Over seventeen years’ time, a lot of technical innovation and technological progress can happen. Can, that is, but not necessarily will, and when something comes kicking stalled evolution in the pants, it can be difficult to adapt for those accustomed to the way things were. That’s what happened in 1957-’58.
The four-headlamp system was okeh by every state for ’58, but that didn’t mean everything was ducky. There was disruption and upset in the service sector, as illustrated by these four comic panels from that time, shared with me by a veteran headlamp optical engineer. I reckon he’s North America’s top rock star in that arena, and he’s been at it for decades—started out in the sealed-beam era, and now he’s making LEDs walk, talk, dance, and sing (and light your way along at night).
All 1940- to 1956-model vehicles on American roads had two 7-inch round sealed-beam headlamps, one on each side. They evolved every now and then—the filaments were upgraded in wattage and output a couple of times, an anti-backdazzle filament shield was added, the reflector and lens optics were improved, and aiming pads were added—but they were still 7-inch round sealed beams, one per side.
And then, Suddenly It’s 1960 1957: some cars come with a new system of four 5¾” lamps, two per side, in states that allow it. National vehicle technical regulations were still about a decade in the future; lamps had to be type-approved by every state, and some states weren’t yet onside. Others were, but hadn’t amended their laws in time for the ’57s.
For these to make any sense, you have to understand the very different laws, customs, and culture of the foreign country they’re from; i.e., the past: in most states each vehicle had to pass an annual roadworthiness inspection by state policemen or other inspectors probably wearing neckties. The inspection included checking the headlights for type approval and proper installation and operation and colour and aim (donno ’bout you, but I could sure as hell wish this were still the norm!). As this 1967 article describes, faulty lights were a frequent find.
An element of the inspection that had been routine and uniform for all cars, no longer was. It wasn’t just double the number of lamps; there was other stuff to mind, too: the upper or outboard lamps produced the lower beam, while the lower or inboard lamps produced the upper beam. Fine, but now comes a car with the lamps arranged slantwise: the inboard lamps are also the upper lamps; the outboard lamps are also the lower lamps. Uhhh…
I’d like to imagine the cartoons that might’ve resulted if headlamp format had been de-standardised back then!
Because I’m unable to resist, I’ll throw in one more headlamp-related cartoon clip which—I’m warning you—even its creator Tex Avery (of “Droopy” fame) evidently considered a real stinker. Make sure the sound’s turned up.
Happy to read that headlight troubles are nothing new. So many people cannot seem to handle simple headlight operation, especially urban drivers. Of course todays problems would be astonishing to drivers 60 years ago. Maybe we should be testing the drivers these days and not the cars.
Ghost cars drive around at night with no lights on at all but the instrument cluster is illuminated, disguising the problem. Other drivers insist on using fog lights, front and rear, all the time, even on clear well lit highways. Those super bright fog-tail lights are super annoying. They think if some light is good, more light is better.
Then there’s people with flame-thrower high beams on all the time, just blinding everyone. I’m not sure if they’re oblivious or just selfish.
You’re right on all counts. People spoil everything!
I have to admit I made the “ghost car” mistake in a rental car a few months ago. My regular car, which is nearing the 10 year old mark, turns on the headlights automatically when it’s dark and the instrument cluster is only illuminated when the lights are on. So I picked up my rental after dark, started it up, saw the instruments all lit up and thought “Ah, this car which is way newer than one I drive at home must also turn on the lights automatically!” and drove off. Since the area around the airport was well lit I didn’t notice until I got to the unlit highway and was like “WFT? I can’t see a thing”. When I attempted to turn on the high beams in an attempt to alleviate the problem and they only flashed for a second, I realized what the problem was.
It’s a really easy mistake to make. Sloppily-written North American regulations are to blame. It started when Daytime Running Lights came along (mandatorily for 1990 in Canada, optionally for 1995 in the States). Drivers were made more or less aware that their car had some kind of automatic lights up front (they’d see a reflection from the car, wall, or window ahead, for example, or they’d see the front of the car when someone else was driving) and they’d figure the whole thing was automatic.
The regs had long required that the instrument cluster illuminate when the parking and tail lights were turned on, and this wasn’t changed when DRLs came in, so either the dark dashboard or getting flashed from behind would prompt the driver to swat at the switch until the dashboard lit up…now they’re no longer dark from sides and rear, which is an improvement, but they’re still driving around with DRLs: totally inadequate for seeing safely after dark, and often much more glaring than low beams. This could have been avoided by changing the regs to require that the dashboard not illuminate until the headlamps are switched on—not just the parkers and markers, and not with the DRLs—but no such change was made.
Then came dashboards illuminated day and night, and LED DRLs children of varying age think are way cooler-looking than boring ol’ normal ol’ ugly ol’ headlamps, and that quaint old thing of ghost cars being rare and dependably advertising impaired drivers went away.
(You did a lot better than most by noticing that you couldn’t see and noticing that operating the high beam switch didn’t fix it. Most ghost-car drivers I’ve flashed just flash back and keep going.)
