I like to think of myself as an observant person. I regard the world around me with interest, and I try not to be a person who wanders through all the wonders that life has to offer blindly, barely taking in the rich visual tapestry of the world. I delight in the very act of seeing, of noticing the small things in the world, the way a fire hydrant can look like a little gnome in a conical hat or how the pattern of bark on a tree can mimic the tread of a tire, or maybe vice versa. The point is, I like to look at things.
Especially car-related things. Which is why I was so shocked to notice something about one of the cars that I own that I somehow haven’t noticed for six years of ownership.
Let’s see if you can spot it. Here’s the instrument cluster:
Now, let me just tell you something weird it’s not, which is the fact that the check engine light isn’t on, which it usually is. In fact, the only light on is the bulb replacement warning light, for one of the side marker lamps which I haven’t gotten around to replacing yet.
Honestly, I’m amazed there’s no check engine light; incredibly, the Tiguan is running great right now. I replaced all the coil packs and spark plugs recently, then had one of the front CV joints/driveshafts replaced, so it’s not like it hasn’t been demanding, but since then it’s been running like a top.
Now I need to find an entire redwood tree to knock on, if you’ll give me a moment.
Let’s get back to the speedometer here, though. Can you see what’s weird about it?
I suspect some of you have noticed by now. If you haven’t, here’s a hint:
Okay, that’s more than a hint, but still. There’s no 90 on the speedo! Why? They left out just one number in the series? It goes by 10s, except for 90?
That’s not exactly true, though; if we count the hash marks, it goes by fives; the smaller hash marks are the 5s, and the bolder ones are the 10s. After 80 it seems to switch to 10s, at the expense of showing our pal 90.
So, the question here is why; what’s the point of doing this? Well, from what I can gather, it’s a pretty sensible reason: the speeds from 0 to 80 are more used far more than 80 to 160, so why not skew the scale in favor of that?
I’ve complained about some cars before that have speedos that go up to absurd numbers at the expense of the speeds people actually drive at 90% of the time, where the span of the needle from 0 to 60 only lets the needle move an inch or a half or so. That’s dumb. And, sure, changing the scale of the needle isn’t a bad way to avoid that trap. Well, until I realized something about this generation of Tiguan: it’s electronically limited to 133 mph.
In fact, some variants of the 2.0-liter Tiguan only will hit 128 mph, which is, I should note, plenty. So if keeping the speedo scale reasonable and usable for day-to-day driving was VW’s goal here, then why the hell does the speedo go up to 160, 30 mph more than the car can actually hit?
VW just made their own problem by making a 160 mile speedometer, and then tried to fix it with the weird solution of getting rid of 90 and changing the scale? It’s all such ridiculous thinking. Does any Tiguan owner think they’re going to hit 160 mph? Is that really a fantasy VW found worth supporting?
I really can’t think of another car that just drops a number and changes scale mid-speedometer, but just out of curiosity I checked most the other cars in my fleet:
Going clockwise, we have my ’73 VW Beetle, my ’90 Nissan Pao, my ’83 Citroën 2CV, and my ’89 Ford F-150. The Pao and 2CV are both in kilometers, the Beetle and F-150 in miles. The Beetle, Pao, and 2CV all have speedos with optimistic top speeds that eclipse what the car is actually capable of: the Beetle goes to 90 (real top speed: 81), the Pao goes to 160 kph/100 mph (real top speed: 140 kph/87 mph), and the 2CV’s optimism caps at 120 kph/75 mph, when the real top speed is about 115 kph/71.5 mph.
Only the F-150 is truly modest, with an 85 mph speedo that undersell’s the truck’s actual top speed of somewhere around 100 to 105 mph. Interestingly, the F-150 is also the only vehicle I have that has both MPH and KPH on the speedo dial.
Point is, though, none of these eliminate numbers. These are all also old-school mechanical speedometers, not electronic ones like the Tiguan, so they likely don’t even have the option of changing scale mid-way through the dial.
It’s just weird! And, knowing what I know about the Tiguan’s actual top speed, kind of stupid. They could have just had a normal speedo that went to 130 and had a decent spread for the normal day-to-day speeds, at least as good as the speedo actually in the Tig is now. But instead they had to make it go to a speed 30 mph faster than the car could actually hit, and then remove a number and change the speedo scale?
Why, Volkswagen, why? Why are you making everything needlessly complicated? Maybe I’ll reach out to VW, because the more I think about this, the less sense it makes.
Still, I’m happy to not see that check engine light in there.
I am additionally bothered by the fuel symbol next to your range. It is on the left of the range number. The fuel level gauge and the now standardized arrow points to your fill being on the right. Why not put make the symbol match the fill?
