Check Out These 9 'Wildly Bizarre' Car Dashboard Designs

Futuristic concept designs for hovercraft cars and amphibian vehicles are nothing new to the Blaze audience, but we haven't yet focused on dashboard designs. Amazingly, those pulled together by the blog Dark Roasted Blend as the third in its series "Exploring Art and Architecture with Avi Abrams" are not all futuristic concept designs, but some are actual dashes dating back decades while others debuted more recently.

Abrams writes some of these dashes are works of art while others are so "wildly bizarre" they could actually pose as a distraction to drivers:

Today we are going to look at some amazing car dashboards - if, like me, you enjoy being surrounded by beautiful design wherever possible, then car dashboards (considering how much time we spend in our cars) certainly need to be comfortable and nice to look at. However, some dashboards transcend being simply "visually pleasant" and enter the rarified category of "objects of desire" usually reserved only for masterpieces of modern art.

Original "dashboards" were simply wooden barriers to protect the horse carriage driver from splashes (or "dashes") of dirt thrown up by the horse's hooves. Much has changed since...

Modern dashboards are significantly more than just arrangements of knobs and dials around a steering wheel. At their best, new concept dashboards feel more like clouds of futuristic worlds, enveloping the driver and lifting him into a stratosphere of high style and impeccable taste.

Here are nine we picked out from Abrams' list:

Check out the rest of Abrams' post with more dashboard images, also appearing in Yale University's Out of Order magazine, here.