Loved the cartoon. At 1:30 is obviously an early prototype for the Dodge LaFemme. 🙂
That seems like a million years ago – a time before Federal vehicle regulations when manufacturers (either individually or through the Manufacturers Association) had to individually lobby 48 (then 50) States to amend their laws to cover new technology.
And I miss the era of the sealed beam. The light was decent (certainly better than the worst of the newer cars like the Intrepid) and they were cheap and easy to replace. I know, I’m a Luddite.
Yeah, and that proto-LaFemme isn’t the worst of the gratuitous swipes at female drivers—that’s another of those customs and cultural aspects of that foreign country!
Usually one can only call engineering “correct” with a bunch of terms, conditions, asterisks, exceptions, and parentheticals. But as a concept, the sealed beam headlamp is quite correct—totally sealed against water and dirt entry, which is responsive to the rough service conditions at the front of an automobile. Totally sealed against dillweeds bearing “HID kits” and “LED conversions” and blue bulbs and whatnot, which is responsive to the prevalence of dillweeds. Standardized in shape, size, fitment, and electrical connection, which brings a bunch of benefits: widespread, easy, indefinite availability of replacements. Automatic upgrade of older vehicles to newest headlights at lamp replacement time. Easy lamp replacement and adjustment. Relatively uniform, consistent headlighting performance across all vehicles, which means nobody has a giant seeing advantage or disadvantage over anyone else, and nobody’s going around putting out fifty times the usual glare light, and makes it much easier to optimise trafficway elements like reflective road signs, and to accurately model and configure streetscapes for maximum possible safety. Vast production volumes which drives down cost, which drives down price. Easy and inexpensive provision (and conversion) for the world’s various headlighting needs: left vs. right-hand traffic, various beam pattern specs, etc.
Those are all conceptual advantages, of course; the devil is in the details of the implementation. Sealed beams as implemented in America could have been better than they were, due to both regulatory and market factors, and almost all the ones now available are sloppily made on decrepit or poor-quality tooling. There’s no technical barrier to really good sealed beams even using legacy technology—in my collection is a phenomenally good 7″ round halogen sealed beam that easily inspires “Oh, wow! That’s what they were supposed to do?! I didn’t even know that was possible!” reactions. And up-to-date technology is equally possible; this, this, this, this, this, this, and this are all good-to-excellent LED sealed beams (of course there’s also a mountain of trinkets and junk, and it’s all promoted as an “upgrade”, but that’s always the case with everything).
That’s a big handful of large advantages to the sealed-beam headlamp concept. But the engineers lost and the stylists won, so instead we have model-specific headlamps with big car-to-car differences in seeing and glare light output, susceptibility to water and dirt entry and to dillweeds, time-limited availability of expensive replacement lamps, difficult bulb replacement, such a proliferation of different aim and service technique requirements that most people and states just don’t bother trying, the owner is handcuffed to whatever level of technology and performance the automaker decided to put into the headlamps (and so is tempted to “upgrade” with an “HID kit” or an “LED conversion”), etc.
Conversation I overheard at Auto Zone a few weeks ago:
Young woman: “Do you carry LED headlights?”
Employee: [Shows her where the LED headlights are]
YW: “Are these blue?”
The employee told her no, they don’t carry blue ones, and advised her to look online if she really wanted blue. I have no idea why she wanted blue, but my guess is that she just thought they looked cool.
So those of us heavily into night rallying back then merely substituted the Hella H4 halogen conversions for the pathetic sealed beams. I ran them on my ’73 Vega GT for the entire time I had the car. And had to change them over to the standard sealed beams twice a year to pass Pennsylvania state inspection.
I still use them on my Toyota Pickup, and early Miata….
What fun! Nice of your veteran engineer acquaintance to share the comics, and Tex Avery sure worked plenty of sight gags into just six minutes or so. Just in case anyone at CC has never seen this one:
Someone went crazy with a Continental Mark II some decades ago. This is a real car and not a photochop.
Cars like that used to be regularly featured in the hot-rodding/lead-sledding magazines. I don’t find anything really objectionable about the idea on that Mark II, but I think it would’ve looked better and more deliberate with the headlamps at the front, not recessed in their tunnels like that.
Oh, good grief. Just leave it to JC Witless! Leaving aside the vandalistic nature of a kit like that, it would’ve also made electrical problems. The 12-volt 7″ round headlamp in use on 2-headlamp cars at that time was the № 6012, with a 50w high beam and a 40w low beam. The 5.75″ rounds for 4-headlamp cars were № 4002 (37.5/50w high/low beam) plus № 4001 (37.5w high beam). So now we’re going from a system wattage of 100/80w to 150/100w, high/low beam: 50% overload on high beam, 25% overload on low beam. Guess it’s a good job JC Whitney also sold headlight relays, but sure as hell there were installations attempted without it—and the electrical “budget” on cars of that time was pretty damn tight in the first place.
Not only ugly and possibly dangerous, but also just about a week’s wages to purchase.
JC Whitney always had some weird shit. I sure enjoyed their catalogs.
