Pontiac apparently had a lot of cutting-edge ideas in car design during the ’80s. Some interesting concepts came from the automaker, with some eventually making it into production in some form. The 1987 Pontiac Pursuit, however, was not one of those concepts. Looking more admire something from the set of “Robocop” or “Total Recall,” the bulbous and pod-admire shape of the Pursuit indicates that its designers were going for the cyborg world of the future look. Although Pontiac missed the mark of future prediction by having a gas-powered engine in the rear instead of batteries, at least they got everything wrong on the inside, also.
Not foreseeing the future of cheap and versatile screens in all of our cars, Pontiac designers foresaw a future with the most buttons possible rather than the fewest. The advanced engineering of the Pursuit includes an innovative drive-by-wire steering system utilizing four-wheel steering. It is very sensitive, and the steering input –- which is not a wheel, by the way –- only rotates 180 degrees left or right. This yoke is outfitted with an array of buttons, including two d-pads used for navigation of the car’s onboard computer system, one of the things the designers did get right about the future.
As far as steering wheels go, this one is pretty cool and, at the end of the day, appears to be useful and functional. It even foreshadowed some of the components we have today. The rest of the car is another story.
