Usual Suspects Garage A while back, we said that big screens in cars wasn’t the answer—many more tiny ones are. Clever minds in the aftermarket have started to explore that concept, building digital gauge clusters for vehicles that are much more refined, and more thoughtful, than a tablet stuck in a binnacle. One such inventor is Jean, owner of Usual Suspects garage in Naples, Florida that specializes in BMWs and Porsches. He started developing his own plug-and-play hardware and software for digital clusters in the E28 BMW 5 Series and E30 3 Series because he wanted it to exist, only to discover that plenty of other owners did, too. We first came across Jean’s project on his garage’s Instagram page, where he’s regularly uploading behind-the-scenes footage of his work. Jean doesn’t expect to have a final, shippable product ready until next year, but his first inkling to embark on this labor of love dates back to the start of the decade. After some false starts with suppliers, and initially struggling to find the proper displays to suit his vision, he returned to it three years ago and took on everything himself, including the programming—all the while running his existing business. “I didn’t know how to code beforehand,” Jean told me over the phone. “I started with one screen on a piece of cardboard, but I had the layout for the E30s. I bought another one, and then I realized it’s not going to fit in the E30 housing, so I moved it over to the E28, which is what I really started with in the beginning of everything. “Then I started thinking, ‘All right, how can I make this unique?’ I added my little shift light, trip reset button, and I kind of started having fun with the code on my spare time.” Jean said he “just kind of let [his] brain go crazy” with the possibilities, and was also able to return to developing an E30 version, once he found touchscreens that fit. Perhaps not surprisingly, sourcing displays was one of the biggest hurdles Jean told me he had to overcome in this journey, one that repeatedly derailed it in the early days. Circular screens weren’t as readily available back in 2020 as they are now, especially in the sizes he needed. And even once they became more common, fitting everything required to drive them was another bugbear. But finding displays that fit just right and can be packed behind a standard BMW instrument cluster of the era without too many extra parts is really important to Jean’s vision for the project, which is that everything has got to be not only plug-and-play, but also easy to install and remove, if a customer wants to move their digital cluster behind the dash of a different car down the line. A good look at Jean’s E30 setup. Usual Suspects Garage “I’m trying to take account for every single variable that I can come up with in terms of the differences in years, the differences in wiring, and like what’s needed and what’s not needed,” Jean said, adding that his main focus at the moment is UI refinement. “I don’t want it to be laggy because then it kind of takes away from a digital dash,” Jean said. “I was looking at a video of, I think it’s MoTeC unit, in a Gunther Werks Porsche. I noticed the needle was kind of laggy, and I was surprised that, you know, that’s what you accept at that price level for certain things, but obviously you don’t buy the car for that. When you have a car that extreme, you don’t buy the car for the cluster, but people are going to buy my cluster for the cluster, right? So I can’t have that.” Jean is targeting a price of $1,300 for a whole unit. It’ll include a control knob, “because no one’s really gonna want to reach behind a steering wheel and mess with a touchscreen,” as he says, as well as wireless connectivity to enable over-the-air updates, likely from a paired smartphone with a companion app. He’s open to phone projection as well, via Apple’s new CarPlay Ultra system that is made for circular screens, though it’s not currently in the project’s scope. Jean is considering a Pro version with built-in navigation, though. That’s where a digital replacement cluster could really shine—not just in re-creating the look of the original gauges, but being able to quickly pivot through various displays without leaving the original aesthetic compeltely behind. It’s a lot of ground to cover, especially since it’s simply Jean working on this with his cousin, all completely self-funded for now. He’s considered crowdfunding, but would go down that route only after he’s proven himself with the initial launch. “Realistically, I don’t want to lose anyone’s trust,” he said. There are plenty of people tuned into what he’s doing, though, as over 1,000 people have registered their interest in the BMW clusters. Some work has already been done for a Porsche version, and, down the line, he’s eyeing Mercedes, too. “For reference, my Facebook page was sitting at 1,000 followers, and within like two weeks, it was at 40,000,” he told me, off the back of a few snippets of the project that went viral in enthusiast communities. When Jean started all this, he was building the product he wished somebody else had. Now, he’s leading the way.
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