Why Did Automakers Stop Making Cars With Pop-Up Headlights?

As a baby of the Nineteen Eighties who got here of age within the early ’90s, pop-up headlights are, in my mind, the height of automotive cool. All of the raddest, most interesting cars of my childhood — Lamborghinis, Starions, Trans-Ams, Fieros — had pop-ups. Heck, even mom cars like Honda Accords had ’em. I once even had the pleasure of owning a automobile with flip-up headlights, my 1990 Dodge Daytona. Unfortunately, you only don’t see pop-up headlights anymore, which is an actual bummer.

Why, though? Why don’t cars have flip-up headlights anymore? Is it forgotten knowledge? Nah. Is it a conspiracy? Nah. Is it because carmakers do not know the best way to make cool cars anymore? Okay, well, that last one is usually true, but it surely’s not why we haven’t got flip-up headlights anymore. Probably not, anyway. No, unfortunately, a mix of tightening pedestrian crash regulations, advancements in headlight technology, and the introduction of the Ford Taurus is what killed the very best automotive feature for the reason that electric starter.

So, let’s speak about why cars haven’t got flip-up headlights anymore, and why that is proof that we live within the bad timeline. First, though, a bit history.

In response to our friends over in Ann Arbor, the primary automobile to supply pop-up headlights was the devastatingly beautiful 1936 Cord 810. Within the Cord’s case, the headlights were hidden in order to not break up the front fender lines with the massive, goofy, bug-eyed headlights used on the time. Pop-up headlights were used on and off over the subsequent few a long time by quite a lot of carmakers, but they were rare. It wasn’t until the ’60s and ’70s when automobile designers began hiding dorky looking and federally mandated sealed beam headlights behind various covers and grilles, and hidden headlights really took off, especially pop-up ones. They were almost de rigeur within the early ’80s, especially when you desired to sell a cool, futuristic, wedge-shaped automobile just like the aforementioned Starion.

Unfortunately for the pop-up headlight, and the overall coolness of the world at large, pop-up headlights were on borrowed time by the mid-80s. They’d all the time been finicky, touchy things, and the complex mechanisms that operated them — electric motors, vacuum pumps, tiny little levers and hinges, etc. — were liable to failure. Cars with busted pop-ups were often left with a winky face, one headlight up and one down, or had their pop-ups permanently fixed within the open position. Some, just like the headlights on my ’90 Daytona (which were broken), could possibly be manually opened and closed with dials just contained in the hood, but that was an enormous pain.

Drivers put up with it, though, ’cause sometimes you gotta suffer to look cool. Then, in 1984, a bit old automaker from Dearborn, Michigan, called the Ford Motor Company began events in motion that may directly result in the death of the pop-up headlight.

See, Ford had been lobbying the feds all throughout the event of the Taurus to get headlight regulations relaxed, because the corporate just couldn’t make their latest wündercar with regular old sealed beam headlights. No, they needed these latest, flush, composite lights that the boys over on the lab had give you. Eventually the feds relented, loosened restrictions on what headlights could seem like and the way they could possibly be made, and the remaining is history.

To be fair to the Taurus here, the demise of pop-up headlights wasn’t totally its fault. Pop-ups remained relatively popular into the ’90s, but their star was on the wane obviously. By the late ’90s pop-ups were just about just for sports cars and exotics just like the Cizeta Moroder V16T. Then, in 1998, an EU mandate regarding pedestrian safety regulations essentially killed pop-ups in Europe. Over here in The Colonies, pop-ups soldiered bravely on, but by the early aughts only two cars had them anymore: the C5 Chevy Corvette and the Lotus Esprit V8. Those were the last cars to be equipped with pop-up headlights within the U.S., and by the center of the last decade they were all but gone, replaced by squinty, weird-shaped composite lights, gaudy angel eyes, and annoying HIDs.

So, there you’ve gotten it. The death of pop-up headlights was attributable to plenty of aspects, but it surely all boils right down to, essentially, improved pedestrian safety and changing tastes. Cars could also be safer nowadays, but they’re rather a lot less cool and we’re poorer for it.