Cars - For Car Enthusiasts

I remember it well lol. Back in the day, I had a Triumph TR7. I had to disconnect the headlight motors and run with them up, because of 'winking'.

Car designers also mostly used them since they were forced by regulation to use circular or rectangular lights of a standard size (think of all those 80s cars that look similar in the front). Pop up headlights allowed them to hide them and create cars that looked much different from the rest. I think there is a video from technology connections on the matter.

Edit: I think it is briefly mentioned on this video, although it’s been a while since I watched it: https://youtu.be/c2J91UG6Fn8

Around here new cars have to have the lights on (but on a dimmer setting) whenever they're running. It's easier to see an oncoming car with lights on during the day when it's foggy or rainy. In conditions where lights don't improve the visibility of the road most people don't think to turn them on simply because it'll increase the visibility of their car to others.

So in places where lights are required to be always on, lights like these would only give a sleek look when the car is parked. Also aerodynamics are a consideration, and like you say they tend to break.

Just one of those fun little ideas that didn't work out for a number of reasons.

Yep. The technology of the time was pretty limiting. We have better tech and could do it better and more reliably but we don't.

Even little things like the Toyota Mister Two and the Honda S2000. At one point, Toyota made a Celica that looked like a 7/8ths scale 70's Mustang.

I want a small, lightweight thing with a little more than necessary horsepower and a 5 speed manual, something that's actually fun to drive in normal road conditions.

I agree. The world needs more drivable cars. Until this SUV/crossover trend ends, I'm hanging onto my 6-speed 350Z Roadster in Daytona Blue for the foreseeable future.

We need mass-transportation and small, electric cars for when you absolutely have to drive yourself somewhere.

Our neighborhoods and roads are packed with massive trucks and vans and weird crossovers that look more and more like giant basketball shoes, and the people who drive them have statistically NEVER taken them off a paved road.

I mean, yeah I'm lefty #49764 ranting about transportation, but it's all because of the social manipulation by people who want to sell trucks that cost as much as houses and have unlimited access to our politicians. The only solution I'm offering here at this point involves creative home-engineering projects.

Gender affirming cars is such a great term because the people who drive them are exactly the people who will be most offended by it. Definitely stealing that.

The pop-up headlights were a stopgap solution to a problem that no longer exists. They're a result of the DOT at the time flat out requiring that all cars sold in the US must use the same handful of dorky looking sealed beam headlamps, bar none, without exception. None of them were very attractive and certainly not aerodynamic, especially considering that they must be positioned with their massive flat faces perpendicular to the road in order to actually work.

Have you ever wondered why every car in the '70s and '80s seemed to have this same doofy Clark-Griswold's-station-wagon lookin' square (and sometimes, circular) headlight design?

It's because they had to, by law. Up until 1983 they didn't have a choice.

Just got my Miata a a few weeks ago and I love that it's understood that we have to blink/wink every time we encounter each other

I miss my NA Miata dearly, but my back and legs sure don't 😞.

Using the popups was always the best part, partially because I liked to imagine she was helping me watch the road ahead of us.