It’s probably to denote “fuel range”. On newer VW products you can click over to shower your “range to next breakdown”, which is a handy planning feature and doesn’t need any more digits than the fuel range.
Knew right away. Had a 2010 VW Jetta wagon with this change in speedometer scale after 80mph.
It’s brilliant. So many cars have the stupid 160mph speedometer despite 1) being physically unable to hit that speed and 2) being legally unable to get within 55% of that speed in the US. But the usable range of 0-80mpg is smushed into a narrow 90-degree arc to accommodate the Fiction Zone.
This VW design gives a full 180-degree needle sweep in the usable range and you can still pretend it’s capable of 160mph on the Autobahn you’ll never drive.
The ambiguity about whether that hash mark is 85 or 90 is a small price to pay.
That’s just daylight savings speed
Appears to be a German, or at least a VW thing…my 2016 Audi A3 does the same thing. Can’t remember if the scale changes at 80 or 100.
Are you sure the the dash half way between 80 and 100 isn’t’t 90?
Scale jump at 2 oclock? Commenting my answer before reading in full…..
Follow up: Nailed it, but anyone else’s head hurt the way torch is saying “skips 90” and “scale changes”? Why fixate on 90? It also “skips” 110, 130, and 150 by that logic. But the scale change is the real answer and Torch is smart, so why conflate the effects of one reason with the reason itself? It changes scale. Done. Go drink more coffee, Torch.
Exactly. The first part of the gauge is 5 mph per small hash, and past 80 it is 10 mph per small hash from there on.
If they had continued like the first part of the scale, it would only have room to go up to 120.
However, if they continued the 5 per ‘high resolution’ markings up to 100 instead of transitioning at 80, and then transitioned to ‘low resolution’ 10 per, it would still fit up to 140, which would have been sufficient. Except on a steep straight downhill grade wide open with the wind behind you maybe?
160 does have a better ring to it than 140, though.
I thought it would either be a fun article about the fuel filler triangle to help you find the correct side, or perhaps the odd thing was that an early Tiguan made it to 174,000 miles?
The thing that worries me is…if the bulb replacement warning light burns out, how would you know?
The companion phone app that doesn’t work ever since 3G service ended, and you didn’t want to pay for anyway.
I had an airbag light on in my old Kia for a couple years before it burned out….or so I thought. A few years after the light “burned out” I noticed that it illuminated when I turned the key to ACC and then turned off when I started the car. So obviously the airbag fixed itself!!! (Not that I wanted to test if that was the case)
That it’s a VW product and dash lights still work?
You can’t go 90. You have to skip it. Bad things happen, like breaking Warp 10.
The 90 is unneeded because once you hit 88mph, you’re gonna see some serious shit.
Assuming this is an attempt to give someone a 160mph Speedo without making it so the needle never goes past twelve o’clock if they’re obeying the speed limit. One of these days our kids are going to look at an analogue speedometer and wonder why we need the whole needle thing. I’m going to enjoy that.
I remember being taught how to read a clock in early grade school (I think, maybe kindergarten). I doubt they still do. If so, It must be strange being a young person who sees these clock things and can’t interpret them properly.
At antique store recently I saw a radio with just a tuning dial that was labelled as a “clock.”
oh god please no
NO, If I encounter someone who can not read an analog clock, they are getting smacked in the back of the head.
Had a W212 E63 AMG wagon and it does the same thing. Except the increments don’t change from 10 to 20 until 120 mph.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/174638687554
All of these are still better the the 85 MPH speedos from the 80,s. Mercedes used to start blowing the horn and flashing lights at, I believe, 85 and were limited to 95 electronically.
Makes sense. The only reason anyone should have been driving that fast on US roads is a genuine, life threatening emergency. In that situation flashing lights and blowing the horn is exactly what one should be doing.
This is so common. Calling VW out for having a 160mph speedo like it’s a German thing is harsh. If anything, a German car having a high speedo should be forgiven because Autobahn. The Kia K5 has a 160mph speedo and it goes in 20mph increments for the entire scale, which is even worse. I literally just googled the first boring car that popped to mind, went to images and found it. It’s not like I knew this because I’m an encyclopedia of speedometer information, I just figured every normie 4cyl out there has at least a 150mph speedo at this point. I don’t have a good pic that shows the whole speedometer on my 14 Rav 4, but best I can tell that one appears to go to 140 in 20mph increments.
Seriously, if anything, ignoring the hilariously high top speed of the speedo, this is the smartest way to display that information. You have a more detailed scale for day to day speeds, and a coarser scale for absurd speeds. It’s an analog speedometer, you don’t have to study it or even know that the scale changes, which is evident by the fact that you and other commenters never noticed. You look at the closest number to the needle, that’s your speed. It’s not complicated.
