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.
As Tom Halter mentioned, 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. So a fair number of MY57 cars were designed, tooled, built, and sold with either one large or two small round headlamps on each side, depending on what state they were shipped to. Whee!
For these cartoons 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….
You could separate the requirement for a standard size/format from the requirement that the light be sealed beam. That would avoid the problem of model specific lights, but that battle has already been lost.
The real problem started couple decades before that when the sealed beam came out and everybody saw it for the safety innovation that was. The government in it’s effort to protect us from our selves made it a law that all cars had to have sealed beams, and put a stop to the type of innovation that brought about sealed beams in the first place. All progress on automotive lighting stopped in the USA. While Europe was developing quartz halogen, quartz iodine, etc.. I worked in a auto factory (AMC) and we had far better lights, but they could only go in export cars. No one was willing to take on the government even though they could show that better lighting would save lives. Until Kawasaki was coming out with the Z1-R TC, a turbocharged 900 or 1000 cc superbike with the power and speed to (allowing for driver reaction time) out drive the headlight in second gear (on a 5 speed bike). By the time you could see the danger, it was to late to get the bike stopped. Rather than kill off their customers,they advertised to the government that they were going to use an illegal headlight because it was safer. Rather than come out on the wrong side of safety, the government backed off and changed the law.
This is a popular myth, that the sealed beam was locked in by the big, bad government and all progress on automotive lighting stopped in the USA. That’s absolutely not the case. There was constant research, development, and improvement in headlighting (and vehicle lighting in general) in America; the sealed beams of 1950 were better than those of 1940; the ones of 1956 were hugely better than those of 1950, the ones of 1958 better still, and in 1963, and 1969, and 1972, etc. Not every change resulted in better lighting, of course; some of the innovations were directed at lower production cost, longer life, and other factors unrelated to seeing.
It is also an error—a popular one—to think that European headlamps in use while you were building AMCs were necessarily superior to American ones. That’s flatly not true. Both the US and the European headlamp standards had (and still have) ample room for objectively good headlamps, and too much room for lousy ones. The difference is in the nature of the lousiness; it’s a different list of inadequacies and shortcomings.
The H4 headlamps you remember from the AMC plant—they would have most likely been very good Marchals—certainly felt a lot more comfortable to drive with. This was because of the broader, brighter foreground light close to the car, compared to the dim little smudge of light on the road surface from sealed beams. The thing is, this foreground light is all but irrelevant to actual safety. It’s purely a driver-comfort factor, and it’s very easy to overdo it (brightly-lit foreground causes driver’s pupils to constrict, which torpedoes distance visual acuity). Keep ramping the foreground light higher and higher and subjective ratings of headlamp “goodness” keep going up and up; meanwhile the driver cannot effectively see past the foreground. The American sealed beams could fairly be faulted for giving so little foreground light that it made drivers feel unsafe, but they gave much longer seeing distance on low beam than the European headlamps. None of this is a matter of guesses or opinions; there is a giant mountain of research and study on this subject.
And here’s the punchline: in the end, despite decades’ worth of research and study trying to figure out whether the Europeans were right to reject American headlamps or vice versa, nobody ever found any safety advantage to either system. We can call out the benefits and drawbacks all day long—US lights were quite a bit more efficient on low beam in terms of the total amount of light within the beam because they used the entire reflector and lens area to gather and focus the light, while the European lights used only about half; European lights gave better beam spread across to the left side of the road and less glare toward oncoming drivers; US lights gave longer seeing distance down the right side of the road and less backdazzle in bad weather; European lights kept operating if a lens took a rock hit, but their reflectors corroded, while US lamps went out if holed, but the reflectors never corroded; European lamps were easier to visually aim accurately, but the performance consequences of misaim were greater, etc—but nobody ever found an actual, real safety advantage to either system in terms of crash avoidance, which is what matters. That’s because low beams, categorically, are inadequate to the task we ask of them. They are intrinsically incapable of providing adequate seeing distance for normal road speeds. We all outdrive our low beams, whichever technical standard they’re built to.
