A STORY AROUND EVERY TURN

Excerpted from a piece by Nicholas Foulkes

Nature, we are told, abhors a vacuum, and so it would appear does the dashboard. Back at the dawn of motoring, when the automobile was still known as the horseless carriage, the dashboard was a veritable prairie of timber, so spacious that it could almost bring on an attack of agoraphobia. “Dashboards were very much bigger—a wooden plank the width of the car,” said automotive antiques expert Tony Gosnell. “And the instrument cluster was very small, just a few brass instruments around the steering column.”

To the Edwardian driver, for whom Less is More minimalist chic had yet to be invented, this was a shortcoming that had to be addressed. The empty dashboard was an invitation to accessorize that early motorists accepted with relish. The naked dashboard needed to be clothed, and there was clothing aplenty. Dunhill, for instance, called such items “motorites” and became famous for its upside-down dashboard clock, which, so it is said, was inverted to protect the mechanism from the inclement British weather.

In search of some road-going bijouterie, the style-conscious Continental motorist turned to his jeweler for help. It has to be remembered that car ownership was a prerogative of the social elite, and given that a car represented a hefty investment, it would have been a shame to skimp on dashboard decoration. The result was a flowering of a unique art form that was part automotive and part ornamental: the dashboard plaque.

The zenith of their popularity was between the two world wars, after which the use of dashboard plaques declined with the advent of mass production and the crowding of the fascia with all manner of instruments and devices.

But it seems there is a growing revival of interest in the contemporary use of dash plaques, and some of the most sought-after plaques in modern motoring are those now made for entries in the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.

In the early years of the Concours, back in the 1950s, class winners received mention of their win on simple metal strips, like those placed on trophies, suitable for mounting on dash, door, or glove compartment. And in the 1960s, all entries received metal strips noting their participation. In 1970, the event, temporarily renamed the Gwenn Graham Concours to honor its early organizer, issued a commemorative grille badge. But then such Pebble Beach Concours plaques and badges were discontinued for decades.

It was Glenn Mounger, working with then-Co-Chairmen Lorin Tryon and Jules “J.” Heumann and Executive Director Sandra Button, who sought to bring the dash plaque back, in much more elegant form, in the early 1990s.

“Every year for years I would go to the Hershey swap meet with a group of guys and we would compare found treasures over dinner,” recalls Mounger, who went on to serve as Chairman of the Pebble Beach Concours. “One year, I showed off some dash plaques I had found, and Lorin said, ‘You know, I really wish we could find a source for great dash plaques for Pebble.’ He said he had tried a couple times, as recently as 1988, and had been disappointed. And I took that as a challenge.

“A while later, at a trade show, I noticed a vendor that made belt buckles depicting intricate hunting and fishing and outdoor scenes. So I introduced myself, bought one of the buckles, and showed it to Lorin. He got excited about it, and he agreed to let me take on the project.”

Glenn not only produced the 1994 dash plaque, a miniature reproduction of the Concours program cover for that year, he also paid for it. “I didn’t want the Concours to spend money on the plaques if they weren’t a success,” he says. “But they were well received. We made the decision to do a limited amount of them and to number them. And now people look forward to them and collect them.”

Although intended for the car, these dash plaques were often retained by individuals as mementoes when a car changed hands—and the Concours eventually recognized and gave in to that, sometimes offering dash plaques to judges and other key participants in addition to entrants. At the same time, wanting something to remain with that winning cars, the Concours reinstituted small car badges, much like the original 1950s and 1960s offerings.