Imagine the year is 1958 and all your neighbors had bought new cars with the fully introduced quad headlight set up making your formally top of the line 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 Skyliner look a bit passe with its mere two headlights. What are the options? Trade it in or get surgically enhanced? I did a double take when I came across this Ford at a car show with an aftermarket quad headlamp configuration.
As a reminder, here is what the stock front end of a 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 Skyliner looks like.
The stock quad headlamp look for 1958.
The owner was not around to ask for any details or when this work was done, but it appeared to be quite well done. These were likely sold through W.C. Whitney and similar outlets.
Update – George Ferencz was able to find the J.C. Whitney and Co advert for these. It looks like a match.
The rest of the car was in fine condition including that fabulous folding roof.
This car had a few other aftermarket touches like the spot lights and fuzzy dice.
What is the verdict? Did this aftermarket kit make the ’57 look new again for 1958? Is it a visual improvement or an oddball hangover from a headlight transition period that is best forgotten?
Further Reading:
Curbside Face Off: All The 1957 Cars With Alternate Quad and Single Headlight Front Ends
I’d put this in the category of ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’.
The headlights, the bright yellow paint and the continental kit do the car no favors.
However, I must add, I painted my ’55 Cadillac the same yellow in 1978.
It was instant regret.
The quad conversion looks really well done and much better than the 57/58 Mercury and Studebaker-Packard nacelles that look tacked on. They do bulge forward a bit but look better that the alternative.
I used to dislike bold yellow. But I like it so much better than the current blah white, silver, grey and black boredom. Bring it on and louder!
I agree – plus I always considered the original ’57 layout hideous. “I know – let’s put a jet engine nacelle in a parachute and that’ll look good”.
Yellow can look splendid gleaming under California sunlight. It generally looks dreadful under grey skies and filthy UK weather.
Thank you for spotting a car “surviving” with one of these kits, almost 50 years later.
It seems to match up to the J.C. Whitney. “Screwdriver installation” is pretty impressive, and the $39.95 would be at least 10x that in today-dollars.
[You’re welcome to poach this and put it into your article!]
For me, the “look” isn’t as smoothly integrated as 1958 Ford, but compares well to, say, the Studebaker-Packard tack-ons of the era.
J. C. Whitney came to mind immediately at first glance. Explain how a smaller low beam of same wattage is 3x brighter? The hype in JCW descriptions is hilarious,
Thank you! Article updated with the ad.
It looks interesting and I agree, it looks like some long ago “make your car look new again !” typ kit from J.C. Whitless or wherever .
I have always preferred the ’57 Fords as they look svelte, the ’58 & ’59 look heavier .
Oddly, you can bolt the entire front clip from a ’58 to a ’57 but not the ’59 .
In high school I worked for Jim Simpson who was a fanatic about Skyliners and owned three, one of each year .
-Nate
The ’57 Chevy in that ad looks uber-hideous. Compared to that, the Ford is a beauty queen.
Agree!
Given what they had to work with…actually don’t bother.
Makes Lancia’s factory bodge on the 1961 Flavia look elegant.
Unlike Chrysler Corporation and FoMoCo, GM gambled (correctly) waiting on 50-state certification was a fool’s errand. Every car would be available in every state… with the exception of the uber-exclusive Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham.
Wow. That is a not a great look.
At least, The Chevrolet’s looks comical.
Those hood-mounted machine guns, however, would be better put to use, when mounted on the trunk instead, given that annoying tailgaters drive behind a vehicle and not in front, unless the machine gun idea was intended to win at playing Chicken
The 1957 Ford already had a wider more squared off hood over the single headlights so there was just enough room.
The 1957 Ford already had a wider more squared off hood over the single headlights so there was just enough room.
Oddly, you can bolt the entire front clip from a ’58 to a ’57 but not the ’59 .
That’s because the ’59 used a different body, with wider “shoulders”. It was very similar the the ’57-’58 Mercury body and most likely used some of its components.
Not bad, not great, but as Scott NJ noted above it looked better than the factory conversion jobs on Mercurys and Studebakers. I find the ’57 Ford single headlamps look lost in those giant nacelles though, so the stock look doesn’t look great either; perhaps the quad headlamps look more natural.
Curiously, when rectangular headlamps became legal on US-market cars in 1975, I don’t recall any round-to-rectangular headlamp conversion kits in J.C.Whitney or anywhere else.
