"Vacuum phosphor display" is an accurate, if unusual, description of a CRT.
There was a trend in the 80s, tailing off in the early 90s, of using accurate but unusual descriptions like this to suggest that fairly mundane technology was in fact exotic and special. You saw it a lot on stereo equipment in particular, but American carmakers weren't shy in participating. If I had to guess at an origin, I'd say it probably had something to do with the "Japanese economic miracle" that was much in the zeitgeist then, and maybe not nothing with the fear of obsolescence and inability to compete that beset much of the US technology and industrial sector (excluding software, but not electronics) at the time.
There was a trend in the 80s, tailing off in the early 90s, of using accurate but unusual descriptions like this to suggest that fairly mundane technology was in fact exotic and special. You saw it a lot on stereo equipment in particular, but American carmakers weren't shy in participating. If I had to guess at an origin, I'd say it probably had something to do with the "Japanese economic miracle" that was much in the zeitgeist then, and maybe not nothing with the fear of obsolescence and inability to compete that beset much of the US technology and industrial sector (excluding software, but not electronics) at the time.