. It carried over with minor changes into 1963.
Chrysler used its own version of the oval steering wheel starting in 1960, shaped to showcase the dramatic new AstraDome instrument panel.
Looking at these high-tech command stations today, it’s tempting to say, “Oh, that looks like Star Trek.” Except Star Trek didn’t come along until 1966 — and the original show never had the budget for interiors like this.
The transparent steering wheel, with its black grips and spokes and red-white-and-blue “300” hub badge, would be impressive in its own right, but it’s overshadowed by the dramatic sight of the AstraDome behind it.
Gosh, that AstraDome toy deserves its own post. Here’s another one in a 1961 New Yorker, also with a transparent wheel. Chrysler called this interior color Cerise.
The color-matched steering wheel was also available with a non-transparent solid-color rim, as seen in this 1961 Newport. This one’s interior is also Cerise, but the lighting makes it look a bit different.
By 1963, the AstraDome was gone (sadly), but Chrysler now had a elliptical steering wheel, complete with elliptical horn ring. This is a 1963 Chrysler 300 (non-Letter) Pace-Setter, released to commemorate the Chrysler that paced the Indianapolis 500 that year.
This 1963 Chrysler 300J has the same wheel, but with a half horn ring rather than the full elliptical one. Like a lot of things Chrysler from that era, it’s hard to tell the reasoning behind these decisions. It seems like certain features and ideas were just tossed around between the divisions.
1964 would bid farewell to these Chrysler wheels, seen here in a neat shade of ivory in a New Yorker Town & Country wagon.
After about 1964, Detroit’s interior designers seemed to sober up fast. Not that there weren’t nice ones later on, but a lot of them were dull, and some just plain depressing. So, better close here, while we’re ahead.
I hope you enjoyed looking at these steering wheels as much as I did putting them together. Now, how much nostalgia is there for the pushbutton plastic steering wheels of the 1980s?
A special thanks to Aaron Severson for additional help getting this post together.
Absolutely astounding. What were they smoking in Detroit in the 1950s? This is probably my favorite Curbside Classic post ever.
I wonder why Cadillac always had such rather bland dashboard designs, certainly when compared to these examples. Maybe wild(er) designs were considered to be a bit too nouveau riche by the Cadillac clientele?
My 59 Plymouth Fury had the steering wheel shown here, and it was one of my favorite parts of the car. The rim was thick, and not completely round in section, but came to a bit of a point on the side away from the driver, in a way that it really fit your fingers as they gripped the rim.
Pontiac was another that featured the clear/translucent plastic sections in their steering wheels, and those may have run as late as 1968.
Ford was an interesting case because their wheels always seemed to be made from hard rubber and painted, just like from the 1930’s. Older Fords up through 1964 were always notable for having the black rubber showing under the worn-through paint.
Finally, I had never noticed how the 1957 Dodge dash looked like a better executed version of the 1956-58 Studebaker non-Hawk dashes.
A wonderful post! My favorites include:
The Nash “Uniscope” instrument pod attached to the steering column, which would have been perfect for a tiltable column, if the Nash had one.
You could write an entire post about the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham. As you say, “there was a lot going on on the dashboard behind the wheel.” Is that a Faberge egg I see?
The Chrysler AstraDome is simply stunning, although points must be deducted for the color “cerise” and for steering wheels that are not perfect circles.
Several things about this article intrigued me. First is the ’66 Toronado tilt and telescoping steering wheel. My father had a ’66 Delta 88 with this wheel which I thought looked very futuristic. Second was Chrysler placing the rear view mirror on the dashboard instead of hanging it from the roof. My father had a ’57 Plymouth Suburban station wagon with the rear view mirror on the dash and it would make my brother motion sick if he rode in the front passenger seat because of seeing the landscape passing by at a weird angle in the mirror. How long did Chrysler do this? Third is the ’61 Fury with the translucent speedometer that you could see the back of by looking through the windshield. I remember one episode of “Leave it to Beaver” where Wally’s date drove him to a dance in a Fury with this speedometer.
Was Tenite similar to Lucite? I have a few rotary dial Bell System telephones made in the early ’60’s with what was called Lucite finger wheels.
Well written informative article.
Lucite DuPont tradename for acrylic ester polymers. Plexiglass was Röhm & Haas tradename. Tenite, cellulose esters. So, probably similar process, different feedstocks, petroleum vs wood.
Lucite is a polymethyl methacrylate, created from the reaction of methanol and methacrylic acid, similar to Plexiglas. As nikita says, Tenite is cellulose esters made from wood pulp. Each has different pros and cons for different applications. Tenite became popular for automotive stuff in the ’30s because it’s easy to mold, so it was an inexpensive way to make parts like knobs, switches, and buttons as well as steering wheel rims.
