Rally instruments over 50 years ago
10/17/2015
Anyone who thinks that modern regularity drivers exaggerate at historic rally events should take a look at the rally cars of the late 1950s. The Jaguar cockpit shown below was downright simple ...
... and Citroën also left it at that with a few additional clocks.
But it was the Swedes who really went for it, carrying a whole battery of clocks in their Volvo (top picture).
Automobil Revue statistically analyzed the watch collections at the 1959 Monte Carlo Rally and found 140 cars out of 168 that were equipped with a Halda Speedpilot. A total of 286 pocket watches, stopwatches and chronographs were counted. A Halda Speedpilot with two other special watches emerged as the standard equipment. These special watches included the popular aircraft chronograph (as seen above in the Jaguar), but also the popular Autavia automobile stopwatch.
It is interesting to note that some teams even measured the speed at the front and rear axles in order to average out deviations. The readability of the individual instruments was already seen as problematic at the time.
