1961 DeSoto
Like a meteor crashing through the sky, diagonally canted quad headlights were a styling trend that shone brightly and then burned out quickly. Let’s take a look at this short-lived fad.
In the US in the 1950s, automotive lighting was governed by a patchwork of state regulations and industry standards. Starting in 1957, most (but not all) states permitted the use of separate low and high beam bulbs. However, because they were not universally permitted, very few 1957 cars were offered with quad headlights. Of the few 1957 cars that were offered for sale with quad headlamps (such as the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, 1957 Nash Ambassador, and 1957 Mercury) many had alternate single headlight front-ends to sell in states that prohibited quad headlamps.
This changed in 1958, with quad headlamps becoming legal in all 48 states. Most manufacturers switched over to the new look almost immediately (Think back to how square headlights popped up almost overnight on every car when they first became legal in 1975).
So the question with quad headlights became how to arrange them. Most manufacturers went with a side-by-side arrangement for their low and high-beam bulbs, although a few, like the aforementioned Nash, went with a vertically stacked arrangement (a look that Pontiac would popularize in the mid-60s).
1958 Lincoln Continental Mark III
And then there was Lincoln. In 1958, they were the first (and only) manufacturer to nix both the side-by-side and stacked headlight arrangement and instead lined up their headlights diagonally. I’m not really sure what the thought process was behind the canted headlights, but when you look at it in the context of the overall car, I think it is pretty obvious: Lincoln was trying to make a statement here.
Lincoln, a perennial #2 in the luxury car race (behind Cadillac), upon seeing the success that Cadillac was having with their ever more flamboyant designs, said to Cadillac, “Hold my beer.” Everything about the 1958 Lincoln was designed to scream “Hey, look at me!” from the reverse-canted “Breezeway” rear window on the Continental to the expansive 131” wheelbase to the large scallops on the front and rear fenders. Honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t try adding a third axle or a second floor. Canted headlights were just the icing on the crazy cake.
1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV
For 1959, perhaps realizing that they had gone a little overboard, Lincoln tried toning down the look just a little, integrating the canted headlights into the grille (eliminating the separate pods), and smoothing out the front and rear fenders a bit.
1959 Buick Electra 225
1959 was also the year that Buick decided to stick their toe in the canted headlight waters. This would mark Buick’s (and GM’s, for that matter) only foray into canted headlights. A one-year-only entry, Buick returned to side-by-side headlights in 1960.
By 1961, even Lincoln had switched over to the side-by-side headlight arrangement, leaving the canted headlights for dead, or so it seemed. This is where Chrysler picks up the look, and the Mopar folks went in on canted headlights in a big way in 1961. You’ve already seen the 1961 DeSoto, in the hero image at the top of this article. Above is the 1961 Chrysler. Even the turn signals are canted!
Even Plymouth got canted headlights in 1961, albeit at a much smaller angle than the Chrysler and DeSoto. Only Dodge and Imperial were spared the canted headlights, although Imperial got its own very unique freestanding headlight treatment for 1961.
1962 Dodge
Not to be outdone, Dodge got its own take on canted headlights in 1962, angled in the opposite direction than all the previous examples.
1963 Dodge Polara 500
By 1963, DeSoto was gone, and Chrysler and Plymouth had gone back to side-by-side headlights. This left Dodge as the lone domestic holdout for canted headlights. They went to a slightly more conventional layout for 1963 (if such a thing can be said about diagonally canted headlights).
By 1964, no American automaker was still using diagonally canted headlights. This would be the end of the story, except for the fact that the look was to enjoy a brief resurgence in Great Britain and Europe around this time. Ferrari briefly employed the look on their 330 GT 2+2 models in 1963 and 1964.
Bentley employed the look on their S3 Continental from 1963 until 1966.
The Jensen C-V8, produced from 1962 to 1966, also featured canted headlights.
And finally, the Triumph Vitesse employed diagonal quad headlights during its entire run from 1962 to 1971, making it one of the few cars to carry this look all the way into the 1970s.
