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Remember what they took from us
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this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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Cars - For Car Enthusiasts
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Man, I miss those pop-up lights in cars. I heard they broke down often and were pretty trouble prone though...
The pop-up headlights were a stopgap solution to a problem that no longer exists. They're a result of the DOT at the time flat out requiring that all cars sold in the US must use the same handful of dorky looking sealed beam headlamps, bar none, without exception. None of them were very attractive and certainly not aerodynamic, especially considering that they must be positioned with their massive flat faces perpendicular to the road in order to actually work.
Have you ever wondered why every car in the '70s and '80s seemed to have this same doofy Clark-Griswold's-station-wagon lookin' square (and sometimes, circular) headlight design?
It's because they had to, by law. Up until 1983 they didn't have a choice.
Honestly, I kinda wish it would come back. Forcing all manufacturers to use the same part for headlights had a singluar massive advatage that is gone now:
You could walk into any parts store and they always had the headlight you needed in stock, on the shelf.
Prices could be lowered dramatically as well because they were produced in such massive quantities. Sure, bulbs are more or less "cheap" now, but imagine being able to walk into any parts store and buy a pair of new LED headlights for your car for just $8 USD. You can't do that now (at least not here in California, the cheapest LED pair for lows only is like $30 at AutoZone), but you could if manufacturers had to use the same light module. And this same process could apply to any variety of other automotive parts.
Despite the limitation of the law requiring certain modules, cars back then had their own unique styling. Just looking at them, you knew exactly what make and model it was, and sometimes even the exact year. Nowadays, with no such limitation, I find cars to be more or less the same boring blobs driving down the road with a similar silhouette and in a paint variety of black, white, or grey/silver. I have to really pay attention to the taillights if I want to identify the make/model/year.
Manufacturers do have to use the same light module. There are still only like 11 types of DOT approved headlight bulb type that can legally be put in a roadgoing vehicle in the US. So yes, we have more than the original 2 options, but if you need a replacement headlight bulb that list is still pretty short. This obviously excludes vehicles with bespoke LED assemblies, which are currently in the minority but who knows for how long.
The difference is the housing they stick it in nowadays, which is vehicle specific (and also the expensive part, if you break one).
Sorry, ill disagree because I prefer all earlier car designs to anything existing today. Cars now are pretty much all hideous as a whole. And a nightmare to fix as well. Thats a beauty of a Ford you posted. Im sure 0 people will agree.
Plus back then, if you had a dead headlight for any reason, any service station will have a stock of all the four kinds of headlights at hand to replace.
Every shop still carries headlight bulbs. There are like 10 or so types of bulbs, outside of LED and HID modules
Let's say you got a rock in your headlight and now it's full of water.
Minor details.
Joking aside, that's absolutely valid. I had an FJ80 Land Cruiser years ago - those had very expensive glass lenses. The driver's side lens had a small hole in it, about the size of an airsoft pellet. A small square of clear gorilla tape fixed it well enough, but I really wanted to do a sealed beam conversion (only available on "poverty pack" models, only in non-US markets).
Honestly it was the only vehicle where I would have rather had sealed beams for functional reasons 😂
I agree. Lights are too bright and distracting now also, and there seems to be no way to go back.
There's no likely way to go back, because sweeping good-for-all regulation that aesthetically inconveniences someone is political suicide in this selfish culture.
Technology Connections made a great video on this a couple years back.
That was great, thanks.
I"m actually fine with that. I kinda prefer how, say, the 1980's Camaro looks compared to the swoopy plastic lens over plastic lens filled with LED fuckpuke they build today.
I would prefer to go back to that than to need to spend $500 to replace the proprietary LED module that cars have these days.
I am making an assumption but I would guess that it’s going to be really hard to come by spare parts like the LEDs in 10 or 20 years. While some company will still be making those rectangular headlights.
Are the circular DOT headlights actually a newer regulation than the rectangular ones? I would've guessed that circular ones came first, if anything, considering the sorts of lights on VW Beetles and other cars designed in the 1930s and earlier.
I could have it the other way 'round. I wasn't paying close attention at the time.
Edit: Actually, you are right. The rectangular ones were permitted in 1974, so I did have that backwards. Corrected!