Infotainment screens became mainstream in the last decade or so, for better or worse. Like so many technologies, though, GM was well ahead of the curve. It had Oldsmobile putting screens in cars all the way back in the 1980s. Amazingly, some of these ancient units live on to this day, thanks in part to the efforts of one dedicated Oldsmobile fan.
The Visual Information Center (VIC) was a brand-new feature for the 1989 Oldsmobile Toronado. The color touchscreen CRT was mounted in the center of the dash, with controls for the radio, HVAC system, and trip computer. It even had a compass, among other features! It could also control the integrated car phone, because those were a big deal in the decade before cell phones really took off. It wasn’t the first infotainment system from GM, but it followed shortly after the Graphic Control Center that the company threw on the Buick Riviera back in 1986.
These old displays are dripping in retro charm, and they’re a key part of what makes these cars special. Keeping these old electronics humming along is no mean feat, and there are precious few qualified to do it. When he could find nobody else to help, Jon Morlan decided that he would shoulder this sage duty himself.
Electronics Wizard
Jon’s journey with the VIC started because of a personal connection. “As an owner of a 1991 Oldsmobile Trofeo myself, I had my own VIC fail on me many years ago,” he says. “I was backing my car out of the garage and heard a short high-pitched squeal and the VIC had a bright line across the screen.” Researching the problem, he found out this was called a “vertical collapse,” and he set about finding someone to repair the unit.
A long search found him a willing helper at a TV repair shop. The gentleman thought he had the problem licked, but wasn’t able to test the repair without the car on hand. Picking up the unit, Jon dropped it back into his car and found it was operating perfectly well once more. Over the years, Jon funneled other Oldsmobile owners towards the same shop, until the man eventually retired some years later.
The owner of the repair shop eventually inspired him to take on the work himself. “He told me that ‘if you can become proficient with electronics repair you could do these yourself,'” Jon explains. “The key thing is that you have to be able to test your repairs.” This was impractical for the TV shop to handle, as the only way to test the VIC unit properly was to plug it into the car’s harness.
By this point, Jon knew that failing VICs were a fairly common problem among Toronado and Trofeo owners. He elected to teach himself the basics needed to repair these units and their tiny 6″ Sony Trinitron CRT displays. Resources specific to the VIC weren’t out there, so Jon looked further afield. “I read every Trinitron repair manual I could get my hands on, watched YouTube videos on TV and arcade game repair, visited TV museums local to me,” said Jon.
VIC units suffer from a number of common maladies now that they’re cresting their thirtieth birthdays. Loss of picture, the aforementioned vertical collapse, and a total loss of power are typical symptoms. Often, these units can be fixed, but Jon always seeks to manage expectations for prospective customers.
Sometimes, a few failing components can cause problems elsewhere, damaging unobtainable parts. “All of this stuff is considered obsolete,” says Jon. “I have been fortunate to find new old stock components from time to time, but in general parts are very hard to come by.”
He took on this work without support from the original manufacturers, or even basic documentation. He has no schematics or service manuals. He’s begged Sony for information on the VIC, given it uses a Trinitron-style display, but to no avail. In lieu of documentation, he’s learned to fix these units with his own analytical skills instead.
Thankfully, common passive supporting components like capacitors are readily available and easily replaced. The worst cases involve damage to the CRT tube itself, such as failing electron guns. In this case, a display transplant is the only cure, assuming one can be sourced from another unit.
A Good Rig
After successfully repairing a handful of VIC units for other owners, Jon realized he really did need a better testing setup. That’s what inspired him to create a benchtop unit that could sit in for the car side of things. With this setup, he’s able to plug in a VIC unit and test all its features, covering every button, every function, and the touch screen to boot. He’s also able to monitor the current draw of the unit, which can help diagnose if something’s wrong internally or if a component is leaning toward imminent failure.
