When I was 16 I knew I wanted to get an NA. I told my neighbor that I would have an NA with a fastback. I was inspired by people like Rough Empire. I had a vision of making a racing oriented car, but not in the traditional gutted and caged sense. I wanted to make a factory looking special edition car. Think if Mazda homologated the Mx5. Something that still looks factory built, but to the keen eye is clearly a dedicated serious track car. I took also took inspiration from Spec Miata. Essentially a Spec Miata was a close variant of the road car, however, most Spec Miata's don't look very pleasing. They tend to be more of a tool than a road car. Obviously I took inspiration from the very homologated road cars that left a mark on me.
A car that struck me in particular was the F40 LM. I based my dash on this car. I remember when I first got my NA, I drew multiple sketches of the dream dashboard that I could make. I knew I wanted my gauge cluster to have digital outputs but not modern looking ones. I want it to still have that green background and calculator font. I guess this is unknowingly keeping it period correct. There is something about this though, I love technical purpose built stuff. Yes, I could have made a dash with an iPad stuck in the middle. It could do far more.. It would cost way less. But frankly, it looks out of place in the car.
Enter the STACK dash.
There are also certainly more advanced dashes. They probably do more for the price... But again, they are too modern looking and I like older tech. There is a peace in figuring out things the hard way. This dash is just that for me. I like the challenge of learning all of this older tech. I'm eager to redo my dashboard to include this grail.
Comments