But fear not, diagonophiles. You may not even realize it, but virtually all cars now feature some form of diagonal lighting. Thanks to advances in composite headlamps, computer-designed reflectors, and LED lighting (not to mention aerodynamic demands), cars can now feature pretty much every lighting shape and arrangement you can imagine.
Related Posts
Curbside Face Off: All The 1957 Cars With Alternate Quad and Dual Headlight Front Ends
Curbside Classic: 1958 Continental Mark III – The Party’s Over
Cohort Outtake: 1959 Buick – Just Missing The Third Central Fin
Curbside Classic: 1961 Plymouth Fury – What Planet Are YOU From?
Dont ask me why,but i would love to own a plain jane 1962 Dodge. that front end borders on hideous,but i love the whole package.
That 61 DeSoto sure had a goofy grille design! It was more virtual than real, though, since hardly any were actually sold. That’s one of the few canted headlight designs that doesn’t look good, though, IMO.
I think the ’59 Buick did it best. Some of those European examples are just horrid!
John Jerome, writing in The Death of the Automobile:
“The Academy Award . . . goes to the headlight boys, who somehow went from single to dual headlights, arranged the duals horizontally, then vertically, even DIAGONALLY, then horizontally again, put them inside mechanical eyelids, brought them back out again, and finally went back to single headlights–“classic simplicity”–and made every single step [seem like] a consumer benefit.”
Agreed that the ’59 Buick is the best looking of this lot.
(Great feature, Tom Halter – Always appreciate your humorous and knowledgeable approach to subjects like this one.)
+1, to both points.
Wow, I haven’t thought of that book in 20+ years. I was one of those who read it, and The Insolent Chariots (John Keats), way before the internet.
The woman in the DeSoto photo looks like she’s fainting at the sight of the incredibly
hideous car hubby just bought.
The photo of the white Lincoln above will always remind me of the movie “North by North West”.
After shooting Carry Grant in the cafeteria, Eva Marie Saint makes her mad dash escape in the Lincoln convertible, canted headlights and all.
Please don’t forget the Gordon Keeble…
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-outtake/cc-outtake-1965-gordon-keeble-gk1-the-cc-effect-at-work/
Oh, I try to forget that car, but not for its rather tasty looks. It just SOUNDS awful, and for years I swear I thought it was a bug of some sort, as in: “Och, I hear wee Duncan’s come down w’ a touch of the Gordon Keebles”.
You could have just as easily have titled this, “Some of The Most Ugliest Cars ever”. Great piece. Who ever thought this was the thing to do with headlights.
I myself, have never before laid eyes on a 1961 DeSoto, to be quite positive.
Of all of these, I would take either the 63 Dodge or the 59 Buick.
But surely…
you could have added…
a few more?
I don’t know if you count trucks… But just in case…
…
almost forgot…
(thankfully, this one was a one-off…)
Only the French would think of a coach-built Rambler for a car of state. Viva le dorky Rambler!
trouble is, once you start…
you cant stop! (But I will now, it’s getting late here.)
Thankyou, Professor Pringles.
Last one for the road
Sorry Tatra, the Jag doesn’t count – it has two headlights and two fog lights.
Really? No Jag?
How about a Fiat then…
“Approved for production,” but then not.
I never liked the canted/slanted eye look, even as a kid. I will make an exception for the Buick; it looks sophisticated and elegant. The Lincoln is clearly a cry for help, and that Desoto is clearly suffering from the effect of Atomic-Bomb-radiation genetic mutation.
I have an odd question rattling through my head now though: when were the first high-beam/low-beam headlights available on American cars? That must have been quite a selling point.
And a random “how old are you?” question – does anybody else even remember those huge foot-operated high/low dimmer switches on the floor? Those things always seemed pretty industrial-grade to me. I -think- my 69 Camaro had one, but I don’t remember when they disappeared.
