I drive a Citroen Xsara Picasso which has a centralised instrument panel (I think they made it this way so that left and right-hand drive cars would have a greater number of common components) It took about five minutes to get used to and to be honest, I think it is better; the steering wheel is never in the way. It looks like this BTW.
The display is entirely digital (the speed is expressed in large 7-seg numerals) - I actually find this easier to read and instantly understand than I ever did with an analogue speedo. The other advantage is that, should I take it abroad, I can just press a button and have it switch to displaying km/h instead of mph.