It must have. But I can't get my head around it. In London, you could more or less tell when someone's bought an Irish car as the number plate / license plate looks custom but not like it's a vanity plate; but looks like a UK car on the outside with right hand drive; but I've never been inside one or thought about their dashboard before. These cars I see with Canadian plates in Canada... American made cars through out the eras... They all got kph too from the factory? I've never thought about this before, but, again, they must do, right? I know Japanese cars are rhd / kph because of watching YouTube; I've seen American registered cars in London too many times to count; including a convey once with NY plates in South Norwood that looked like somebody's personal security in some BMWs or Mercedes(es)... but never a Canadian one; I once saw a Far Eastern license plate on my road in Thornton Heath and it was just a regular looking hatchback and the people at the car were Asian, I forget where exactly that car was registered but I don't think it was Japan, could have been Hong Kong, however, me telling that is also like me saying In central London where all the embassies are, that's different, see a plate with Arabic on parked outside a compound sort of deal. But when you import a car into the UK, do you get given a number plate or do you have to pick one yourself?
I've seen modern UK cars in Jamaica online and classic UK cars in the US online; outside of Europe that is. I've seen modern UK cars in the US being crushed online as they were trying to pass them off as classics but the engines were too new so Uncle Same crushed them; so I figure it's down to the country what they will allow on their roads or not.
I once drove a rented Chevrolet in Tucson and immediately noticed the speedometer was 'whacky'. I turned back to the rental office and the guy came out and pushed a few buttons and apologized that it had been programed to kilometers and he had corrected it back to mph.
I wonder who wronged it to kph in the first place, unless it had Ontario plates on or something like that.
Irish cars are generally made for the UK market that has required dual MPH/KPH speedometers since the 80's I think. In America, every vehicle I have ever been in has dual speedometers in some fashion or the other. My cars with digital speedometers both have/had the option to display in kph. The ones with the traditional needle speedometers have a kph grid below the larger MPH numbers.
IDK, maybe. It's been a while since I had my car. Could have swore it was MPH though, but... Maybe that's because my brain is creating that memory for me and it said both, IDK. 2001 model so, it was post 1980's UK spec. But IDK. I see this in Halfords, a UK chain of automotive shop.
Some of our company vehicles are canadian. They have the big numbers in kph and the small numbers in mph.