Jon’s always on the hunt for spare parts to support his work, but he doesn’t sell parts or whole working units himself. For those eager to purchase a working VIC, he strongly recommends the services of his close friend, David North. Not to be confused with the David North who designed the first Toronado, this David North is the man behind TrofeoParts.com. Jon jokes that there’s a common saying around the Trofeo community these days. “If you need parts or want an entire car, call David,” he says. “If he doesn’t have it, he can get it, if he can’t get it, it doesn’t exist.”
He notes that his role comes down largely to economics. “Businesses that do nothing but automotive electronics don’t want to touch anything 30 years old,” he says.” “It’s not a money maker for a large business’s bottom line.” Like so many obscure cars, ongoing support comes down to dedicated community members. “It’s left to Trofeo nuts like myself and David to keep these cars alive for everyone,” he says.
The Digital Dash
The VIC has very basic graphics by today’s standards. However, it perfectly matched the style of the Oldsmobiles of the time, sitting neatly alongside the digital gauge clusters that were so hot in the late 1980s. To that end, Jon doesn’t just spend his time fixing up old VICs. He’s also learned how to repair and maintain the futuristic clusters, too. Much of his work involves repairing damaged traces on circuit boards, swapping out old capacitors, and cleaning scratches off of the cover lenses.
Jon often recommends preventative maintenance to avoid cascade failures that can render a unit unrepairable. This is true for the VIC, as with just about any electronics from the 1980s. But it’s especially relevant to the digital gauge clusters manufactured by Yazaki. “Proactive restoration on these units and replacing those 30-year-old components can stop a cascade failure from occurring,” he says. “Once it happens, you will have a speedometer that is dead and cannot be repaired.”
These unique displays were only around for a few years, featured in the refreshed Toronado and Trofeo line. “Only 19 thousand of these [facelift] cars were actually made,” he says. “I would gather that only a third of them had the VIC option, but every single one had a speedometer.” To that end, Jon finds himself repairing a lot more digital dashes these days than VIC units, but it’s all in support of the same cause.
He also jokes that perhaps the Toronado took things a little too far forward for the brand’s existing customer base. “It was also so ahead of its time, many generational Oldsmobile buyers were turned off by all of the futuristic technology,” he jokes.
Obscurity
GM killed off the Toronado in 1992, probably after finally admitting they should have called it the Tornado all along. That saw the end of the VIC, though it had a final hurrah as the basis for the TravTek GPS system that was killed off in 1993.
There aren’t a whole lot of Toronados and Trofeos left on the road today. Even fewer have VIC systems in the dash. It’s perhaps the coolest feature of the model, though, and one that previewed the future direction of automotive interior design by over a decade. It’s neat to know that the VIC will live on for some time in fully functional condition, thanks to the efforts of people like Jon Morlan and David North.
“It’s a thrill for me each time I work on just a small part of the car,” says Jon. “Someday long after I’m gone, someone could pull out a VIC or cluster that I’ve restored and see my own signature on it.” It’s a legacy worth celebrating. Hats off to Jon, and all those like him that are keeping rare automotive relics alive.
Image credits: Jon Morlan, GM
Hell yeah, Jon!
Too bad about the lack of CRT parts and CRT reparability for certain issues. I see some discussion in the classic arcade video game community about replacing CRTs with LCDs:
https://www.aceamusements.us/how-to-convert-a-ms-pac-man-arcade-video-game-from-a-crt-to-an-lcd-monitor-.html
Surely there’s a solution to saving the rest of a VIC when there’s display failure?
https://singleboardbytes.com/1231/best-raspberry-pi-touch-screens.htm
It would be possible to develop a CRT to LCD adapter but that’s serious embedded development. Just needs the right person to try. Similar has been done with the Game Boy
Doing God’s work. I am also thankful to the guys who specialize in vintage motorcycle gauges. I recently had to get my BMW R100’s speedo and odometer fixed and I was very thankful there are still enthusiasts out there willing to do the work!
The vintage video gaming community has folks who do similar with old arcade machines. Same era electronics, same crt technology (obvs bigger).
So if you need this and these guys can’t help that’s a good place to look.
Obligatory callout, again, to just how good GM’s engineering department was when they were given the money and left alone to do their jobs the way they wanted to.
