In the 1940s through the 1960s, American car manufacturers and their imitators designed unusually-shaped instruments on a dashboard laden with chrome and transparent plastic, which could be less readable, but was often thought to be more stylish. Sunlight could cause a bright glare on the chrome, particularly for a convertible. On North American vehicles in particular, this trend lingered on as late as the mid-1980s, which still featured dashboards with wood and fake chrome embellishment along with square instruments long after European and Japanese manufacturers had long embraced a plainer, more functional and austere approach for dashboard and instrument panel design.