Digital gauge clusters, as in the kind that are 100% digital, started making their way into production cars in the US around the early 1980s and lasted up until the mid-1990s.
For computer geek, a gauge cluster like this looks just plain cool. It’s not any more or less accurate than needle gauges, but you feel like you’re driving a very sophisticated machine when there’s a digital display in front of your steering wheel.
I previously owned a 1994 Chevrolet S-10 Blazer Sport which had the complete digital treatment, and yes it was one of the reasons I bought the truck in the first place. You see that digital cluster and the whole thing just looks sexy.
Just about all carmakers at one point had a model or two with full digital treatment. General Motors had many cars and trucks with them, from the lowly Cavalier to the premium Cadillac and everywhere in between. Datsun/Nissan had them, Dodge had them and several others.
Problems with digital clusters
While needle gauges can easily last the life of the car or truck in most instances, digital clusters can’t.
The #1 problem with a digital cluster is that it usually blinked out with no warning whatsoever once it decided to die on you. One day it worked and the next it didn’t. The car still started and you could drive it, but you had no idea how fast you were going or even how much fuel was in the tank.
In the early days, replacing the cluster was ridiculously expensive. However these days a cluster for one of those older cars can be bought off eBay in fully-restored condition, installed and ready-to-go for usually less than $300 depending on what car you have.
(Side note: If you have a car with digital cluster that’s out of commission, a temporary fix is to use a cheap 50-dollar Garmin GPS plugged into the cigarette lighter; it has an amazingly accurate speedometer, and you can use its trip odometer to guesstimate when it’s time to put gas in the car.)
Hybrid-digital is what most cars use now
The all-digital gauge cluster wasn’t the best of ideas, but the hybrid-digital you see in modern cars works very nicely.
In simplest form, the odometer/trip odometer and gear select indicator are digital while everything else is needle gauges.
In advanced form, fuel and tachometer are needle and the remainder of the cluster has assignable "pods" where you can choose what you want displayed (temperature, voltage, etc.)
Will there ever be a return of the all-digital gauge cluster?
We already have seen them to a small degree. In most gasoline and diesel-powered cars we still see needle gauges often, but in hybrid-electric and all-electric cars we’re seeing all-digital clusters. Not on all models, but a good number have them.
Fortunately for us, newer all-digital clusters don’t have the same blink-out-for-no-reason problems the ones from decades ago did; the construction of them is a lot better and should last for at least 10 to 15 years before needing replacement – if ever.
And if you’re wondering if needle gauges will still outlast digital, the answer is yes and they always will. Lights burn out. Needles don’t.
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The downside to a digital instrument is that it is more difficult to see the rate of change. This is why they make poor tachometers in sports cars. I agree that a digital meter provides a more definitive output. But as far as being accurate, this all depends on the accuracy of sending unit and not the display itself.
I hope that at least for cars that tachometers never return to digital. The speedo is fine either way for me. I have a car with both, a Mini Cooper. I find myself looking at digital readout behind the wheel rather than the big pie plate analog readout in the center of the dash.