Just idly wondering: Is there some sort of regulation that means a CEL has to resemble an old school V8, with a crank-driven fan and a huge great pancake filter atop its carburettor?

You'd have thought the engineers at Porsche would have gone for something a bit more flat-six-ish if they could have.

 

hahahaha.... yea, I feel you. And I'm sure Porsche hates having to use the universal MIL (i.e. check engine) symbol that looks like an ol' V8, but since light color and symbols are regulated by the government, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room with graphical creativity.

 

Does a Škoda have a Czech Engine Light?

 

"Czech Engine Light" ... FUNNY!

 

The "save" icon in many applications is a diskette, even though computers no longer have them. The hard drive icon in OS X looks like an internal hard disk drive, even though most casual computer users have never taken their computer apart or replaced a drive. It just makes sense to use a universal symbol for a device or feature, even though the icon may not look anything like the real thing.

There are many people (both male and female - so let's not go there) who have never seen an engine on a pallet or bolted to a stand, but the engine icon is widely used and thus well known. Using a flat six horizontally opposed engine (or a rotary engine, or an inline 4 with a turbo) is going to mean absolutely nothing to most people, so it makes sense to stick to the icon that is already universally accepted to mean "engine."

We're surrounded by this stuff all day. For example, the silhouette of an Ethernet jack may be used to indicate which button enables/disables networking; "search" is nearly always represented by a magnifying glass even though most of us don't own one or have access to one. Timers and alarms are often represented by an old-school alarm clock with two bells on top, but those haven't been sold for decades; a fountain pen icon is used to denote drawing or shape editing, but again, how many kids in elementary school have seen one?

Since the "check engine" symbol is one of the most important icons on the instrument cluster, it just doesn't make sense to mess around with the representation, even though the icon looks nothing like an M96...

I know most of what I wrote is common sense - but choosing or creating an icon to represent a feature can be very challenging, especially in titles like those my company creates that (a) have features that are not widely known. Trying to make a button's function obvious in a 32x32 square

 

You see, straying too far from convention with cars or electronics does not work. Star Trek actor got killed by his own truck due to "confusing" shifter. Even the ignition key on the left will confuse most people in Porsches. My AMG has 'start' button on the shifter, I doubt most people will know how to start it either.

 

 

I just don't want to ever see it lit up.

 

ha! I did seriously ask an ol' school mechanic how to get the car's check engine light to turn off.

His answer, "Unplug the bulb" with a serious face.

ha!