Wonderful post. Chrysler was the king, but Pontiac’s clear rim wheels were also pretty neat. As a kid, one of the first things I did was to replace the factory steering wheel on my ride with something more modern. Thankfully I still have the factory wheel from my 67 LeMans displayed on my shop wall.
Those Pontiacs were great. I remember being fascinated by them as a kid.
I know it was an inevitability, but something that really bummed me out was the transition from an old-school, shiny plastic, Bakelite steering wheel on the 1983 Lebaron, to the more modern, softer-touch, A-frame steering wheel the very next year (1984).
I guess the now ubiquitous soft-rim steering wheel had a better feel (and were probably cheaper, too) but I loved those shiny plastic rim wheels and something was lost when they went awa and I wonder what vehicle had the final application.
Those yoke-style wheels were a rehash of a couple earlier versions. The ’41 Dodge had a yoke with short horn rings, like the ’66 Toronado here. And the ’38 Olds, the most futuristic dashboard ever, had a unique X-shaped wheel with inner grips.
The interesting thing is when Tesla decided to bring the yoke back as standard equipment on higher end models, it was universally derided to the point that they quickly returned to the traditional steering wheel and made the yoke an extra cost option.
I suspect that, today, they get few takers for the yoke.
“I suspect that, today, they get few takers for the yoke.”
Except for airplane pilots that may really like the feel… 😉
Here’s a 1938 Oldsmobile: https://rmsothebys.com/auctions/af20/lots/r0481-1938-oldsmobile-eight/
STAR WARS fans will look at the wheel and immediately think, “Oh, it looks like a TIE Fighter.”
The AstraDome definitely had an unearthly, sci-fi feel to it, but I’d call it more akin to the ground-breaking fifties’ movie ‘Forbidden Planet’ (which introduced Robbie the Robot) than ‘Star Trek’.
And it got even wilder at night with Electroluminescent lighting (which would reappear later on the cool 1966-67 Dodge Charger). Early sixties Chrysler styling was really out there and, for better or worse, their instrument clusters matched.
Here, if it attaches, is the wheel of a 1941 Nash Ambassador 6 that I photographed at the Keeneland Concours this past summer. It appears to have a deluxe clear plastic horn ring (I guess that’s what it is?) It might be one of the earliest uses of clear Lucite on a steering wheel.
That is a magnificent!
Very Buck Rogers, as they used to say.
Now these are dashes! Colorful, interesting, and eye popping. What a contrast to that Caprice wagon which is borrrrrring…
I do happen to have a 67 Parklane, maybe 66, steering wheel sitting around for no good reason and it is like the 61 Chrysler with transparent sections.
The 61 Chrysler 300G is spectacular. I would love to tool down the road nestled behind that dash and in that seat.
The “soft touch” wheel on my Honda is terrible. In a few years the plastic skin over foam has deteriorated and flaking, and sticky feeling.
There definitely seems to be an issue with the longevity of soft-touch plastics deteriorating over time. As stated, more often than not, they began taking on a very sticky, gooey feeling with a residue that actually comes off to the touch.
What a series of designs. I am a bit too young to have had much exposure to 50s cars but I love seeing their over the top designs featured here.
I like the two-tone turquoise and white wheel on the 1957 Dodge Custom Royal Lancer.
As you pointed out, it’s probably because the ribbed metal horn button looks like an old fridge handle.
Isn’t it amazing that after all of that, cars from the time where humans actually finally do have vehicles that can take them to space (i.e., now) only provide drivers with a junky flat screen to look at.
Imagination turned out to be so much better than reality.
Actual fast aircraft and spacecraft use ended up showing the necessity of multifunction displays for complex systems: There were eventually so many instruments and sensor readouts that presenting them through a series of individual gauges and panels became a real problem. There are limits to how many gauges a pilot or system operator can reasonably keep track of, so MFDs became increasingly important because they could present different combinations of relevant data without overwhelming the crew with extraneous information. It was also more flexible because the MFDs could be reprogrammed to integrate new systems, whereas older cockpit designs would end up having to shoehorn a new panel into control layouts already littered with steam gauges and toggle switches. Light aircraft still usually have old-fashioned gauges and switches, but big commercial jets or military aircraft have been mostly MFD for years now.
The difference in this case is that, with the arguable and complicated exception of navigation systems, car controls have not gotten that much more numerous or complicated, and burying secondary controls like radio tuners or seat heaters in onscreen menus mainly increases rather than decreases the driver’s workload. It’s mostly a gimmick, in the same way the controls on these dashboards were gimmicks. I kept hoping that it was a fad that would run its course, but the idea of treating cars and trucks as rolling smartphones seems to be too ingrained at this point, and the range limitations of battery EVs means that their controls are probably inevitably going to be “trip computer and battery condition displays plus like a speedometer and odometer.”