It might be time to take stock of the automobile dashboard.

Earlier iterations connected the driver to the automobile in a much more base and fundamental way.

Take, for example, the dashboard of the 1904 Panhard et Levassor. A beautiful plane of wood served as the main visual and structural element of the dash, and mounted onto it were two gauges (air pressure and water temperature) — and the complete lubrication system for the engine. That latter consisted of two sight “oilers” with regulating taps, and a brass-capped oil reservoir, incorporating two plungers to pump oil to the crankshaft bearings. How’s that for cementing a symbiotic relationship?

Today’s dashboard is obviously focused on other matters, like making sure your butt is adequately heated or cooled, that there’s not too much treble on the rear speakers, and that the navigation system is able to furnish coherent voice directions to Taco Bell.

Nothing wrong with that, per se, but some of these dashboards are getting pretty noisy with the electronic stuff. Is this weakening our link with the essential mechanical-ness of the automobile, and weakening the essential automobile experience, you know, that thing we call driving?

Maybe this is a control issue. Dashboards used to embody that fact that drivers had to adjust things like ignition, magneto and choke. We’ve since abdicated control over to the computer chip and bought into the concept that cars should be pleasure domes on wheels. On some luxury cars you don’t even need to set the parking brake any more, it’s done automatically, as soon as you shift into park. And a Lexus LS will even parallel park by itself, without you touching the wheel.

Men need control. Consider this quote, from the comedian, Rita Rudner: “I’ve never known a man who wasn’t deeply attached on a very emotional level to his beloved vehicle. Whether it was a piece of junk or a masterpiece made no difference, they rode in their metal boxes and were in control of their lives. I think I know why so many men are afraid to make a commitment to women. It’s because we can’t be steered.”

Another aspect of past dashboards designs, that also causes one to lament their passing, is that there were so beautiful. The dashboards of the classic era (1920s and ’30s) are particularly arresting, rendered as they are in wood, brass, steel and glass, and often times in cool art deco treatments.

I’ve been wallowing in dashboard nostalgia via a gorgeous book by David Holland, which is simply called Dashboards. The book’s front and back jacket, which we’ve reproduced here, features the dashboard of a 1924/30 Bentley Special GB (photograph by John Goddard). Now that’s a dashboard. It took me several days to take it all in.

Holland chronicled the fascinating evolution of the dashboard. Its earliest incarnation was “the foremost part of a horse-drawn carriage,” designed to keep mud and horse-whatever from spattering up into the seating areas.

When an engine was fitted to a carriage (soon to be known as a horse-less carriage), the dashboard became, “a convenient structure on which to mount ancillaries — supports for the hood straps, and later, for the glass windscreen.” Everything that mattered to the driver eventually found its way onto this dashboard. But bear in mind, than this era of dashboard was placed quite low in the carriage, where the steering column came up through the floorboards.

When cars got faster, and drivers wanted to move out of the air stream, seats got lowered, cowls were erected around the driver, and the steering wheel got angled. This meant that instruments and controls were too far away, and had to be moved to a subsidiary dash panel closer to the driver. The original dashboard then became the “bulkhead,” which separated engine from people, and the subsidiary panel evolved to the dash panel we all know and love (or despise) today.

The book’s forward is by Gordon Murray, technical director of McLaren Cars. His summation of dashboard is as follows: “I find in the dashboard a deep technical beauty. During the evolution of the automobile an enormous variety of dashboards designs and levels of information have appeared — ranging from bland, plastic information-givers to examples that are truly works of art in their own right. But cars are about dynamics — driving — and driving is about the man and the machine. Here we find the dashboard’s rasion d’etre: it represents the only link between the machinery and the driver — in short, nothing less than a visual lifeline of information transfer.” Here, here.

So as designers push the envelope with all manner of infotainment and convenience features, here’s hoping that such a focus doesn’t become the tail that wags the dashboard dog.