I still miss the foot operated dimmer switches to this day, can’t remember them being huge though, about a 3/4″ button,
My 1973 Vega and 1973 Nova both had the floor mounted dimmer switch; by this time I’m sure that most European and Japanese cars were using the turn signal lever to operate the dimmer. I can’t honestly remember how the dimmer was operated in my 1984 Mustang, I’m presuming it was in the turn signal lever but can’t say for sure. The rational for moving away from the floor mounted switch was to eliminate the opening in the floor board, which was thought to be a location where rust would form.
Surely the reason for dumping the foot operated dip switch was that you can’t operate it while changing gear. My 1946 Anglia had no column stalks so the dimmer was on the floor, but you didn’t need main beam unless you were in top gear so it wasn’t a problem.
My dad’s ‘77 Buick Century had a foot operated dimmer switch – that was the last car I drove with one.
Good summary, I had thought that the whole canted headlight thing lasted longer but with a few exceptions it was over pretty quick.
The 63 Dodge is my favorite in this bunch. But the Jensen gets high marks for being so bonker ugly it’s actually fantastic. Like they threw every styling feature at the wall, and they all stuck except for fins in the back.
Here’s an idea for a CC Feature/Quiz/Poll: “How does this face make you feel?” , or maybe “Does this car look angry to you?”
There’s something about the “face” of a car that evokes feelings in the onlooker. 90% of these just make me think these cars are pissed off. (Most of them probably rightly so, considering the unflattering light those faces have painted them in.)
For some reason the smaller, sportier European examples wear their anger with a little more lightheartedness (like, oh how cute, that little bugger’s got attitude). On the other hand, the full size Americans? They’re all pretty scary. (More like “That monster wants to eat my family”.)
I’ve always found that ’59 Buick’s “face” to be quite sinister looking, personally.
how bout this
Now, that’s an interesting point. I’ve been a fan of the Volvo 164 since I was a little kid, and I owned one for two decades, but I never thought of it as having canted lamps. The inboard ones are fog lamps, not headlamps, and I guess that functional distinction is strong enough in my mind that it doesn’t get filed under “canted headlamps”.
I always thought that the Volvo 164 was imitating a contemporary Jaguar sedan.
Sure, if anyone at Jaguar ever went “Crap, we forgot about the front indicators! Where are we going to put them? What are we going to do?!”. 8^O
Some of the exterior features on Jaguars looked rather “cobbled together” by the late 1960s.
I see your Volvo and raise one VDP 3 litre in response (this one with extra glasses on).
“Cars can now feature pretty much every lighting shape and arrangement you can imagine.”
I’ve actually started to like LED daytime running lights but only because the designers have started to get more creative with the shapes.
So much nicer than the straight line ones that dominated early LED designs.
LED daytime running lights annoy the snot out of me, but I see your point. They sort of act like hood ornaments used to… in that they provide a very quick, shape-based identification of what kind of car it is.
Okeh, I’m sort of obligated to bite: why do LED DRLs annoy you?
(And yes, you’re right, we’re in an era of “lightstyles of the rich and famous”; that is, lights being used to advertise vehicle brand and model family and technical content.)
Daniel – True.
Many reviewers have taken up the past time of complaining about the lack of the high end headlights on certain vehicles.
I was happy that Buick had a package for my Regal to upgrade the lighting. So now I’ve got a technically mid-trim car with the fanciest headlights offered and the uplevel factory audio. And I could get those things without buying the highest trim level of car.
Sort of a happy medium.
I can’t speculate for Eric but the only DRLs that annoy me are the old school ones that just burned out the low beam headlight more quickly. That only annoys me as an owner, not a fellow driver. 🙂
I find them too bright, and distracting. I find it’s easier to lose sight of things like pedestrians when they’re surrounded by cars with intensely bright lights. Also, the bright DRLs tend to obscure a car’s turn signals, or they shut off when the turn signals blink, which again is needlessly distracting.
I’m still not sold on the concept of DRLs to begin with (and yes, I know I’m losing that battle), but in my opinion the best examples were GM cars in the late 1990s that had relatively low-intensity amber DRLs. They made the car visible when in a dark place like under a bridge, but weren’t annoyingly distracting in the process.
