Let’s Confront The Three Worst Euro-To-US Headlight Changes

I’m an American. I’m proud to be an American, usually, and while this wonderful, messy, ridiculous, often stupid and fascinating country has many things I’m proud of (JPL, Dock Ellis’ no-hitter on LSD), there are things that cause me to cringe in shame and regret. Like our absurd and over-long obsession with sealed-beam headlights. I’m not against sealed-beams – I think they absolutely have their place and their ubiquity and affordability makes them attractive options even today – but Federal Motor Vehicle Standards made them the only option for far too long. And those rules ended up doing some terrible things to some very good cars.

Starting in 1940, all cars that would be sold in America were required to have a pair of round, 7″ sealed-beam headlamps, a dual-filament design providing for both low- and high-beams. In 1957, quad headlamps became legal, allowing for four 5.75″ lamps, with all four illuminated for high beams.

These remained the only headlight options – two big round or four slightly smaller round – until 1975, when rectangular headlights became federalized. As with the roundies, you could have two larger or four smaller ones.

But that was it! In Europe, custom-to-the-car headlamps of almost any shape, with replaceable bulbs, were quite common, and allowed designers a great deal more flexibility in design. America finally approved these sorts of composite lamps (even with plastic lenses) in 1986, but by then many lovely European car headlamps had been debased by the cruel federal regulations.

There are many examples of lovely Euro lights being clumsily replaced with clunky sealed beams, but I think there are three examples that are the most tragic – not because the carmakers didn’t try to do their best to work within the American rules, but because they did try, and try hard. And yet, despite their best efforts, the result was a far cry from the original Euro lights they were designed with.

It’s tragic yes, but if we don’t confront these painful moments, we could be doomed to repeat them. So off we go.

BMW 2000CS

The 1965-1969 BMW 2000CS was the sporty coupé variant of the Neue Klasse, and differed from its other Neue Klasse siblings in the design of the front end, which reduced the grille to just the two trademark kidneys (and some slots hiding behind the bumper), along with some wide, shaped headlamps that hugged the lower edge of the hood.

The look was pretty controversial at the time, but it was interesting, and a big part of what made it interesting were those novel, shaped lights, flush with the body and having a compelling depth to them.

When these came to America, there really wasn’t much that could be done; the volume of the headlamps were filled in with a ribbed aluminum, and quad round sealed beams were jammed in. The car doesn’t look terrible with the sealed beams, but it makes the already polarizing front end look, as the kids say, a bit derpy, especially when compared with the purposeful look of the original.

Mercedes-Benz 280SL (W113) Pagoda

The 1963-1971 W113 Pagoda was a genuinely elegant and lovely car, and a lot of what made it so striking was the lighting design. The Bosch-sourced headlamp units were designed to follow and finish the line and shape of the fenders, and incorporated a headlamp, indicator, and foglamp under one large, domed chunk of fluted glass.

These are really striking-looking units and help give the front end a lot of its elegance with their jewelry-like presence. The US market version doesn’t actually look bas at all, and the round sealed beams and large indicator lens do fill the area well, requiring only a minimum of ribbed clear plastic filler, but its just not the same as the original custom Bosch units.

They’re a hell of a lot cheaper to replace, though.

Citroën SM

Out of all of these luminary federalized debasements, this one is by far the worst. It’s the worst not just because the USDM face looks so much worse, but because changing the lights loses one of the most exciting and functional details of the original car: the headlamps that self-leveled and turned with the steering wheel.

Here, look at them in action on this partially-disassembled SM:

The original SM’s headlight treatment broke more than one federal lighting standard: not only were the lamps themselves not approved sealed-beam sizes or shapes, but they were set behind a panel of shaped glass, which was also against Uncle Sam’s strangely strict lighting rules, for some reason.

The original SM’s lights are an absolute triumph of headlight design and execution: they fit the overall swanky-spaceship look of the SM, they added genuine safety benefits, and they just made the car cooler.

The US market version, on the other hand, looks faintly ridiculous. The four round headlamps are set strangely far apart from one another, inset into plastic alcoves trimmed in chrome. The result is strange and awkward, and ruins the otherwise dramatic look of the car’s front end.

These were, ironically, dark times for headlights, and I pity the designers that had to try and debase these fantastic bits of lighting design to meet our strange, probably Puritan-inspired standards. I respect their attempts, despite their sometimes lackluster results.

Are there other examples that should be mentioned? Let’s discuss, at length, loudly, until they kick us out!

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