The simplest way to improve the stock look is to replace the stock body color headlight rings with chrome, especially if the color contrasts well. It tones down the “eyes bulging out of sockets” look.
I like them better than the stock single lights, although neither looks as well-integrated as the 1958 quads. I’m less fond of the Tonka yellow, the Continental kit, and the fuzzy dice, although with a lot of ’50s car fans, you’d have to put them in a Saw trap to keep them from adding the latter two items.
At least there is no crying time out doll leaning on the front bumper!
It looks like an Edsel, and consider that a compliment. 1957 Fords and Chrysler Corporation brands were ready to go with the four-light setup, but certain states dragged their feet in making them legal. It’s interesting to contemplate Ford having a similar arrangement as Mercury, installing the quads where legal. The ’58 Fords were butchered, with their quasi-Thunderbird front clip.
At least, Chrysler Corporation did it by stuffing a parking light in where a highbeam was intended for markets located in states where feet weren’t dragged.
In any event, that ’57 Ford quad light conversion is über hideous. Tilt fiberglass front ends used to be common, back then. After a co-worker of mine’s girlfriend wrecked the front end of my ’56 Chevrolet, a neighbor on the next block swapped his ’55’s sheetmetal for a fiberglass tilt. I had the opportuinity then to fix my ride, when he sold me his metal clip.
If there was still a J.C. Whitney available to sell a fiberglass tilt for a ’58 Ford, the owner of our feature Ford would have the best of both worlds, given that the ’58 had the ugly taillights and the ’57 the ugly face
It’s def better than the weird google-eyed stock ’57.
I’ll take ‘How to Make my ’57 Ford look like a Packardbaker’ for 600, Alex.
These are far better better executed than the packardbaker in that the “hooded eyebrow” of the 57 Fords was wide enough to accommodate quads to begin with, the packardbaker needed awkward pods tacked to the sides of the old Studebaker fenders to accommodate them.
The Hubcap Club guy made a video about the gradual shift to quad headlights in ’57. He mentioned the JC Whitney conversion but couldn’t find any pictures of the results. This answers his question!
There’s a very good article here on CC on the topic.
This looks like a cool old car, but for the life of me I can’t warm up to the “continental” spare tire or fuzzy dice. I have never been much for conformity and narratives, but it seems the narrative that every fifties car gets encumbered with this kitsch.
Small comfort: this isn’t a ’55-6-7 Chev painted red/white or turquoise/white and named “Peggy Sue”.
From afar they look remarkably factory appearing, but the closer you look the worse they get; the ribbed section and exposed screws between lights is unattractive, they stick out way too far, there’s a visually cluttering piece of trim between these pods and the fender creating multiple seams, and the bottom is a rounded section very obviously covering what would be the single headlight. Obviously all of these tell me these were designed to bolt atop factory footprint without any alterations but it would have been so much better if they physically replaced some of that factory trim to allow them to be set in more like how the factory 58 quads are. I never particularly cared for the hooded headlight look of original 57s so I’m overall not offended by this conversion whatsoever, but it leaves something to be desired; close but no cigar.
Still neat to see genuine 50s accessory in use today, and I imagine it probably was convincingly fashionable for a brief period before the rapidly approaching zenith of long/low/wide Chryslers GMs and Ford’s by 1960 made this body look ancient anyway.
Very interesting topic and enjoyed the video. Regarding the initial topic, I prefer the stock 1957 Ford duel headlamps. The timeline of headlamp design from the video really hit a few issues that has had my attention for decades now.
First was the quad headlamps offered on the 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser, a favorite of mine since I first saw a new one as a child. Yes, they look like an afterthought and much better on the 1958 models. About 25 years ago I was able to contact a man in his 80s, through a Mercury Club. I was told he was the North American expert on Canadian Monarch Turnpike Cruisers and he lived in BC. The 1957 Canadian Monarch Turnpike Cruisers were only duel headlight versions and as I recall only less than 188 were made. I think the video shows one of his cars (he owned & restored two). As I mentioned this was decades ago, he was elderly & did not use a computer. As car guys we spoke for hours and hours on the phone. The man knew every small detail of these cars. He even snail-mailed pictures of his cars showing every little detail of his 1957 Monarch Turnpike Cruiser different from the American Mercury Turnpike Cruiser. Sorry, I have changed computers at least five times, saved 1000s of car images, and dozens of car PowerPoints’, but it has been years since I tried to find them on my latest computer (still there, somewhere, on my latest computer).
