I had a plastic boomerang as a kid, and much like the wild concept of packing gauges inside the rim of the steering wheel, it never came back either.
Sure, they were hard to see and prone to failure, but they were cool. Typically, I like asymmetrical touches on vehicles. Offset striping packages, hood tachs, driver-only mirrors, and my favourite, the AMC Pacer with the extra-long passenger-side door. One thing I don’t like, however, is laying out gauges. A weird line has to be walked, with visibility on one side and aesthetic balance on the other. Sure, I like some of the old British sports cars with gauges augered in wherever, or drag cars with them bolted to the pillars, cowl, top of the dash, etc., but the next guy might not like them for resale. On my C10, I raised the hard-to-see ones a touch and made sure they cooperated with the steering wheel that I chose to run. On my old Jimmy, when one quit, I spun a new one into the plastic dash with a hole saw wherever it fit. Who needs a rear-defroster switch when the wires aren’t hooked up anymore, right? The Maserati Boomerang was on a whole different level. I’ve read a lot about how fast it could potentially be, but who cares about speed when the cockpit is just plain weird?
The 1972 Maserati Boomerang has your typical early-exotic wedge shape, not unlike Lamborghini, Lotus, Pantera, Bricklin, Delorean, and the list goes on. It has lots of glass, weird alloy wheels, and a little over three-hundred horsepower pumping out of a 4.7 litre V8. Supposedly, it could hit a top speed of three-hundred kilometers-per-hour, but in reality, it was just a show car. The seats and tall console are typical of the exotic, as there’s only so much room, but the steering wheel and instrument cluster are a whole different story. The steering wheel is just a rim with some spokes that disappear back into a tube on the dash. Inside the wheel, where the spokes and horn button would normally be, is a mess of gauges, indicator lights, and switches. It’s an organized mess, but it still appears as a mess stacked in there. Aside from having to glance down, it’s really in the perfect location. Everything is right there, with nothing in the way. I would imagine the wiring and mechanics behind it to be a nightmare, but being a one-and-only concept car, maintenance and repair isn’t an issue. I’m not sure what the car is valued at today, but in 2015 it sold for 3.7 million U.S. The tachometer location? Smack dab in the middle of the steering wheel like a horn button., every bit as cool as on the hood, I’d say.
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