That’s a touchscreen-plus-physical-buttons interface that looks like it’s actually useful. Key functions are still on nice, big, easy-to-find buttons and the touchscreen pages are kept simple with easy-to find touch targets spread out on the screen. As if it were intended to be used by humans who didn’t want to take their eyes off the road for too long, if at all. Imagine that. It’s not much different from working a radio or casette/cd player in a car, and yet it can neatly handle most if not all infotainment functions. (Before “infotainment” was even a word.)
Can we send some modern infotainment UI designers over to see one of these things in action so they can learn a few things about a useable UI, please?
So much cleaner than many 2010s units, right? And buttons! Bless the buttons.
I’ve done a little electronics repair (like replacing a damaged USB port) over the years, but it’s a youknowwhat-show every time, so I have huge respect for people who do this kind of work.
There is a guy in the Subaru and Evo world who does this kind of reverse engineering to convert km to miles for swaps and such. He has a crazy setup to allow it to happen and can even match the mileage on the digital portion of the gauge to your vehicles mileage. Pretty damn cool.
huh, I did not know that.. The STI gauge with the center tach is a common mod, and one I had on the list for a long time
This guy is awesome and what a great story! I love to see someone try to get something fixed, finding nobody really does it, so learning to do it themselves. I wonder if it would be a good idea to try to convert it to a modern touchscreen, though that will probably have to be done at some point if they’re to be continued to be used (I have no idea how that would be translated or anything).
I feel like GM should add some of these digital display styles as options on the new cluster screens like Ford’s doing with the Mustangs.
Kudos to these guys for keeping the originals alive, underneath that dash panel reminds me of my old Colecos I may have accidentally dismantled one time, good memories.
Does he do Reattas? It’s fascinating that there’s a cottage industry for this given how few of these Toronado Trofeos seem to still exist. I have a 2011 9-5 and we have a similar small number of niche providers doing very specific fixes. I’ve had the car for three years and it’s been interesting seeing vendors come and go with their projects, as well as seeing the projects from a few years ago that are no longer available.
You might want to hit up my buddy Marck at East Coast Reatta Parts.
I would if I had a Reatta. Which I wish I did.
I love this article so much. That is all.
Thank you! If you’ve got similar tips and leads, please hit me up! Lewin@theautopian.com
I guess I don’t know anything about electronics, because I don’t know what the glazed donut does.
It releases smoke, like all electronics, that’s the only way I can fix them if there is a part with a hole burned in it, replace it
Don’t forget, that is the magic smoke.
If you let it out, the part stops working.
I’m surprised so many still exist, as they are hazardous to use while driving, same as more modern ones today.
Just completed a trip in my MkVII GTI. Used CarPlay w/ Waze. Reaching out to touch the “button” to report a vehicle or cop on the side of the road was frustrating because the jiggles transmitted from the road cause your extended arm/finger to bob up and down and it’s hard to hit the dumb button. Then to acknowledge a report, is another button push on the screen that is tricky to hit the right part of the button ????
Kudos to Jon for restoring these things, as well as restoring a bit of my faith in humanity this morning. What a great skill to develop.
I remember the first time I sat in one of those Trofeos, it was brought into the shop to repaint a fender that had been keyed at a sporting event. Up until then I was still planted pretty firmly in the “they don’t build them like they used to” and “cars can’t have cOmPOOters” camp.
Sitting in the Trofeo was an experience – the owner had obviously driven it a great deal yet kept it quite clean – I was amazed to see the odometer showing 195,000 miles. Those screens made everything feel like the future, yet here they were, functioning just fine in a car with more miles than I had ever seen or driven at that point.
It was one of those early moments when I started realizing the “elders” maybe didn’t always know what they were talking about.
I always wanted a Trofeo, with or without VIC, it’s awesome to see people helping keep them alive electronically. I have a 91 Riviera, there’s no CRT but it has the facelifted full instrument digital-analog gauges with a vehicle diagnostic mode, all of which I managed to keep functional when I swapped in a series 2 supercharged 3800. The E body is sort of it’s own thing as far as fwd GM cars from that era go, but I think that helps them still feel unique today.