BUT THE 90 ERASURE!
Really, they didn’t skip 90. They just went from the 10 mph scale to the 20 mph scale starting at 80.
I wonder how the speedometer adjusts for “miles per hour per degree of angle” after a certain point? I mean, is it even accurate after 80?
Considering the speedometer is actually an electronic speedometer that indicates where the gauge should point, I suspect it’s simply programmed in a way that compensates and is likely accurate.
They should be. When I worked at Faria making Harley Davidson gauges we calibrated them all the way out to the end (120….LOL) at set points like 25, 65, etc they had to be within one or two mph of the calibration points.
And 110, and 130, and 150.
Oh come on now !!!
Have you never driven a Benz?
This is a non-proportional speedo, like most Germans and Swedes – more info at (almost) legal speeds, then drifting into nothingness as you become a criminal. Same as most Saabs and Volvos.
You notice this, but it doesn’t weird you out that you are both in Neutral and Drive at the same time ?!?
Shame
It’s not in neutral and drive at the same time! One of those is the compass. Clearly, it’s telling me I’m in Neutral and facing Deast.
Porth, Routh, Deast and Lest
The fact that you didn’t have to buy a Benz, Saab, or Volvo to get this non-proportional speedo is notable. Can’t recal a non-luxury priced brand where you could. Also notable is that VW stopped doing this around 2012 or so, even in the GTI
What I really “enjoy” are the people who claim – nay, insist – that their base model economy vehicle can go 180mph because that’s how far the speedometer reads.
When we were kids we’d peak inside parked cars and check what their top speed was. The speedo’s max was the top speed.
It took us a while however to figure out that the rev counter was the speed in Reverse. It was a bit puzzling that some cars would do 6, and others – 60.
Yeah, like how they “slowed cars down” in the 70s. One year the top speed was 120, the next 85. I got made fun of because my parents owned a vehicle that was “slowed down” to 85 ( a GMC motorhome).
Is that gauge a shared part across multiple models? Would you find it in a GTI of the same year?
The GTI and R use those same instruments.
The MkVII GTI & R didn’t change the scale until 120mph, and the benefit of the changing scale was reduced because they made the highest speedometer marking even more absurd–180mph for the GTI and 200mph for the R.
Who says the Germans don’t have a sense of humor?
I had an ’87 GTI and an ’88 Scirocco that offered 140 and 160 mph respectively. That was even more absurd since the Scirocco was rev-limited to the same 125 as the GTI.
That was my first thought as well, parts sharing for the cluster.
The lack of 90 isn’t the only weird thing happening after 80. It also loses, for lack of better description, visual proportionality in how it registers speeds on the dial. See how the 80 mph distance between 0-80 is much different than 80-160. Another thing, is this a completely analog cluster? If you take a road trip to Canada do you not have the assistance of a KPH scale in an inner ring like most cars with analog gauges I can think of?
This was what I noticed (Have not read article yet). It goes from measuring in 5 MPH increments to measuring in 10 MPH increments.
You can change the units in the center digital readout. The analog portion would stay in MPH, but the digital readout would change to KPH, as far as I’ve been able to find on the internet.
My ’72 Super has the updated speedometer. All black background, with smaller numbers. The numbers are all upright, unlike yours that kind of wrap around. But mine is even more optimistic. It goes up to 100, despite the fact that VW didn’t sell anything that could do 100 in 1972.
Jason, is that the original speedometer in your Beetle? It’s a year later than mine so I thought it would have the same style speedo, but yours looks like it’s from an earlier model.
It’s not! Mine had the more modern 100 mph speedo with the Futura font; I put in a ’68 speedo just because I liked the vintage look more. If you look, the fuel gauge is from the ’73 cluster, though.
It’s German. That’s the cultural default setting for engineering.
Also, now I need to go see if my Alltrack is the same. It looks like exactly the same custer so probably., I just can’t believe I never noticed before.
Well I guess it’s true, 7 really did 8 9! o.O
One, two, three, four, five, six, nine, or ten
I noticed the hash marks being slanted on a few numbers, but not most. Changing the value of each has mark is pretty weird, though.
There’s no 110, 130 or 150 either. Looks like the hash marks are in 5 mph increments until you get to 80 at which point they change to 10 mph increments.
The VW one looks like it goes 01, 02, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 08, 06.
And the F*rd one also eliminated 90 mph.
Looks like they decided they had to reorient 80 and 90 so we don’t read them upside down and think we’re suddenly doing 6 or 8 mph.
I know. It just looks funny when you look at it.
I’m guessing the Ford speedo is from the period when an 85 mph max and 55 mph bug were required. Or sometime afterwards. I remember Fords having that into the 90s.
That is straight up psychotic.