Time, as you may have heard, is a flat circle. This is generally accepted to mean that we’re doomed to repeat ourselves, to exhume the mistakes (and, hopefully, triumphs) of the past and bring them into being once again. I suspect we may be witnessing one of these cycles starting again, as signs are emerging, and it’s a cycle that merits a warning: we may be entering an era of non-round steering wheels.
Yes, the non-round wheel. It’s an enticing siren that has called auto designers to their doom before, going as far back as 1923 at least, with the Voisin C6 “Laboratorie,” an experimental racing car that employed all sorts of experimental ideas, including a water pump driven by a little propeller!
And, of course, a non-round steering wheel:
Now, on a racing car, these kinds of wheels can make more sense, along with yoke-type wheels, because in racing contexts, one’s hands tend to stay at the same spots on the wheel, and the amount of wheel travel is quite different than in day-to-day driving. So maybe we can excuse the Voisin here, but I’m not so sure, say, the 1960 Plymouth Fury should get such a pass:
That was a car definitely not intended for the track, and yet there’s a steering wheel, tentatively edging away from roundness, into the abyss of squirclehood, a terrifying descent into a wheel with corners.
Across the pond, Austin found themselves drawn to the dark allure of the nonsquare wheel with their “quartic” steering wheel in the Allegro, from the 1970s:
The big thing to remember for all of these attempts at uncircularity is that they only lasted a short period of time because, fundamentally, these non-wheel wheels kinda suck.
Round wheels feel better, and they allow the wonderful sensation of a wheel gliding through your fingers as it re-centers after a turn, which everyone loves, and whoever says they don’t is lying. Round wheels work instinctively and naturally, and as soon as you start introducing corners into the equation, comfort and usability start to go downhill.
And yet, here we are again, lessons forgotten, as we seem to be edging towards a new era of squaricalish wheels. I say this because our own publisher Matt, who is currently at the New York Auto Show, sent me this picture of the new Subaru Trailseeker’s wheel:
That thing is sprouting corners. This isn’t good. And then, of course, that reminded me of the Tesla Cybertruck I just reviewed:
That wheel was genuinely uncomfortable and annoying to use. Which is why seeing that this foul disease is spreading is so alarming. Look at this Audi:
It’s a more subtle one, but it’s definitely getting squared-off there. The Lucid Gravity is even more afflicted:
The “corners” aren’t dramatic, but those proportions are definitely creeping toward the rectangular. The Corvette, too, is pretty damn un-round, with that upper glossy quarter shaped like a pair of bike handlebars: 
I think we’re seeing enough current, mainstream examples of un-round wheels that I can feel comfortable announcing a general state of UNROUND WHEEL WATCH. This is, of course, still a level below a full UNROUND WHEEL WARNING but we’re definitely on that path unless we take some action now.
For the love of a wheel spinning through your fingers, a wheel that doesn’t change proportion when you rotate it 90°, a wheel that’s actually shaped like what it’s named for, then I call upon everyone to reject these be-corner’d abominations and push back, push back and hold fast, long enough for us to get through this period of wheel ensquarement, and emerge back into the sweet embrace of roundness.
Until, of course, it happens again.
Oblate Blunders
We need to go back to the massive circular wheels of 1970’s Cadillac. Big steering wheel meant that you were a serious baller back in those days. You probably also wore a fuzzy hat and carried a cane too if you drove one of those bad boys when they were new.
Kramer!
https://youtu.be/fJcdIamctmA?si=rSQuNNlGLDGZlgis
Yeah, I love those big ol’ steering wheels
“You think I’ve never ridden in a Cadillac? I’ve ridden in a Cadillac hundreds of times…THOUSANDS!”
I don’t know why anything over than a centered circle is permitted. Anything else introduces a situation where that rim is in a different place in space depending on the angle of the wheel, which has got to be a safety detriment in a no-time-to-think situation.
^this
There is actually a legit reason for having a circle that is not exactly centered – Huibert did a piece here a while back:
https://www.theautopian.com/heres-why-your-steering-wheel-doesnt-actually-rotate-about-its-center/
Thanks, I had forgotten that. The trivia memory registers must be full and in need of a partial purge. (I am NOT giving up the mantis shrimp info though!)
I remember now, that had only partially made sense to me, because the thigh space is decreasing with rotation, and a person with heavy thighs might have trouble turning. Or a short person with the seat forward (for pedal reach) and high (for visibility).
At least a circle with a small offset has a very slow, gradual change in radius as presented to the hands.
Something like a r8” +0/-1 for the TDC point. And it varies in a smooth, sinusoidal fashion, once per full 360 deg. In contrast to, say a CT yoke that probably varies from r8.5 to r4”, twice per revolution and with four sharp transients.
Nothing should ever displace Mantis Shrimp trivia.
That’s ok. Just throw a spinner knob on there and you’re all set. Whee!
I’ll take stupid things that nobody asked for for $200 Alex.
You know Alex is dead, right? (I’m sure you do, and it was just a perhaps bad joke.)
I’m old enough to still watch Jeopardy! And find Ken Jennings far less condescending (especially to female contestants) than Alex was.
Ok, back to non-round steering wheels. I hate them.
Citroen had some interesting steering wheel engineering designs, but I thought they looked cool and AFAIK, they were all round.
Where would anyone comfortably rest their hands on that Lucid wheel? I’m getting carpal tunnel just looking at it.
All My Life’s A Squircle. Harry Chapin.
Will The Squircle Be Unbroken.
Squircle of life
One of my favorite bands is A Perfect Squircle.