It would be really cool to find a Toro with Navi and a car phone, and set the phone up to be a bluetooth unit that pairs with a modern phone, add bluetooth music playback to the radio and I’d be a happy camper.
I love reading stories of people like this, dedicated to learning new skills to keep some arcane technology alive despite no support from manufacturers.
My first car was an ’89 Trofeo, midnight blue with a matching interior, that thankfully did not have a CRT infotainment. That car was already far enough ahead of it’s time to be problematic. But now I’m far enough removed from the problems, to put the rose colored glasses of nostalgia on, and want another one.
This time it will have to be one that is NOT equipped with the problematic early ABS systems that when they failed, you lost most of your braking power, and even 20 years ago nobody could fix them.
I also don’t want one with the CRT, but it’s great to know there is somebody that can fix the ultra cool digital dash!
I wonder if the digital gauge clusters were the same as the ones in Cadillacs from that era. Those things were terrible pieces of junk.
Yeah, I had one go out on a 1996 Fleetwood at around the 11 year mark, was pretty expensive to have rebuilt, and there actually weren’t new ones available even by then
I just want to say how crisp and uncluttered all those digital displays looked. That design has aged quite well.
For sure. Looks like something out of Terminator 2.
Holy fuck it’s been 20+ years since I heard of the name “Trinitron.”
Memories of gawking at store displays, looking for that thin horizontal line across the screen immediately comes to mind.
Also lugging that “giant” 21″ Trinitron monitor in and out of the dorm rooms….
I had the granddaddy of them, the 1080i 34”. What. A. Picture.
Thinking about moving a 34″ Trinitron broke my back. Thank you very much.
I think it was about 175 lbs.
I am an advocate for all retro 80s car things, (and new car tech) and I really hope these pieces of 80s and 90s epicness can be preserved and kept working for years to come.
It’s a good story and a hopeful one. 50-ish years ago, when cars started gaining electronics (I’m going with the introduction of Bosch D-Jet) a lot of folks said “yeah, but who will repair them 30 years from now?” Now we know!
I had a 1992 (I think) Trofeo. Bought it off my dad and drove it through college in the early 2000’s. That thing was a tank and would not die. It was rock solid. It was totaled when some dipshit sideswiped me and ran me off the road. But, it was all cosmetic so I bought it back form the insurance and continued to drive it for another year. If I could have afforded the body work, I would loved to have kept it.
It says something about the Sony Trinitron CRT that they are soldiering on almost 4 decades later. They always were considered to be “the best” CRTs of the day. I fear that we will have generations of cars from the late 90’s forward that will see the crusher because the electronics won’t be so repairable and as a result the cars will be “bricked”. Sad.
All we have to do to prevent that is use standardized components.
Ha ha, I’ll be here all week. Tip your waitresses.
I never knew these were Trinitron tubes, but that certainly explains why the picture looks so good.
I’m guessing these were a proprietary size made for GM? If so, yeah, there’s going to be some time in the future when they just can’t be fixed at all, once the supply of good used tubes is exhausted, the last CRT rebuilder in the country closed shop in 2010.
I think there might be one or two aerospace companies that still rebuild CRTs for cockpit displays, but they’re focused exclusively on military work and would not be interested in a private customer
Still, very impressive that these tubes have held up so well after 30+ years, considering they’re powered on all the time whenever the car is running
As a child of the 90s, these screens always look like a once-promised future that I would love to visit. It fits in perfectly with the aesthetic of Alien, Robocop, and Blade Runner. Move over steampunk, cassette futurism is where it’s at!
As for the car enthusiast side of me, I hope Jon Morlan has thoroughly documented his rediscoveries and work. It would be a shame if all this effort to re-learn what Sony refused to share was once again lost.
The common name for cassette futurism is Cyberpunk. And the music of Cyberpunk is Synthwave. And it is good.