Think for a moment about the ideal shape for a steering wheel. What shape would give you a perfectly consistent feel as you turn from one direction to the other, or through 360 degrees? And put the word ‘wheel’ to one side because it might cloud your thinking. What’s the answer? A circle, maybe?
You’d think so, but car makers seem intent on – quite literally – reinventing the wheel, with fresh designs that are turning the steering wheel into something that’s not round, and in some cases, not even a wheel. Now, if there’s one element of a car’s design that seems least suitable to shaping according to fashion or whimsy, I’d suggest it’s the bit that you interact with most, and which keeps you going in the right direction. But what do I know? Perhaps the circular steering wheel is too perfect; too boring.
Exhibit A: the ‘Hypersquare’ steering control (it’s definitely not a wheel), as seen in Peugeot’s Polygon concept car of 2025. Despite the name, it isn't even a square. Nope, it’s a rounded-off rectangle with holes at each corner that's paired with a steer-by-wire system (no mechanical link between the steering and front wheels) that allows you to turn the car’s wheels from lock-to-lock using less than a full rotation of the (non-)wheel at low speed.
It’s a progression from the ‘i-Cockpit’ dashboard design that’s featured in most of Peugeot’s new cars of the past decade where you look over, rather than through, an unusually small steering wheel to see the driver display. Anyway, the Hypersquare is just one of those crazy concept car conceits, right? Erm, no. Peugeot says that a version of it will be available in a production car (most likely the new 208) in 2027.
But don’t go thinking that this kind of tinkering with one of the fundamentals of the motor car is something new. In fact, car makers have been experimenting with all kinds of weird and wonderful variations on the humble wheel more or less since day one. Non-round rims and oddly-shaped spokes or hubs are more common than you might think.
Citroen, for one, produced a string of cars famous for their unusual single-spoke steering wheels, starting with the DS in 1955. Weirder still was the fixed-hub steering wheel of the C4 introduced in 2004.
While the rim turned, the centre stayed in place. On the upside, it meant that the audio/function controls were always in the same place. It also allowed the shape of the driver’s airbag to be optimised to one specific position. On the downside, and I’m talking from personal experience, it felt deeply odd to use. The fact that Citroen hasn’t used the setup for any subsequent models says it all, really.
Then there’s the infamous Austin Allegro ‘quartic’ steering wheel. This was a squared-off circle (‘squircle’) shape that was widely derided when the car was launched in 1973 and phased out little more than a year later in favour of a round wheel. You could argue that the Allegro was simply ahead of its time, because a large proportion of new cars launched over the past few years have a steering wheel that’s either squircular or, at the least, has a flattened top and/or bottom. Some are actually more like a cross between a hexagon and a circle: a ‘hexagircle’, if you will.
And then there’s the ‘yoke’. Long the preserve of concept cars (and aeroplanes), Tesla made the yoke a production car reality in the updated Model S of 2021. It then backtracked, making it a no-cost option – rather than a standard feature – from 2023. But the genie was out of the bottle, and other models such as the Lexus RZ and updated Mercedes-Benz EQS are both available with a yoke rather than a wheel.
In truth, both Peugeot’s ‘Hypersquare’ and Tesla’s yoke can be seen as evolutions of the kind of rectangular steering ‘wheels’ that have been common in F1 cars for almost thirty years. And if they’re good enough for drivers approaching corners at 200mph, so the thinking goes, they’re good enough for pottering down to your local garden centre for some compost.
I’d argue that F1 drivers are professionals, hyper-focused on the road (well, track) ahead, and not distracted by things like quarrelsome kids, oncoming traffic or that really nice sunset. In real-world driving, anything that makes the experience less – not more – complicated has to be a good thing, surely? And never mind that the steering systems of F1 cars are designed for track use rather than the challenges of the average supermarket car park.
In many cases, the argument for these non-round steering wheels is visibility since, in theory, with less wheel in the way, it’s easier to see the driver display. Until you have to turn it, of course. Which you generally do. Quite a lot.
Common sense (in my opinion) may yet prevail. The all-new Mazda CX-5 that’s just reaching showrooms has not only a perfectly circular steering wheel rim, but also a 100% circular hub. A sight for sore eyes indeed. So too does the Audi Concept C revealed in 2025. It might be a concept car, but it’s expected to inform a whole new generation of Audis. And when the brand announced details of the updated Q4 E-Tron in April 2026, one of the most notable changes was the shape of the steering wheel, which switched from a squircle to… a circle. Now that’s what I call progress.
