It's time to settle this once and for all...
I love pop-up headlights I just don't know how they'd look on some of the more modern cars. But I do love them on the F355, absolutely beautiful.
simple really, do they work = good, don't work = bad on the older cars (308/328) they are useless for night driving at any significant speed
Great survey. I simply love pop-ups; I think they are cool, whereas fixed headlights just don't do it for me.
Just a question, besides maybe the Cord, can you name one car, preferably a Ferrari that looks good with the headlights up? I can think of lots of cars that a talented designer turned the headlights into a positive part of the design but not one with pop ups with the headlights in the up position.
I think the 512TR looks better than the 512M. But that's just my opinion which is all this is just opinion, love em, hate em or "ehh kinda". Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I am partial to seeing the lights on a C4 corvette in the up position that is because the lights don't just pop up 60 degrees but they actually spin 180 degrees. It's pretty cool looking. Also, I like the porsche 928? pop up lights. On f-cars I am a fan of the 456 with the lights up and the TR's and 512 with the quad circle lights pretty sharp IMO. But, the real reason I like pop up lights is for the clean look they give the hoods of these cars. Except for turn indicators and fog lights f-cars and cars with pop up lights have nothing but flat painted surface on the hoods. It really accents the lines IMO. Erik
Generally, it's dark when you have to put the lights up (or raining, but I don't see many Ferraris in the rain.) I'd agree that from outside the car the lights look better flush (closed). I think the F355 carries it off best - it has a nice hefty front end. The Boxer also wears them quite nicely, up or down, IMO. Wedge-shaped cars like the Lotus Esprit also seem ideal for pop-ups. That linear wedge shape is no longer the thing, so it makes sense, in a way, that pop-ups have been left behind.
Granted they Look better with them down, but you decide : Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
You guys must be kidding. Every example you gave made me go Bleeccch. I have a TR and the head lights look Rube Goldberg. And that last pic.....give me the 360 anytime Hideaway headlights (for everyone under 45, that's what they called them orig) are just a way for a designer without talent to hide a required element of the car because he did not know how to deal with it in an elegant fashion. And to support that I give you the antithesis of elegance in the form of how badly they managed what they look like when up. The TR chief among them. Think Lusso, or 250 GTO. Now those guys knew how to use a headlight.
Dont forget the 348's moretti. I drove my 348 last night and agree the lights are not so good in it. Crap actually. I dont mind the pop up lights look on the 348/355. The front looks beautifully contoured with them down
Aren't the pop-up lights because modern optical techniques (elipsoid beams and xenon) hadn't been invented, and therefore sleek integration with the body work was simply impossible until about 1997 or so? Really, I don't know... I'm asking. -Daniel
There are 3 things I have always associated with Ferrari since I was a kid: round tail lights, the gated shifter, and pop-up headlights. My 355 has them all, and I love it. In fact, I love the lights even more now that they are no longer the rage.
The best thing about pop-up lights is the moment you raise them. You never get past the "wow" factor of flipping the switch, and up they come. Plus, you get another little mechanical sound in the process. Of course, I am known for being easily amused...
Same can be said about convertible tops and those removable hardtops, even the current trend of using foldable hard tops. Name one car that looks better with top on/up than off/down.
as a former owner of a Porsche 944; all I can say is I grow sick and tired of pop-up headlights as they look featureless in the hood or face of a car. I much prefer aggressive "eyes"
Agreed. That's why I try and only drive my TR in the daylight! The pop up's work fine, except when they like to jiggle over bumps and tend to be a minor distraction when driving. Just like my 92' Stealth was...LOL. Still, a beautiful car with the lights off.
I don't really like popuplights. They look ok down but once you have to turn on the lights it becomes very ugly and akward looking.
This is why Baskin Robbins makes 31 flavors. If everyone liked only one, they would only make one......Charlie
Same here. When I had my X1/9 in the '80s, it was just another car with pop-up lights. Now they're rare. There are some widely admired cars, such as the Maserati Ghibli and Ferrari Daytona, that have them, which leads me to think they'll be considered a "classic" feature someday.
My understanding on the use of pop-up headlights is as the following: Federal regulation dictates that the headlights on a production, passanger vehicle must meet a specific standard, one such standard is the minimal distance of illumination. In the era of pre-projection type (Xenons included) of headlamps, this means that the headlights must be mounted at a certain height in order to achieve that. Because of this, pop-up headlights was the design of choice of the 70's, 80's and early 90's. They allows a designer to creat a nose that is lower than convientional vehicles with better aerodynamics etc. (IIRC, this is why Daytonas had to have pop-ups in the later cars as the earlier vehicles had the exposed lights with plexi-glass covers. Daytona experts, please varify if this is correct, TIA.) This however, became a trend, as there are many cars with so call hidden headlights that really offers nothing more than just having hidden headlights. I think the mid-80's , Toyota Celicas, Honda Accords, Nissan 300ZX are good examples of this as their nose profiles doesn't really change that much with the ligths up vs. down. Needless to say, all these changed with the invention of projection lights and xenon lights. These lights allows the actual lights to be mounted further back and not having to comprimize the angle of the hood/nose. Another cause to this change is the day-light running lights, which became standard equipment for Canadian vehicles. I can recall seeing many Canadian Ferraris with their headligths up and on during a FCA-NW event as the results of the law. PS: The designers of the cars with pop-up headlights never meant to have them driven with the lights on under daylight or majority of the time. From both functional and visual POVs, hidden headlights makes better sense in those days.