New Dash Lights for 2004

[Reynoma]

Looking at this posting on ebay, it looks like they changed the dash lighting for 2004? http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayI ... 2429828673

[NovaResource]

Yep:http://forums.genvibe.com/zerothread?id ... 359However, I will give you credit for searching. I did see searches for "2004" and "lights". You should have searched on "gauges".

[NovaResource]

2003 US GT:2003 Canadian GT:2004 US base:

[baltimore17]

Does this mean that Pontiac finally figured out that customers couldn't read the all-red gauges while wearing dark sunglasses?

[joatmon]

Whoa, novapoints! I asked a pontiac dealer about upgrading to the new 04 cluster, and they had no idea what I was talking about. I almost had to explain to them what a Vibe was they were so out of it. They said it couldn't be done, but I don't believe them. I would have believed them if they said I couldn;t afford it, but they didn;t give me a price since it was "impossible"

[NovaResource]

quote:see, baby steps..Thank you Dr. Marvin.(Click Here if you don't get that joke.)

[drunkenmaxx]

roses are red violets are blue, i'm a schizofranic and so am i

[drunkenmaxx]

i am so drunk i cannot spell...it don't matter to me...atwork, go to hell!

[Reynoma]

Thanks Nova. I did a search for "dashboard lights", "dashboard" and "lights", but didn't come up with anything. I should have done "gagues" or "dash"

[NovaResource]

No, thank YOU. At least you tried to search. That's more than i can say for some people. Good job.

[joatmon]

That ebay auction is actually aggie_vibe's, announced at http://forums.genvibe.com/zerothread?id=5545Somebody here needs those, and should buy them!

[Reynoma]

I didn't get the reference at first, until I clicked and saw what movie it was from. THEN I got it.BTW, very funny AtWork!

[drunkenmaxx]

i got that poem from that movie, he tells it to the hospital staff when leo commits him

[Sputnik]

I'm just wondering why he included a photo of his guages at all in the item? He's selling his wheels.

[ragingfish]

quote:I'm just wondering why he included a photo of his guages at all in the item? He's selling his wheels.To show that there couldn't possibly be more than 100 miles on the wheels...and they are essentially brand new...

[Sputnik]

Ah I get it now.

[Stang2Vibe]

LOL!!! I haven't laughed so hard in a while! I loved the movie "What About Bob".But as for these dash lights for '04, the pic won't come up for me. What's the big change? Did they finally go to the white faced gauges like I've been begging for like in the Corolla S? Or did they just do something stupid like change the orange glow to blue like Ford or plain ol' boring white?

[joatmon]

Try the pics that jfcou21 posted in http://forums.genvibe.com/zerothread?id=4178&page=4I don't know how they look without the flash to light them up, but they still have the dark red lens so you still can't see them when the car is off.edit 10/17/2005shows you what I knew, the lens is not red anyway, here is a pic showing the difference between the 03 and 04 clusters, for US base

[Stang2Vibe]

Ahhh...nevermind. I looked at the pics in another thread. Not bad at all, I think. It's an improvment, but not quite what I hoped for. For a car that is supposed to be youth-oriented, I think they could have done a little better, though. At least for the GT models which are supposed to be sportier. I like the night look of the '04 gauges, but for the day, the black background should be like the silver of whiteface gauges. Then the colors reverse for night viewing like they had on the Nissan Maxima. Had whiteface gauges with black numbering during the day that turned to blackface with white numbering at night. That feature was really cool looking.

[Kari]

Hmm...I like the red better, personally. It's more Pontiac. The red guages have been a Pontiac thing for a long time. You know what would be cool on a Vibe though? A heads-up display.

[Stang2Vibe]

I used to like the reddish-orange display for the first few years. My mom's 1985 Pontiac 6000 had it and it looked cool through most of the '80's. They started it in 1983, I believe. By the mid-90's, most of the automotive world was begging them to change it, as it was a fad type of thing that was part of Pontiac's futuristic dash designs that were so distict in the 80's. I know I was already kind of sick of it when I owned my 94' Grand Prix. Now, somehow the Vibe has resurrected the orange glow and some people are considering it "cool" again, not realizing it has been used for so long. Oh, well, go figure. I still want my white-to-black face changing dash like the Maxima had. That was such a big thing when it came out in the early 90's. Though few other cars copied it, it was frequently talked about and admired.

[Kari]

I find the orange glow to still be very "futuristic" looking, even if they have been used for forever. I also like the way the turn signals sort of cast a glow across the whole speedometer and up the walls of the circle at night.A heads-up would still rock though.

[Stang2Vibe]

I really like the green turn-signal glow too. I have never seen anything like it on another car.The heads-up display concept (usually called HUD) was used a bit on some Pontiacs in the early 1990's. It, too, was a fad thing. I remember it being an option on top of the line Grand Prix's and Bonnevilles. It was popular as a concept, but I don't think many were sold. If I remember, the cost was pretty high and when they broke, they were very expensive to fix. They were really cool to play with at car shows, though. I remember that very well. I'd have to dig out and look though my old Pontiac literature to see if they list a cost for that option. It could be kind of annoying, too. You had to adjust the contrast for day and night. At night, you had to make it dimmer so it wasn't distracting, but in the day it had to be adjusted so you could see it. It was actually promoted as a safety feature because it allowed you to access info like your speed and some other features without taking your eyes off the road. You just had to adjust your eyes' focus to get the info and then adjust focus back to the road again. It was really cool.And IMHO, if a concept is 20 years old, it's not really futuristic anymore. I meant that the orange lighting went well with the overall scheme of the dash designs that Pontiac came out with at the time. When they dropped the design scheme in about 1991, the dash design became the same as the more mundane dashes that GM offered in their other cars. Just Pontiac carried on the orange lighting scheme, and I think that it looked a bit odd, even dated when the dash design scheme changed.

[ragingfish]

I remember reading in some promotional materials that Pontiac considered the red backlight a "characteristic" of Pontiacs, just as they consider twin-port grilles and "cat-eye" headlamps characteristic of them.

[Kari]

Yep...that's just Pontiac.And I've driven a 2000 Grand Prix that had a heads-up display. However I was too short to see it without having to crane my neck. Haha.

[NovaResource]

quote:And I've driven a 2000 Grand Prix that had a heads-up display. However I was too short to see it without having to crane my neck.The HUD has an adjustible height for drivers of different height.

[Kari]

Really? Well the guy who owned it was tall, so I guess that's why I had a problem.