The Kawasaki story is fun, but imaginary. Sealed beams were never required on motorcycles. That Kawasaki, like many other motorcycles, came with an H4 headlamp. The maker advertised to the government that they were going to use an illegal headlight and rather than come out on the wrong side of safety, the government backed off and changed the law is just not how any of this has ever worked. Moreover, an H4 headlamp is a very poor match for the safety needs of a motorcyclist.
Enough for now; eventually there’ll be at least one post digging more comprehensively into this subject.
(also, “quartz iodine” and “quartz halogen” are two names for the same technology)
I too miss them, but for different reasons. While I have seen a couple of cars with ok, lower case ok, maybe even almost good, headlights, most I’ve seen and used weren’t all that good. But they were not laser like and blinding like so many current headlights to either oncoming traffic or in your rear view mirror. Even maladjusted they weren’t as bad as many new vehicles with factory settings. And if you did want good headlights, H1/H4 headlights were available aftermarket, not technically legal, but I never got stopped for them and believe me, I got stopped for a lot.
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.
Headlight relays certainly make sense and stop light switches burning out or overheating, but they are not without problems. My BMW 2002 had them as original wiring. I never really thought about them until after about 10 years they started to act up. Driving along a rural road I hit a bump and my lights went out. Pretty scary. I guess ther was only one relay for both lights. The fix was to stop, open the hood and give the relay a smack. Fortunately they were easily accessible. They were cheap to replace but there was warning before the failure.
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.
I love the look of the ‘Wood-lite’ headlamps that were available in the 1930s, but I gather they weren’t very effective….
I had a 1969 Alfa Berlina that I bought in Canada but might have been a European import. It had a 4 headlight system but the outer lights were 7 inch and the inner were 5 3/4 inch. I am pretty sure that low beam was only the outer and high beam was only the smaller inner lights. They were not sealed beams and used halogen bulbs. I guess they would not have been legal in the US.
When we lived in cities, single sealed beams worked. Most drivers didn’t go faster than 50 around town. When we lived in the suburbs, we needed quad headlights for the areas between suburbs and cities. Most drivers used interstates and drove 70 miles per hour, requiring more light. Now we see ex-urbia spreading. Quarter acre lots out in the country, on country roads, and where there’s lot of animals. So, we are seeing more powerful lighting to accommodate this type of driving.
Not everything is about looks, in my opinion.
This sequence you describe doesn’t accurately reflect, represent, or explain the evolution of headlighting systems.
A friend’s Tesla does a light and motion (synchronized window movements and wig-wagging exterior mirrors) show, employing the headlights, taillights, and side marker lights, while playing “Carol of the Bells”. While parked, certainly.
It sounds utterly ridiculous, but it is really quite fun and fascinating, to see what can be done with various lighting elements, programming, and synchronization. It is a long, long way from sealed beams and incandescent bulbs.
If you have a chance to witness it, especially during a cold winter night, take the opportunity.
Yeah, these kinds of welcome/farewell animated-light displays are the latest “Wheeee, look what we can do!” from the automakers and their suppliers. Just because one can do something, doesn’t necessarily mean one should; there’s a time and place for playing with blinky-flashy lights, and on a car near traffic isn’t it.
Wheee ! .
Crappy dim lights for all Americans .
-Nate
The quad 5-3/4″ round headlamp system was a real improvement, though the single 7″ round lamps were improved not long after and the performance gap closed, especially on low beam.
I don’t own a Subaru Outback now, but was researching a 2010-2014 model while looking for a vehicle a few months ago. I do a lot of research and found that replacing the lamps in that era Outback involves removing the plastic pins that hold in the cover (not sure of the term) in the wheel well to access the lamps. Some owners found taking the wheel off helps, some can by turning it inward. Then, it’s mostly by feel. My 2002 Silverado’s are about as easy as you can get – replace the whole headlight. Not too bad in my 2012 CR-V. The driver’s side is somewhat difficult because of access with the fuse box being in the way. Supposedly you can press some tabs to unmount it and move it a bit out of the way, I didn’t do that. but the process did involve bandages.
Mechanic’s gloves would have been good, to prevent cuts and prevent touching the lamp which there’s a warning about.