…and yet the data show DRLs prevent daytime pedestrian strikes, so we can categorise this as yet another instance of the human visual and attentional systems, like the rest of the world, not working the way we feel like we’re sure we know they do.
The DRL regs in North America are imperfect, but the concept is very sound, and most of today’s DRLs are (1) of an appropriate intensity, and (2) a whole hell of a lot better than the high beam DRLs that are finally going away.
I’m with you Eric. As far as I’m concerned DRLs make far too many owners forget to turn on their actual lights at night. I never ever saw this common occurrence until the last 8 years. What few incidents DRLs allegedly prevent in the daylight is outweighed by this.
The LED DRLs seem much more about style vs substance. One day a few years ago Audi had them, and the next year everyone had them. The ones that turn off with signals look weird, like something is going haywire with the cars electronics.
Agree. To quote William S. Gilbert: “Very true…so they do.”
This isn’t actually a fact, it’s an opinion with no data to back it up. I’m completely onside with you that misuse of lights at night, aggravated by DRLs and always-lit dashboards, is a problem that shouldn’t have been allowed to happen. I’d say it’s because the regs were thoughtlessly written, but they wound up the way they are because of very deliberate work by the automakers to make sure the regs are as cheap as possible to comply with, and leave room for the automakers to monetize “extra” features (automatic switching between day and night lights) that should be standard equipment.
But there is no factual basis for any part of your claim about DRLs vis-a-vis daylight or darkness.
As for the DRLs that turn off or dim down on the turn signal side: that makes it much easier to see the turn signal. Remember, car lights are first and foremost conspicuity devices. “Ew, that looks weird when one DRL turns off while its same-side turn signal is operating!” is not on the short list of factors that matter. And to state the obvious…well…you noticed it, didn’t you! 🙂
The LED DRL turn signal combo is weird because it doesn’t focus my eye on the turn signal, it gets drawn to the white LED on the opposite side that’s constantly illuminated I have no issue figuring out which way their turning, it is just weird looking, nothing more. DRLs used to be separated from the indicator sections and that’s what everyone was used to, why not just have the signal/DRL alternate amber/white rather than amber/off? I didn’t think I was on a legislative committee where I needed graphs to illustrate an opinion.
I’m continually frustrated by this, too: people driving at night without their headlights on, or any lights at all. It’s an epidemic. And as Daniel pointed out, one of the culprits (and the main one in my mind) is the always-lit instrument panels in modern cars. Anyway, while I understand the point about automakers looking for any and every way to cut costs (or more precisely, to add dollars to the selling price for perceived “extra” features), don’t all cars now have an “auto” switch for the lights, anyway? Perhaps the cheapest econo-cars out there still do not. I’m never one to advocate more government intervention in our already over-regulated world, but this is one area where I do think the feds should step in. In an age where drivers are so moronic they need warning lights on their side-view mirrors to tell them whether or not it’s safe to change lanes, it seems unbelievable to me that cars still have any light switches at all—just mandate across the board that a sensor decides when the lights go on, so the idiot behind the wheel can’t mess it up.
My wife pulled out of our driveway and hit an unlit speeding car with it’s headlights off at night. Full dark night. I ran out of the house when I heard the crash and saw his car stopped a ways down the street. When he moved it from the center of the street, the tail lights went completely off. By the time the Police got there, he had turned on the headlights and my wife got the ticket for running into a black car at night with no lights on. The cop told me after interviewing my wife, if they ticketed drivers for the headlights being off, they would be unable to handle any other calls at all.
Really neat article! I love the 61 Chrysler, it pulls off the canted look quite well I think. I like the way the slope of the headlights is echoed by the canted tailfins. The fins are similar to the 60, but the design is more integrated with the new 61 front end. Then they kept the front design for 62, but completely shore off the fins. I always liked the 61 much better.
My Dad bought a 1963 Dodge 330 with the canted headlights. I remember asking why they were slanted when I was a young kid. He said it illuminated the road better and reduced glare to oncoming traffic.
The weirdness factor is alive and well in most of today’s grilles. I realize there are pedestrian protection laws, but come on…must the front ends of modern cars (and some trucks) look like monsters that came to devour earthlings?
