Changes in automotive lighting technology and style have helped radically alter the look of cars over the past 100 years and given us some memorable faces and fashions.
Think of pop-up headlamps, which appeared on the 1936 Cord 810, but would define the look of so many sports cars and supercars throughout the 1970s, ‘80s and ’90s. Or the hideaway headlights on an early Buick Riviera or the ’68-70 Pontiac GTO and Dodge Charger.
Sometimes legislation spoiled the fun, unwittingly changing the look of iconic cars, like when U.S. legislators forced Jaguar to uncover its E-type’s faired lamps and Ferrari to swap the original Daytona’s Plexiglass lamp cover for a set of pop-ups.
In more modern times, the explosion of LED technology and the use of DRLs (daytime running lights) has enabled carmakers to give their vehicles distinct signatures to ensure they were easily recognizable even at night when you couldn’t make out a badge or grille.
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But while modern lighting tech means cars can look different, we’ve noticed many of them are choosing to follow the same trend: ultra-slim headlights.
Cadillac’s Lyric is the most obvious recent example, though it’s far from the only one. Like many of the cars on our list the Cadillac’s super-slim headlights aren’t actually headlights at all, but DRLs. The real headlights are the vertical units mounted below. The Lyriq also features a very cool illuminated grille that echoes the shape of the Cadillac crest, but we’ll leave that for another day.
Other cars employing similar tricks include the new Hyundai Kona, as on the Kona N pictured here,
the Citroen C5x,
and the Hyundai Staria minivan.
Some cars, like the Nio ET7 pictured above, and the new Ford Evos, pictured below, are so clever at hiding the real headlights into what appear to be bumper air intakes, that unless the lights are on, your brain is easily tricked into not seeing them at all, and only seeing the DRLs.
Others, such as the Mitsubishi Outlander, aren’t quite so sneaky, but your brain will still try to tell you the DRLs are the true lights.
Toyota’s recent bz4x concept combines a traditional DRL ‘eyebrow’ with a set of narrow LED lamps in one unit, a slimmed-down refinement of a more conventional approach to lighting design.
And Audi’s recent A6 e-tron’s Digital Matrix headlights don’t only look cool, they can even project a smartphone-controlled video game onto a wall to help you and your passenger pass the time while the car is charging.
But best of the lot is the Bugatti Centodieci, whose entire headlamp assembly slots beneath two wafer thin slices in the front fenders. We guess when you’re paying upwards of $9 million for a car you have every right to expect it to deliver the best of everything, including headlights.