Lighting the way

Exterior lighting systems are not just contributing to safety, they are also changing cars' styling.

There has never been a brighter future for vehicle lighting design and engineering than is promised by the next decade. The development of all aspects of automotive lighting has become a rewarding but increasingly complex challenge, with the need to combine styling, systems technology, and safety issues, particularly pedestrian safety. For many years, vehicle exterior lighting was something of an add-on feature-a practical necessity. There were some efforts to give headlights a styling identity, particularly on the more expensive cars of the 1930s and 1940s, while quadruple and rectangular designs were introduced in the 1950s and 1960s. But then came a trend towards hiding them behind flaps or tucking them away via pop-up motorized systems (Oldsmobile Toronado, Triumph TR7/TR8, Fiat X1/9), although Cord was hiding its headlamps 30 or more years before. In the 1940s, though, the Tucker, with its “Cyclopean eye” central headlight that illuminated when the steering was turned through 10° had demonstrated a new dimension for lighting technology, and in the late 1960s came Citroen's DS 21 and SM, with steering-directed high beams.

But during the mid-to-late 1990s, not just headlamps, but also vehicle lighting in general, began to take on a new and very significant role in overall design integration. And parallel with that came the realization that front lighting systems were not just about the safety of the vehicle to which they were fitted.