Find Reviews by Make:
Yesterday on Name That Car Clock, we went to Germany for a subdued ’84 VW Golf timepiece. Today, we’re going… well, that’s for you to decide. Guess the year/make/model of this clock, than make the jump to see if you guessed correctly.
Yes, the obvious Ford part number on the face was a giveaway; I made it a bit more difficult by blacking out the Ford logo to the right of the part number. You can see that Ford was using better-quality but less-glitzy clocks in Lincolns by the late 1980s. What car did you think this clock came from?
28 Comments on “Name That Car Clock: Black Analog Quartz...”
Read all comments
One of the funny things about some of these clocks is how prominent they are. This one is right up there with the speedometer.
Up until the new fancy LCD screens, analog clocks were still found in the instrument panel of many Euro cars.
I knew it was a Ford clock, but they were definitely going for a Euro look with the typeface and simple black and white graphics. Reminds me alot of the Volvo 760’s clock (which we owned) and those found in Mercedes.
Time gauge.
At one point I had a VW Fox with a similar setup. It had two equally sized large round gauges, speedometer and giant clock. No tachometer, despite being a manual transmission car. I never understood the cost-cutting involved in that decision – perhaps they wanted people to pay extra for the tachometer option?
That’s usually when they insert a clock in place of the tachometer on a lower trim level… Simple as that – at least the Euros use it that way, as opposed to the Japanese who sometimes go to a different design altogether if they choose to pull the tach from cheaper variants. I don’t know which way comes out cheaper. :P
Interesting; my mom’s ’86 Town Car (base model – flat metal hubcaps – I don’t think they even called it “executive series” in those days) had much nicer instruments. Silver faces and roman numerals on the clock I believe.
I was guessing 88 Mark VII….so close. The Ford part number told me I was in that neighborhood, but I didn’t cheat and find out what the VF meant.
My Nark VII had a digital clock in the center stack
Yep – this is what I remember. Much more “d’elegance” than the flat black parts bin special.
http://lydia.la/CA/RetrieveEntry.pcgi?raulid=114
I have this clock in my 89 Town Car. Some months it holds the time perfect, others it loses about 5 minutes. Not terribly shabby for a car with almost 200,000 miles.
MM,
Unless I missed it on the super secret TTAC secure site, there was no Name That Clock yesterday… nor has there yet been a VW clock in the series (yet).
I must have missed it too. The last one I remember was the Cartier.
I was gonna say… that Cartier doesn’t look very Wolfsburg.
I looked in vain as well; even checked the calendar to make sure it was March 1st and not April 1st.
Wow that Lincoln’s instrument panel looks so European, I’d expect that in a Volvo or Peugeot or something. So weird seeing it attached to such a traditional and baroque kind of car.
It’s good to know that I haven’t forgot how to read Ford part numbers. My first guess was that it came from a Ford product.
The E8 coincides with the model year you posted.
An off the wall question, but the speedometer says “unleaded fuel only” – when did they stop having to print that?
If I was stuck in bumper to bumper traffic and I had to watch the second and minute hands sweep by as they stared me in the face in the heart of my instrument cluster where a tachometer belongs, my head would explode.
If you speak Ford numbering system, then you know:
E = 1980’s
8 = 1988
V = Vehicle Line
F = Office within Ford having design and release responsibility for a particular component.
So I was able to guess that it was a part that had at least been released in 1988, but the odd blue font didn’t speak lincoln to me, and I began to wonder if it had been from a Scorpio (except by that time, I think that vehicle may have had a digital clock.)
I didn’t think Lincoln, because, frankly, it didn’t look over-done enough.
It’s not over-done enough — this was the base cluster, designed (I’m guessing) largely to get you to upgrade to the whiz-bang all-digital dash. Those were pretty ubiquitous in Lincolns of that day.
The Grand Marquis, interestingly, had a much more baroque cluster.
I used to enjoy this website.
Isn’t it odd that Lincoln wasn’t using a digital clock of some kind by 1988? Cadillac went digital (mechanical rolling numbers) in 1974, and probably included the clock in the electronic radio display by 1988 depending on model.
Town Cars went to a digital clock on the dash from 1990-94, and it was integrated into the radio from 1995-2001. Interestingly enough, it went back to analog from 2002 until the end in 2011.
@chrisgreencar – look at Infiniti; their signature interior design element is the analog clock. I think they were trying to have some “old school elegance” in the interior.
@dtremit – the Signature Series did have the digital cluster, but Ford must have changed the instrument faces in ’87 or ’88 as this one looks much cheaper than my mom’s ’86. See link posted above.
Yeah, I know about Infiniti and its very elegant retro clocks, but this seems more old-school and even cheap, like the low-trim level use of clocks in place of tachs, as referenced above. Buick tried for a retro-clock in 1977 on their new downsized LeSabre/Electra/Riviera, with a very large round clock on the passenger dash, but they ended up phasing it out on that same panel in the early 80s with the advent of the digital radio/clock displays. The time wasn’t quite right yet in the early ’80s to pull off the retro analog clock. For Lincoln in the late ’80s, it wasn’t quite ready either IMO — at least not with this boring execution.
@sastexan — I saw the link; it’s clearly the same clock mechanically, but with a different design on the bezel, and minus the decorative cover for the hub. Probably changed with the Panther refresh in ’87.
My guess is that they were trying hard to upsell the digital cluster. I dug up an old brochure here: http://oldcarbrochures.org/index.php/NA/Lincoln/1988-Lincoln/1988-Lincoln-Town-Car-Brochure/1988-Lincoln-Town-Car-16 that shows the digital instrumentation as optional on all series. It was probably a decent money-maker.
What I’d like to know is how that clock compares to the 2012 Buick Verano. The link doesn’t seem to be working properly. There’s no mention of clocks or even the 1988 Town Car on the linked page.
I knew it was from a Ford because of their part number nomenclature… or what I remember of it. “E8” indicates the part is for a 1988 model year vehicle. At one time I could tell you what the rest meant, but that was many moons ago.