»thundrous applause« Hoorah for this article, and for canted headlamps. A few points (‘cuz of course…):
That’s not quite so. The patchwork was entirely state-by-state; there weren’t any US federal regs for lighting or any other aspect of vehicles until 1968. See this CC piece for more info (and cartoons!).
I don’t think the ’63-’64 Ferrari 330 GT 2+2 headlamps count as canted; it looks to me like the bottom of the outer and inner lamp are tangent to the same horizontal line. They’ve got a ø7″ outer and a ø5.75″ inner lamp, so the top of the outer lamp is higher than the top of the inner lamp, but that doesn’t seem the same thing to me as one (whole) lamp being higher than the other. Compare the Jensen C-V8, which has a truly canted bigger/smaller lamp setup; a horizontal line cannot be drawn between the bottoms, the tops, or the axes of the two lamps on each side of the car.
Hey Daniel, I was hoping you would stop by. This exact question came up during my research for this article. I was even thinking of reaching out to you, since you are the master of all things automotive lighting related.
Yes, FMVSS-108 didn’t take effect until 1968, but there clearly was some sort of regulation that dictated the use of 7″ sealed beam units after 1940 (although I looked around and couldn’t find any specific statute). I find it difficult to believe that there happened to be 48 state laws that specified the exact same vehicle lighting prior to 1968: This feels like some sort of federal regulation. Even your earlier post does not mention the actual source of the 1940 sealed beam mandate.
Nossir—there was no national regulation dictating the 7″ round sealed beam, for there was no legal structure, no regulatory mechanism or agency for any such thing until the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966.
Like the 1963 adoption of amber front turn signals (rather than white), the 1940 adoption of the standardised 7″ round sealed beam headlamp was not a national mandate. It came about by dint of carefully-orchestrated—one might justifiably say “choreographed”!—cooperation between industry (automakers and lamp makers) and state motor vehicle authorities. The son of a prominent GE lighting engineer wrote a very detailed account of it, at least some of which is available online.
Thanks for the link. I read it and found it very fascinating.
OK, then why were all 1939 cars prefocused bulbs, and suddenly in 1940 everybody (except possibly Graham-Paige?) running the sealed beams that I grew up with? And no foreign car coming in after WWII was anything other than sealed beams, even if it meant kludging the headlights unmercifully.
If there wasn’t a 1968-ish Federal statute, then there had to be some kind of confluence of many smaller laws to keep any state from getting too creative.
Because enough states mandated it and the industry agreed to conform to it. Imports conformed because their cars wouldn’t stay sold if they were continually ticketed and/or impounded. Customers, not being idiots, would demand their money back.
You could license a motorized milk crate, but if it didn’t conform to state and municipal laws it was subject to citation and/or impound wherever it was driven. If you visited California with an Idaho registered car and you were in violation of specific California law (for example headlamp height), you were subject to citation or impound. Especially if you were black.
Also a lot of those “creative” lights sucked because amyone could make any headlight any way they wamted.
It wasn’t a completely unregulated highway before the feds butted in.
Daniel Stern: I, too, got a lot out of that paper–thanks for sharing.
As to the industry-wide embrace, here’s a Sept. 1939 article about what had been going on:
Article didn’t post? I’ll try again:
Sealed beam headlights don’t seem to have reached the UK until the late 60s. Certainly my ’61 Triumph Herald had separate bulbs and reflectors and I was able to fit uprated reflectors and halogen bulbs to improve light output. By the 1970s I had to dump standard-fit sealed beams and fit Cibie refectors and bulbs to uprate the lighting on “my” Morris Marina.
I remember a man from Cibie giving a talk at our motor club, and he suggested Lucas made their sealed beam lamps with “jam-jar” glass.
There was something about Cibié, some weird aspect of the French cultural headlamp thing, that caused their foreign distributors (i.e., outside of France) to tell whoppers about headlamp lenses. In America the LOLROFL claim was made that Cibié lenses were made of lead crystal. No, they were made of soda-lime glass, also called “soft glass”. It’s relatively inexpensive and easy to work with, and it can be optically quite fine.
