> What makes me mad is that my speedometer goes up to 140mph! Why?! For your answer, take a look at this modern Ferrari speedo: https://www.straight.com/files

> What makes me mad is that my speedometer goes up to 140mph! Why?! For your answer, take a look at this modern Ferrari speedo: https://www.straight.com/files/v3/styles/gs_large/public/images/15/06/ferrarispeedometer_0.jpg https://www.straight.com/files/v3/styles/gs_large/public/ima... If the link doesn't work, the key thing is: the bottom right quadrant of the speedo is just blank. Top speed is indicated at three o'clock on the face of the speedo. You'll see a similar layout on some of their modern tachometers. This is by no means universal but it's more popular nowadays. The idea is that when you're travelling at high speed you've minimized the amount of time and effort involved in looking at the instruments. You can sort-of, kind-of rely on your peripheral vision, but that's harder to do as the needle moves further and further downward, away from the road and closer to the center of the steering wheel. With collectible sports cars with traditional instruments, you can often see examples of this that involve having rotated the speedo, or more likely just the tachometer, to a position where it's most easily readable when the redline is reached. That invovles getting the needle vertical and/or putting it where it's not obscured by the steering wheel, also an important factor. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/286011-why-do-people-tunr-their-gauges-sideways.html http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/2... It's also becoming common to see replacement faces for those old instruments available for sale, so they look a little less goofy when rotated ninety degrees (or whatever) counterclockwise. With a subcompact car that isn't super fast, these visibility purposes can be served but the owner can also sort of feel like their car is a lot faster than it actually is if the speed numbers keep increasing down and to the right. That part is stupid, but it actually does make the speedo more readable most of the time.