From the Office of Wheels
Found this great gallery of old dashboards on Flickr. I'm always paying attention to this kind of stuff because A) I love industrial design and B) I never know when I might need to design a dashboard for a comic or concept art job. I love industrial design because I think it's pretty cool to see how 100 different designers decided to solve the same problem. Some of these are really spartan with just the essentials (LINK). While others have every gauge, knob, dial, and lever available at arms length (LINK).
Also find it fascinating where some car companies will spend money on interior design, and others look like the interior was an afterthought...something for the engineers to handle.
You can see many many more dashboards here: LINK
-Jake