Now comes this entirely believable report of the British distributor claiming sealed beams were made of “jam-jar glass”. Jam jars are made out of soft (soda-lime) glass, just like Cibié lenses. Sealed beams, including the ones Lucas made starting in the 1950s, were made of hard (borosilicate) glass: more expensive and more difficult to work with, but much more resistant to impact and thermal shock, and it can also be optically quite fine.
(It’s also quite believable that your ’61 Triumph didn’t have sealed beams; they were never mandatory in the UK.)
The canted headlight design was what auto designers could do 60 years ago, that today’s cars do with ease. Make the car look like it is projecting itself forward. The 59 Buick was going so fast, its headlights were lifting off its grille and holding on to the front fenders, thanks to the eyebrow bezels. That is the design of canted headlights.
These Lincolns were so ugly, Lincoln dropped to third place behind Imperial – which ironically, was just as ugly!
If I recall correctly, Ford was counting Continental sales separately from those of Lincoln during those years – even though both were the same car with different trim. Combine sales of the two, and Lincoln/Continental beat Imperial in sales.
One of the few design gimmicks of yore I don’t care for, so of course every modern car uses them. Ugh.
What did Chrysler give DeSoto for a redesign budget – $1.50?
Whoever got that redesign job wasn’t trying at all.
Interestingly, there was hardly any differentiation between a 1960 DeSoto and a 1960 Chrysler – the differences were limited to the grille, side trim and ribs on the tail lights.
There is less differentiation between those two than there is between the 1961 models of each division.
Given how quickly Chrysler decided to phase out the 1961 DeSoto – the official announcement was made in November 1960 – it’s amazing that the corporation bothered to give the DeSoto a front end that differed as much from that year’s Chrysler as it did.
I’m guessing the corporation clearly differentiated ’61 DeSotos to satisfy their legal obligation to provide a distinct product to the soon-to-be-orphaned dealers. A few stampings might have been cheaper than angry dealer lawsuits. Packard and Edsel parent companies did the same.
If this was the motivation, it didn’t work, as the corporation was fighting lawsuits from angry dealers into the 1970s.
I’d bet that the split level 61 De Soto grille didn’t deter a single law suit from a terminated dealer.
Awesome compilation. . .I vividly remember a ’61 Chrysler near my grandmother’s house back in the 70’s on family visits. I always did like cars that dared to be “different” and the concept worked well on the Chrysler but definitely NOT on the DeSoto.
One note, GM actually started with the rectangular headlights with their 1975 models (so late 1974 they started hitting the road). I know the big C-Bodies and personal coupe E-bodies all got the treatment that year, along with the Chevy Monza and its corporate clones that also bowed with the quad rectangular headlights for 1975.
Those jet fighter plane styled bumpers on the 59 Lincoln are pure genius.
For that matter . . . .
Steerable Trippe driving lights aren’t universal to Duesenbergs but the pattern is diagonal…
Fun to see all these (and of the “extras” submitted in reply). I was just then becoming aware of the mostly-Detroit stuff on the road. I saw that ’59 Buick occasionally, and those ’58-59 Lincolns perhaps never; I’d take the stacked ’57 Lincoln headlamps given the choice.
Not that every styling feature first appeared on a Detroit “concept car,” but can someone point to something in that direction (canted headlights) from a few years earlier?
1962 Dodge: don’t know if/how they advertised it, but would there be advantages in having high beams farther above the road?
Cornbinder B series had canted headlights just to bring pickups into the trend
Count me as a fan of the ’62 Dodge. It’s unusual, and that makes it cool.
Oh, and nothing new under the Sun.
My 2016 Civic Coupe is definitely sporting that look (along with a lot of other crazy angles, some would say):
On the ’62 Dodge Dart, the inner lights were mounted higher than the outer lights also at the rear of the car.
Does the Peugeot 505 count?
I reckon so. Also the 504.
Brilliant idea for an article, why didn’t I ever think of that? Really well executed too.