I think the Corvette’s wheel is kinda, maybe, possibly, acceptable, since it is a high performance vehicle. But in daily use, I can see how it would be annoying.
I don’t see why this is news? The Solterra’s had that exact steering wheel for at least three years now…
No one has actually bought a Solterra and driven it yet.
It’s not news…it’s a plague warning
No one is saying this is news.
I was referencing this paragraph:
Which seemed to imply the wheel is new when it isn’t, it’s just carryover from the Solterra.
This is all a plot to make steering a car so uncomfortable that people opt for FSD mode instead. I SAY NAY! CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE BRODIE KNOBS OF WAR!!
Since the CT and Gravity wheels are more rectangular than square, shouldn’t re call them “rectles”? And drivers of such vehicles referred to as “rectle probes”?
With rectle dis function
That works since they also need to have their heads examined too…
We’ve been trapped in the fourth circle of hell since the damnatic duo arrived.
I demand my steering wheels be like my stomach, round and larger than it should be!
Are you entirely sure of what you’re complaining about?
And I think most drivers figured they were ahead if the car kept running and the steering wheel stayed attached long enoughto reach a corner.
Better than a yoke, I guess.
I don’t love the squircle, but I don’t hate it. Of the photographed ones, the only one that is unforgivable is the Cybertruck. The Lucid is a distant second to that. Everything else very much leans towards the circular end of squircle.
The cybertruck really is a big F U to ergonomics. Like we’ll give you this piece of shit steering wheel because we can. It’s so bad.
Have to respect the commitment to the bit. If it had a good steering wheel it would stick out like a sore thumb.
That is entirely valid
That will totally mess with the muscle memory. NBD since I will not own any of these new cars for many years.
Also gone are the days you could swap out a steering wheel with a puller a auto parts store replacement and 5 minutes. No more chrome welded chain steering wheels in our future.
And no more of the wooden Mardi steering wheels that were advertised alongside the sheepskin seat covers and translucent Saratoga Tops in the pages of Car and Driver et al, which is one reason why they don’t have the staffing levels and content they did back when Hatchette et al was a media gatekeeper and the expense accounts flowed like the wine the expense accounts were paying for.
Or buying them from JC Whitney sight unseen with only a tiny line drawing to go by.
You haven’t been able to swap out a steering wheel in 5 minutes in decades. At least since air bags became popular. Even on my ’65, it’s questionable if you could do it in 5 minutes because you’ve got to remove a few components for the horn button.
My 70 jeepster commando with the aged fragile plastic horn parts that had already broken away did not slow me down. I could also pull the gas tank and the radiator in 5 min each out of repeated practice.
I can pull the gas tank out of my car in 5 minutes.
Once.
I know there is some poor engineer at these places screaming at the top of his lungs “steering polygon”.
Or what George Costanza screams:
“We’re living in a SOCIETY!”
When we inevitably return to round steering wheels, would it be appropriate to say we have come full circle?
I think that would be perihelion, and maximum rhombus would be aphelion.
My Drivers’ Ed instructor used to coach us on “controlled slipping” to allow for smoother transitions between steering inputs and the natural, on-center position of the wheel. This was made possible by a good alignment and the natural, round shape of the wheels itself.
On the other hand, designers are now uncontrolledly slipping into the frayed ends of sanity (hear them calling me?)
I’ll quote myself from earlier because it still works: Jesus, take the rhombus.
Strangely I almost failed my license test because I let the wheel slip through my fingers coming out of a turn. That’s how I’d been taught, but my tester was extremely cranky about it. I had to learn REAL fast how to keep my hands stuck to the wheel at all times.
When I took Driver’s Ed we were taught that while allowing to slip back to center was how people really drove, we would be inst-failed on the test unless we did hand-over-hand at all times.
It’s similar for motorcycles – the traing courses and DMV insist you work the front brake with all the fingers of your right hand, whereas in actual riding, most riders just use their first two.
Is hand-over-hand still taught? Seems like it could lead to broken arms if the airbag went off during a turn.
No, they don’t teach hand-over-hand. You fail the license test if you hand-over-hand. Now they teach kids to “shuffle the wheel” by making smaller moves, alternating hands so that one is always holding the wheel.
But hand-over-hand can put your mitts in awkward positions in right-angle turns, making a sudden course corrections more difficult.
I’m assuming horn activation by stalk is coming back next? And “okay so you don’t like screens, here’s a thicket of circa 1995 GM tiny buttons.”
“a thicket of circa 1995 GM tiny buttons”
That would be lovely, yes.
My last gen before the screen Ford Focus has a glorious wall of buttons, made even more conspicuous by Ford’s moving the entertainment system display to a pod on top of the dash.
All that’s missing, from my pov, is “why can’t there be some toggles??”
A very well-rounded article. Torch nails it by circling back to those old models. Most writers don’t have the intellectual radius to pull this off, but for him it’s as easy as pi.
You mean “re-entering”
Fuck it, let’s skip the yokes and go straight to the joystick future we were promised by the concepts of the 80’s and 90’s. They’ll still be shit, but at least we can use them to help pay off the cars with our onlyfans accounts.
The footage of Clarkson driving the joystick-equipped Saab on old Top Gear is excellent. He looks legitimately uncomfortable.
Plus a joystick, if placed on the side, can offer unobstructed view of the dash so the driver can enjoy TikTok or OnlyFans on the large LCD that would certainly be installed there.
Gross. Even the mildly flat-bottomed steering wheel in my ’17 GTI bugged me.
Yet another nail in the coffin containing my desire to ever buy another new car, the stupid grows by the year. It was fun while it lasted.