This article also remined me of an article I saved from the web many years ago. Again somewhere in all the car related pics and articles I have saved on my computer (s) for decades. When the new 1964 Square Birds were introduced, Tasca Ford dealership known for modifying high performance Fords cars dropped in a bigger 427 engine and did some minor body modifications to a 1964 Thunderbird. That got the attention of Ford and they later offered a more powerful engine option on the Square Birds.
As my mind twists and turns, and years ago when I first saw pictures of the Tasca 1964 modified T-Bird, I have thought about modifying my 1966 T-Bird with the Cibie headlamps. My 1966 yellow Bird is basically stock, pristine looking. I did change out the headlights a few years ago to stock looking Halogen’s, big difference. So is it better to leave my 1966 T-Bird front looking stock, or slightly modify just to add Cibie headlights like the Tasca 1964 T-Bird?
My 1966 T-Bird convertible
or Cibie headlamps:
Installing the big rectangulars would require a great deal more money-time-effort-heartache-brutality than you probably have in mind. And your options are seriously crummy “reproduction” headlamps or spending cubic money on scarce NOS headlamps (which, when one breaks, you have to do again, but for more money because now they’re even scarcer).
Halogen sealed beams only seemed better because the originals were putting out some fraction of their original output. You can do much, much better while keeping the quad-round setup, but it takes educated, careful shopping; there’s a mountain of garbage out there.
I had an issue posting two picture’s on the reply above. Here is a picture of my 1966 T-Bird front view. Leave it stock, or modify to Cibie headlamps like the Tasco 1964 Bird? Just considering the headlamps only.
Yup, just one image at a time. If you combine multiple pictures into one image that can work.
Re your question, I would leave the headlights as is. But then I’ve never been a fan of those European style rectangular lights.
My father owned a ’58 Ford Fairlane 500. It was a leftover ’58 bought after the ’59s had come out and so he got a deal on it. My father always complained about the styling and thought that it did not look as good as either the previous ’57 or the subsequent ’59.
It had the 332 cubic inch V-8 and was, at first, kind of a lemon. The dealer ended up replacing the original engine under warranty and the replacement engine seemed to be fine. He drove it for several more years and then traded it for a ’64 Chevy BelAir station wagon to accommodate our growing family.
I like the update, and colour. Where is the spare usually kept on this car? Does the Continental kit make it easier to get at?
For personal items or small bags there is a metal bin with rounded corners located in the center of the trunk which could be used with the top down, maybe about 6.5 cu ft. The spare was under the tub in a well so a little more space for junk inside with the spare inside the continental kit. The trunk lid is rear hinged, controlled by the top mechanism switch, so minimal interference from the continental kit.. That bin was hard to reach as I remember, fortunately never had to get the spare out.
My reaction came in three stages.
Immediate – Wow! Big improvement! I’ve never been a fan of those thick body-coloured headlight surrounds; they should have been thinner and chrome. They make the car look like it has a nasty case of exophthalmic goitre, and the lack of chrome just looks cheap.
Second thoughts – Yes its overcome the problems of the original, but they stick out an awfully long way. They look like they’re forward of the bumper even. That would look very awkward in profile, introducing a new problem.
Third thought – It’s a shame Daniel Stern isn’t still here to enlighten us with his take on this setup.
I’ll ignore the Ughinental kit.
What happened with Daniel Stern??
I’m here, occasionally.
I drop by occasionally.
My thoughts on this setup –
Aesthetically: meh. A bit better than the yucky stock design, maybe. A better conversion than this.
Technically: see here.
We/Dad had a ’57 Country Sedan (312 V8). This is a big improvement, the bug-eyes of our family’s car looked downright dorky compared to other ’57s especially my Scoutmaster’s gorgeous salmon & cream ’57 Saratoga 4 dr hardtop with the new 4 light setup.
As was said above, it was probably a good idea back when it was a lightly used car but now it just looks like it’s wearing coke bottle glasses.
Go get eye surgery or contacts Ford. Trust me it will make you look so much better!
This reminds me of the people who cut the center divider out of their split window 1963 Corvettes to make them look like 1964s.