The ’59 Buick’s slanted line up front repeats the fin line at the rear. Quite clever and beautifully successful I’ve always thought. And it’s always looked exciting and optimistic to me, never menacing.
I freely admit my bad taste was formed as a kid, I love the 1958-’60 Lincolns and Continentals, there I said it! Once Lincoln dropped them, Mercury should have taken them up, would have been a lot more interesting than the bland Ford-knock-offs they did.
As for the Mopar diagonal headlights, Exner was in his Mannerist Crisis, the more outlandish and bizarre, the better. Wonder if the slight angle of the ’61 Plymouth layout inspired those on the Bentley S3 Continental…bet it did…
How disappointing the AMC didn’t do a production Ambassador with diagonal headlights, that’s would have been just bizarre/
There were a lot of inner-mounted fog lights and road lights in the ’30s. The ’36 Pierce fits the definition of quad more than the others, with its fender-mounted outers and integrated inners….
https://www.mecum.com/lots/CA0815-219952/1936-pierce-arrow-1601-club-sedan/
When I acted up in parochial school, the nuns would squeeze my face until it looked just like the front of the featured car.
I didn’t see any correction to the generalization about quads on 57s.
Mercury, De Soto, Chrysler, and Imperial offered quad or dual.
Cadillac Eldorado Brougham and standard size Nash didn’t offer a duals option. Most states had changed the law by time the fenders were tooled and all were ready to chamge. Cadillac wasn’t worried about a few random states for a very scarce car, and Nash just went naked.
The big obstacle to implementing quads for 57 was that some state legislatures only met every 2 years.
One of my favorite headlight designs in recent memory. Simple yet exceedingly distinctive without being at all offputting. Interesting post with lots of scope for more “finds” as we’ve seen…
Quite agree about the Sonic (translates into Holden Barina when read upside down).
Such a pity it’s attached to the car to which it’s attached.
1940: the papers are already advertising “sealed beam conversion kits” for earlier cars, and such ads appear into the 1950s.
Also 1940, here’s what the “re-silvering” process would entail. About $1.50 a pair then, so less than $25 today, FWIW:
The Lincoln was indeed trying to make a statement.
That statement was “I AM EVIL AND I WILL DEVOUR YOUR SOUL!!”
Kill it, and not softly with your song, either.
I would much rather have the Buick.
Caption contest for the ’61 DeSoto ad?
He: ‘I know I’m a compete nerd, but my DeSoto will wow you!”
Stylish lady (to herself): ‘Dear God, it looks like my mother’s refrigerator.’
Wow, the upper grill on the ‘61 DeSoto is about as “extra” as things get. A face only Ma Mopar could love.
Strangely enough, I like the ‘61 Chrysler.
The rear of the ‘61 DeSoto is just as weird as the front. And check out those skinny tires on the one above. Normal for cars of this era, with little 14 inch wheels and tires woefully undersized for their needs.
Alternative title: “The All-too Brief History of They Can’t Be Headlights.”
Great post, Mr H.
I am sorry but i have never liked the look
A lot of them(like the 61 Desoto) look like the end result of driving through a too narrow alley. Sort of like Christine crushing herself to get at that punk at the loading dock in the movie.
The ’58 Lincoln Continental looks like something the Joker would drive.
Chop four feet out of the middle of some of these canted-light cars, and they look like a lot of modern motorcycles. Some are asymmetrical. BMW S1000R shown. The newest refresh is equally canted but less asymmetrical.
Thanks again for putting this together for us, Tom Halter. This photo adds nothing, but when would I next have a place to post it at CC?
Quite the image. Like looking into a GAF View-Master.
I know your article wasn’t meant to be comprehensive, and it’s a few years old now, but my mate owns one of these; a Prince Super Miler.
Prince, you may recall, was the company building the Skyline before being taken over by Nissan.
I’m not sure how many were sold in Australia, but my mate in Victoria owns two; one restored and one for parts, while another guy I know owns one in WA.
Rare truck!
And there was the 1962 Prince Skyline Sport, designed and built by Michelotti, It think.