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Readers of a certain vintage might remember when the Volkswagen Jetta had a signature icy-blue instrument cluster you could spot in after-dark traffic, or when Mazda stuck a big, race-inspired analog tach front and center of the cluster in the RX-8. Meanwhile, Lexus brought high-precision analog Optitron gauges to market, creating some beautiful displays along the way. If you happened upon a Dodge Viper and got a peek inside, you’d probably spot the 220-mph speedometer in short order.
We didn’t know it yet, but the art of creating a really good instrument cluster was about to be lost in an incoming wave of big-screen tech, and nighttime driving was about to change forever along the way.
When Saab Got It Right, They Got It Right
Remember Saab? Originally an offshoot of a Swedish aircraft corporation, the company marketed its automobiles strongly with connections to the world of aerospace – keep this in mind for later. Quirky and engineering-driven, the automaker helped bring turbocharging to the masses and, for a time, contributed to the popularity of headlamp wipers. Nearly all Saabs featured a signature floor-mounted ignition, originally conceived to reduce knee injuries during impacts, according to the lore.
Eventually, financial pressures led to the brand being absorbed by General Motors, with full ownership by 2000. The brand struggled to maintain its quirky, unique identity as its offerings increasingly rode on shared platforms with other GM brands. Struggles continued, and things got worse. The Saab automotive brand ultimately retired permanently in 2016.
Among Saab’s other innovations included its first turbocharged car, the 99 Turbo, from 1977. In 1999, the Saab 9-3 Viggen, named after a fighter jet, helped cement the brand’s reputation within the growing high-performance sedan space. By 2008, the 9-3 Turbo X arrived to celebrate 30 years of turbocharged Saab models, but the end was in sight: the brand’s final car, the 9-5 Aero, would arrive in 2010, just before Saab’s bankruptcy.
Into The Black: The Arrival Of Dark Panel
In the midst of Saab’s busy and tumultuous life, it introduced one of the smartest features ever put into a modern automobile for nighttime driving. However, the feature was hardly celebrated and quietly disappeared as the brand wound down. We’re talking about the Night Panel, a driver-selectable feature that could instantly soothe fatigued eyeballs by cutting virtually all forward lighting in the cabin.
When engaged, the Night Panel (also known as the Dark Panel) switched off the backlighting on the entire dashboard, except for the first two-thirds of the speedometer. The car’s cabin plunged into darkness. If required, warning lamps or messages would still illuminate, as would the fuel gauge if its level got too low.
The result from the driver’s seat wasn't just a cool trick to show your pals, but also a means of reducing sensory stimulation in your after-dark driving environment at the press of a button. If you’ve had a long day at the wheel that’s turning into a long night at the wheel, Night Panel was a superpower that could fend off eye fatigue for hours.
I fondly recall activating this function on a five-hour nighttime highway drive and feeling the tension, soreness, and stress leave my eyes, as if they had just exhaled a soothing sigh of relief.
That’s a major boost to safety, since eyes that are comfortable and free of fatigue perform better than ones that aren’t, giving seasoned drivers the advantage of sustained after-dark vision comfort that’s vital to safe nighttime driving. Along the same lines, limiting interior lighting on the vehicle’s driver-facing surfaces makes it easier for the driver to train their eyes on the road ahead without distraction, another vital aspect of nighttime safety.
If you enjoy nighttime driving, as many drivers do, there’s a third dimension to the Night Panel experience: it makes the experience more personal and memorable. For reasons that are hard to explain, some drivers find driving in the dark on an empty road offers an almost therapeutic kind of relaxation that’s hard to get anywhere else.
With the lights down, it’s just the operator, machine, road, and nearby scenery flying by. At night on an empty road, driving is a purer, more focused experience. Flick on the Night Panel, and your Saab’s interior virtually disappears in front of you: it’s just you, your machine, and the forward scenery.
This process is how a relatively simple feature, inspired by the world of jets and designed for an analog viewing experience, left such a big impact on those who had the chance to experience it from behind the wheel of the sensible Swedish sedans. In this way, to the very end, Saab honored its aviation roots with features like the legendary "Night Panel" button, and almost nobody noticed.
