Wouldn't that be pretty instead of an idiot pointer ? And the dash chime activated by the idiot red light ? (Images borrowed from the net)

 

I'd be surprised if this wasn't a direct dose of BMW influence. This is the era when BMW did the same thing with their cars due to all the service calls because customers would freak out when the temps moved around. Remember who owned LR while the D2 was being developed.

 

Our 2012 X5 had nothing but the idiot light. Pretty aggravating when my wife was driving through a storm over the Continental Divide at night when (I learned later) the overflow tank gave up. She called me while driving and I'm trying to get her to tell me what the temp gauge says, she says I don't see one, I say find it. Well, she couldn't find it because it wasn't there. Couldn't believe it. Someone once told me that BMWs are driver's cars. Hmmm.

 

Tangentially on topic but since no one asked I'll offer my opinion on the once-mighty BMW. They WERE driver's cars no doubt. In the 80s their cars were recognized as among the best engineered in the world. They offered something unique in all aspects of the car ownership experience. Long term value, superior engineering, distinctive styling, a truly rewarding driving experience that wasn't just hyperbole, and something beyond being just driveway bling or "look what I have". To be fair they certainly had some of that last bit back then but the reasoning behind it was completely different. The cars were different, and they were better. In the 90s the marketing team was given control and things began to take a turn for the worse. The corporate goals shifted from build Better cars and became simply sell More cars, any Way they could.

By the 2000s BMW was adrift in a sea of car companies whose engineering capabilities were as good if not better, in part due to the proliferance of CAD leveling out the playing field. Cost cutting and shorting the manufacturing process by employing planned obsolescence become one way to remain profitable. Today most car companies, and JLR is no exception, produce brightly colored appliances whose competition is fierce and ubiquitous, and struggle to set themselves apart in a meaningful way with things like "the biggest screen in its class". The market is saturated with over-complicated, profit driven and soulless necessities of our daily lives; designed with internal priorities over customer application in mind. Did anyone really interested in driving ever ask for cars that maintained their own lane/speed, and then dutifully (and too often surreptitiously) reported it all back to the "cloud"? Every car commercial's purpose is to tell you what you need to have in your garage order to be current/relevant in the transportation arena. Disguised as innovation, the difference is that now most of it is a glut of features nobody asked for and no one actually needs, unless you don't like driving in the first place, developed for the sake of developing (and selling) features. Is a $1,000 headlight really doing the job 20X better than a $50 version? I doubt it, but what I am certain of is that the company fortunate enough to put two in your garage earns a lot more profit that way. The only things that set one vehicle apart from another these days are price and an overabundance of electronic gadgetry.

Brand allegiance is what car manufacturers value over anything else. Just look at BMW's once hallowed "M Division". It seems half the BMWs on the road now carry some sort of ///M insignia, and in many cases it means stuff like carbon fiber sill plates and colorful badging all over. Are some of them actually top performers like the vaulted M cars of the past? Sure, but so is every thing else in that market segment. When companies like Kia can offer a 4.5 second AWD coupe with twin turbos and Brembo brakes for $55k you have to get inventive to remain in the game. One way is to create exclusivity based on an emotionally driven desire to display a particular badge saying who you are, or more accurately, saying who you want every one else to think you are, which has nothing to do with the actual driving despite it being attached to a machine whose sole purpose is to do just that. Welcome to the future of automotive transportation and innovation, and as we place even more of our welfare in the hands of the car companies we won't need instrument clusters at all, never mind just the temp gauge.