I'll bet that the lack of a visible oil pressure gauge will drastically reduce the number of questions at the
service department counters........
Absolutely. And I'll also bet the reason they don't have the engine temp, oil temp, or coolant temp shown is to avoid all the complaints those would cause. Tell many people their coolant runs at 220 degrees for instance, and they will have a mini-stroke. Tell them their motor oil runs at 240 to 280 degrees and they will have a full stroke. Much easier to just eliminate all the worry inducing information.
I think I've told this story before, but in the auto business we used to get complaints all the time about things like "my oil pressure drops after a long drive", or "my temp gauge reads higher than my buddies gauge, there has to be something wrong with my engine", or similar stuff from uninformed people. Eventually we basically neutered the gauges to eliminate all the misguided complaints. All numbers were removed, replaced on the temp gauge for example by a narrow "cold" band, a very wide "normal" band, and a narrow "hot" band. We thought that would take care of it, but we underestimated the folks we were dealing with. Even though the needle remained in the normal band, it didn't stay in the center of the green band but varied from the lower side to the upper side. So we got "my gauge runs to the right of center of the green band and my buddies gauge runs in the middle". Same kind of thing with oil pressure gauges btw. So we ultimately turned those gauges into nothing more than fancier looking idiot lights. Same narrow "cold" band, wide "normal" band, and narrow "hot" band, but now the gauge just remained centered in the normal band until the temperature changed significantly. Hot weather, cold weather, pulling a load, cruising down a long grade, idling at a light, whatever, the needle just sat there and didn't move. And guess what, the constant complaints finally disappeared, even though no change had been made to the actual engines or cooling systems and the actual temperatures or pressures still varied under varying conditions, like they always have. Just like Jack Nicholson told Tom Cruise, many people can't handle the truth.
Jerry