Things Could Have Gone So Differently
The Night Panel was launched on the 900 in 1993, then made its way to the 9-3 and 9-5 Sport Sedans in the mid-2000s. Along the way, to clear up any confusion, Saab also used the term Black Panel for the feature in the late 1990s. The tech lived on into Saab’s final cars, but was discontinued with them in the early 2010s.
General Motors owned Saab as the Night Panel system rolled out, and as the American automaker sought to adopt Saab technologies on its corporate platforms and use those platforms to underpin new Saab models. The Night Panel function was never carried over directly, even though it was resurrected many years later in an unusual place; more on that later. Around the time Saab was being bought and sold en route to an eventual withdrawal from the market, instrument clusters were poised to push toward an all-digital future.
Before long, digital screens were occupying more of the driver-facing surfaces of cars than ever, just as LED headlights were sweeping into the mainstream, dramatically improving forward illumination. The change came partially in response to new Insurance Institute for Highway Safety testing measures, which prompted many automakers to rapidly upgrade lighting systems to achieve top safety scores– which sell cars.
By the mid-2010s, more and more cars were coming with high-performance lighting systems and crash-avoidance tech formerly reserved for top-dollar flagships. The new screens and displays had "night mode" functions and minimized display themes, but nothing like Saab's Night Panel, which was specifically designed to reduce driver distraction.
That’s not so surprising, really. Remember, this was the same era when today’s driver became particularly data-hungry. Automakers were speeding solutions to market that would feed growing appetites for on-the-go data, connectivity, and communication – like the first mainstream infotainment systems, Bluetooth, increasingly popular head-up display options, and even ambient cabin lighting tied to drive modes. The nighttime drive was now more connected and data-rich than ever, leaving Night Panel fans longing for simpler times.
In this way, shifting safety efforts, technological advancements, and changing driver habits made the Night Panel system less trendy. We didn’t see GM apply the Night Panel system to any of its models as Saab faded into the background, and the Night Panel system was, more or less, lost to time.
There Was An Unlikely Detroit Revival
Night Panel was resurrected, in spirit, as a sort of Easter Egg within a pretty surprising car: the Chevrolet Corvette. A ‘night mode’ was available in the C7 Corvette right out of the gate in 2014, with the C8 Corvette implementing the same feature.
Where the Saab version had a dedicated button labeled “NIGHT PANEL” on the dashboard, the Corvettes didn’t.
Instead, rolling the illumination brightness dial counterclockwise to its limit did the same thing to the C7 and C8 dashboards as the Saab system did to the dashboards of the 9-3 and 9-5 a decade earlier. Virtually all dashboard lights turn off, the central infotainment screen goes black, and the instrument cluster minimizes its displays down to a small digital readout for speed and fuel. In just a second or two, this puts drivers in stealth mode, with the interior in near-total darkness.
It’s anyone’s guess how or why the original Night Panel system, designed for its analog cluster and screenless dashboard, was adapted to and integrated within the high-tech C7 and C8 Corvette. Still, nobody can prove that a GM engineer or programmer involved with development wasn’t also a Saab 9-3 owner who loved the Night Panel system and spent a month of lunch breaks writing the required code to bring it back to life in the Corvette. In any case, we’re glad it’s there.
What Will The Night Panel Experience Cost You Today?
As used Corvette C8 Stingrays become more affordable, more and more shoppers will once again be able to take in this historically rooted feature, with units on offer today for around $55,000, often with 50,000 miles or less on the odometer. You can find a similar selection of C7 models with similar mileage for slightly less, perhaps $50,000, though there are numerous nuances.
Tracking down a second-hand Saab 9-3 or 9-5 shouldn’t be too much trouble on a budget of $12,000 or less, but do your homework on repair and replacement part costs and availability, as well as the challenges of maintaining an older vehicle from a now-extinct brand.
Sources:SaabPlanet, Chevrolet