One might as well have enjoyed the JC Whitney cattledog; once on the mailing list (either by placing an order or by just asking or by falling for their subscribe-for-just-a-dollar gambit) one never got off it, and the cattledogs would fall like rain upon the mailbox.
You’d also get on the JC Whitney mailing list by subscribing to magazines like Motor Trend.
These were the 1950s version of the cheap, add-on CHMSLs that J.C. Whitney sold in the 1980s. And even more ridiculous: In the late ‘70s, they also sold chrome covers to place over round headlamps, with square cutouts in them to mimic the look of the newest, most fashionable rectangular headlamps. Not sure what those did for visibility.
I always felt that these items were aimed at poseurs who wanted their old car to look newer than it actually was.
However, in this case of the kits for the ‘57s, the ones for the Ford may have actually worked to improve the car’s looks. While I liked the rest of the car, I never was a fan of the headlamp treatment of the ‘57 Ford. To me, it looked a bit bug-eyed.
And then there was this excrescence:
Wow…talk about trying to put a square peg into a round hole…
I won’t say it looks any good, but it’s really no worse than the 75-76s with the factory ones. Both are randomly floating in filler panels, the factory ones are just better complimented by the wraparound turn signals
It’s not only that the factory ones are just better complimented by the wraparound turn signals, the relationship between the innermost headlamp and the grille is better executed.
The quad-rounds on the ’57 Ford make it look a bit like a Checker Marathon, at least in the line art version.
In its 19-year run in the US, The Volvo 240 series was sold with at least FIVE different headlight configurations, depending on how you count. There were at least 3 more options used on Volvo 240 throughout the rest of the world.
Yes, that’s a long production run, but I can think of no other car sold with so many variations of headlight configuration.
Awright, you’re on!
I count four US headlamp configurations unless we are counting the deep vs. shallow 7″ round bucket/bezel as two types, then I count five.
Not counting LH-traffic vs. RH-traffic separately, and not overlapping with the US, I count eight rest-of-world configurations.
If we overlap the two lists, the rest-of-world list loses two 7″ round configurations that use all same hardware as the US 7″ round configuration(s).
If we pare down the rest-of-world list by consolidating all types that are interchangeable by physical fitment (replacing one kind of 7″ round lamp with another kind of 7″ round lamp that drops in and plugs in directly, for example) then that list is down to six.
If we allow some wiring reconfiguration as well, it’s down to five.
»holds stopwatch« Go!
Okay, Daniel…
You are correct, there were only 4 configurations of headlamp styles in the US. I was being pedantic and thinking of the ’80 models, where base cars had tungsten quad-rectagles and upscale models had halogens. But yes, they are physically interchangeable.
Memory fades on ROW lights, but there were 8″ round lights, *approximately* 9×9 flush glass lights, pre-82 flush rectangular lights (iirc, both single-bulb and 2-bulb versions), and the ’83+ units that are similar physically to the US 1986+ lights.
I’m sure you know better than I, and I take your word. But can you think of any other model of car that had so many variations of headlights available?
Nope, I think you’re right about the 240 taking that crown.
US:
Two 7″ round sealed beam, w/shallow bezels and buckets
Two 7″ round sealed beam, w/deep bezels and buckets
Four 5¾” round sealed beam
Four 165 × 100mm rectangular sealed beam
Two ~11″ × 11″ w/plastic lens and HB1 bulb
ROW:
Two 7″ round R2 tungsten (? Maybe discontinued before 240)
Two 7″ round H4 halogen
Two 8″ round R2 tungsten (? Maybe discontinued before 240)
Two 8″ round H4 halogen
Two 8″ square H4 halogen
Two ~12″ × 8″ rectangular H1/H1 (Cibie Biode)
Two ~12″ × 8″ rectangular H4
Two ~11″ × 11″ w/glass lens and H4 bulb
Who remembers this? Seemed like a good idea.
Wasn’t legal in every state and lasted only 2 years.
Sylvania also promoted it on their own.
Yup. I have two or three of them—one brand new—in a box in the garage, along with wiring harnesses, brackets, at least one bulb, etc. That was the world’s first halogen projector headlamp, and the only one until BMW picked up and ran with the technology in the late ’80s. The Super-Lite did a good job by dint of brute force, but it is a very large lamp, optically it is massively inefficient, and at certain angles there were blue and red fringes at the sharply-defined edges of the beam—that’s what got it rejected by certain states. And GE and Westinghouse figured out how to do pretty much the same thing with sealed beams at very much lower cost and with much easier packaging, and without the colour fringe. There’s more to the story, including why even the inexpensive sealed-beam versions didn’t gain traction; guess I ought to add that to the list of forthcoming posts.
The headlamps with individual projector lens for low and high beams first appeared on Audi Quartz Coupé concept car in 1981.
Back in the Cold War, the Soviets always tried to one-up the West. If four headlights were good for the capitalistic bourgeois, the six lights on this ZIL study were better.
Successfully distracts from the fact that they otherwise plagiarized a 59 Buick and a 57 Plymouth for the rest of it!
The trucks I’m driving have the old fashioned, now four headlight setup but projector type they work well especially on high beam turning night into day.