Modern dashboards are design and manufacturing marvels, combining video displays, infotainment features and HVAC controls into ergonomic, safety-conscious and easily recyclable packages. Even so, we remain partial to the aesthetics of vintage dashes, the best of which add so much to the overall style of the car in which they’re fitted. Minimalist, Art Deco, Jet Age, symmetric or asymmetric, all have their merits and all mark important periods of automotive development.

Here’s some of our favorite American dashes of the 1930’s-1960’s, snapped at shows, sourced from period brochures, or taken from previous BaT Auctions or feature cars, and neatly illustrating the evolving styles and needs of consumers over that three-decade span.

This 1930 Chrysler Model 77 Phaeton has a dashboard best described as minimalist, but Art Deco gauge surrounds add some stylish period flavor. 1930 also marked the opening year of one of Art Deco’s crowning achievements, the Chrysler Building in NYC. Chrysler was a prominent champion of the famously glamorous design school during the decade, releasing the once-controversial but now-revered Airflow just four years later.

This 1936 Ford takes a similar function-first approach, but is elegant in its simplicity with chrome-ringed gauges that have a beauty all their own. Many of these cars had a wood-effect painted dashboard, but we’ve always preferred them with simple body-color setups as seen here.

By the following decade, chrome was becoming a key element in American dashboard design, as clearly illustrated by this ’40 Plymouth. Check out the lovely green-tinted gauges.

Chrysler Corp continued to ladle chrome on many models, even as its higher-end Chrysler division began turning to Tenite plastic for items such as speaker grilles. This c. 1946-’48 DeSoto was a prewar carryover, but still represents a good example of the more-chrome approach.

1946-’48 Lincoln dashes (Continental shown) had considerable chrome and a pleasing symmetrical design.

Late 1940’s Buick dashes, like in this ’47 Roadmaster, were also quite symmetrical–a 40’s design that managed to be both functional and stylish.

Nash, a company that liked to do things differently, put their gauges in a Uniscope pod mounted on the steering column for its all-new 1949 models. The result was a clean, innovative dash design used through 1950.

Packard’s 1953 dashboards featured a so-called Tele-Glance instrument panel that put gauges and clock directly in front of the driver.

Ford’s Astra-Dial dashboard of 1954-1955, here in a ’55 Crown Victoria Skyliner, featured a speedometer backlit by daylight thanks to a housing with a translucent top–much like its acrylic roof panel. It may have looked cool, but wasn’t always easy to read, and at night brought unwelcome windshield reflections.

The dash of this 1954 Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe convertible is just as conservative as the company’s pre-Forward Look styling, but conveys a sense of understated luxury.

The 1955 Imperial featured large round dials and a dash-mounted selector lever for the PowerFlite automatic. Pushbuttons would replace the lever for ’56, and become a Chrysler hallmark.

The 1955 Packard dashboard, shown here in a Caribbean, offered plenty of 50’s flash that went well with Dick Teague’s attractive refresh of the 1951 body shell–sadly neither were enough to save the brand.

Pontiac’s 1957 dashboards, as in this Bonneville, featured an asymmetrical design that included dashboard outlets for factory A/C.

Ford’s 1958 dash, here in a Fairlane 500 Skyliner, was largely carried over from 1957 but reversed that year’s white-on-black gauge faces. Note the glovebox badge denoting the optional Interceptor Special 332ci FE V8.

1960-’62 Chryslers had one the all-time coolest dash designs, featuring an AstraDome instrument cluster that put the gauges in a three-dimensional setting, “bathed in a restful, glare-free glow by revolutionary Panelescent lighting,” according to brochures.

Meanwhile over at Dodge, 1960 buyers received this multi-tiered Space-Age wonder that with minor changes was also also used by DeSoto.

1958-’60 Thunderbirds (’60 shown) had a twin-cove design later referenced by the Mustang.

Studebaker’s 1963-’64 Avanti had polarizing looks on the outside, but its dash (1963 shown) can’t be faulted. Clean, driver-focused and heavily aircraft-influenced, it remains a standout. Let it be known we’re huge fans of these cars, inside and out.

Good as the Avanti’s dash is, we can’t help but notice its resemblance to the 1954 Kaiser Darrin’s and wonder if the Kaiser may have helped inspire Studebaker’s designers.

In 1962, Chevrolet was touting the Jet-Smooth ride of this Impala and other models while offering an asymmetrical dash carried over from 1961.

The 1963 Buick Riviera’s dash, with its round dials and well-integrated, functional console, was meant to evoke the feeling of an airplane cockpit and is one of our very favorites of any era, niche or country of origin.

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