Jim Moylan and the Moylan Arrow
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  By John Gruber  
  https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/09/moylan
  Friday, 9 January 2026

Link: https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ford-gas-arrow-inventor-jim-moylan-6b2ef066?st=uhr6ym&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Ben Cohen, writing last week for The Wall Street Journal (gift link):

  > One rainy day 40 years ago, Moylan was headed to a meeting across
  > Ford’s campus and hopped in a company car. When he saw the fuel
  > tank was nearly empty, he stopped at a gas pump. What happened
  > next is something that’s happened to all of us: He realized that
  > he’d parked on the wrong side.
  >
  > Unlike the rest of us, he wasn’t infuriated. He was inspired. By
  > the time he pulled his car around, he was already thinking about
  > how to solve this everyday inconvenience that drives people
  > absolutely crazy. And because the gas pump wasn’t covered by an
  > overhead awning, he was also soaking wet. But when he got back to
  > the office, Moylan didn’t even bother taking off his drenched coat
  > when he started typing the first draft of a memo.
  >
  > “I would like to propose a small addition,” he wrote, “in all
  > passenger car and truck lines.” The proposal he had in mind was a
  > symbol on the dashboard that would tell drivers which side of the
  > car the gas tank was on. [...]
  >
  > As soon as they read his memo, they began prototyping his little
  > indicator that would be known as the Moylan Arrow. Within months,
  > it was on the dashboard of Ford’s upcoming models. Within years,
  > it was ripped off by the competition. Before long, it was a
  > fixture of just about every car in the world.

What a fantastic story. I'm old enough that I remember learning to drive on cars that didn't have the Moylan Arrow. Then I remember spotting one sometime in the 1990s, and wondering if I'd just never noticed them before. But no: this seemingly incredibly obvious design element had only recently been invented. The Journal has a copy of Moylan's original memo, and it's a delight to read. Clear, concise, persuasive.

  > “Society loves the founder who builds new companies, like Henry
  > Ford,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told me. “I would argue that Jim Moylan
  > is an equally compelling kind of disrupter: an engineer in a large
  > company who insisted on making our daily lives better.”
  >
  > These days, there are two types of drivers: the ones aware of the
  > Moylan Arrow and the ones who get to find out.

Rest in peace, Jim Moylan.




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Tagged: Cars · Design · Engineering · Ford · UI Design