This Seems To Be The Only Car With Exposed Headlights And Pop-Up Driving Lights

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Pop-up headlights are a source of delight to many, with their inherent drama and surprise and hiding and revealing, but sometimes the “face” of a car feels unfinished without the visual element of headlights, which, to our anthropomorphizing brains, form the eyes. You’d think that there would be some auto designer as visually greedy as I am, wanting the excitement of pop-up or otherwise hidden lights along with the visuals of integrated and visible headlamps. It’s a complicated ask, and as far as I can tell, only one automaker has actually pulled it off, and even then in incredibly small numbers. That car was the Ferrari 365 California.

The Ferrari 365 California was built between 1966 and 1967, which may seem like a short run, but only 14 cars were actually built in this period, so the pace was, you know, leisurely. Mechanically, the 365 California didn’t really break any new ground; the chassis was from the 500 Superfast, wishbone front suspension and both coil springs and leaf springs out back, holding up that live axle. A 4.4-liter V12 was up front, despite the way the door handles seemed to suggest a mid-mounted engine’s air intakes.

See? They’re very cool door handles, so you can forgive their little deception:

Doorhandles

Wow, those are pretty stunning. I mean, the whole car is stunning; that’s the main point of it.

Side365

Designed by Tom Tjaarda while working for Pininfarina, the 365 California is a stunning design, clean and sleek and taking a number of liberties with the usual Ferrari design of the 1960s. The rear, with its Kamm-like cut-off tail, is unusual for a Ferrari, and, since we’re back there, we may as well look at the striking and novel taillight treatment. What surprises me about the taillight setup is how it both incorporates off-the-shelf small round taillight lenses and a custom-designed shaped lens.

What also surprises me is that in a run of 14 cars I have so far seen three different taillight treatments:

Taillights 365

There are two with an amber top turn indicator section, one of which has the lower three round lamps set into a red plastic translucent taillight lens-like panel, and the other has them set into a chrome panel, and then there’s a version where the shaped upper lens is red instead of amber and the amber indicator is one of the three lower round lamps. How did they have such trouble making up their minds about this? There are only 14 cars!

But, we’re here to talk about the front lighting, and, specifically the combination of pop-up driving lights and conventionally-integrated headlights, here covered under plexiglass covers, as was Ferrari fashion.

Upanddown

Sure, there have been cars with pop-up headlights and exposed driving lights, like the Porsche 914:

914 Lights

That’s not so uncommon. But having exposed actual headlights and covered driving or auxiliary lights, that’s where things get weird. Weird enough that I’m pretty sure those 14 Ferrari 365 Californias are the only cars to have done it that way.

Well, now that I think about it, maybe we could count the Subaru passing lamp, or “cyclops eye” light?

That might count, too, even if it is just one lamp.

But still, the idea of integrated, exposed actual, main-and-high-beam headlights and pop-up driving or fog lights, that seems to be a rare thing.

Why don’t we see this more? Aerodynamic demands have made conventional pop-up lights unpopular, as they tend to act as aero speed brakes, but why not something that gets more occasional use, like driving or fog lamps? Those would be a lot more fun if they were pop-ups or covered or hidden in some way.

I’m probably forgetting about another car that did this; if so, I’m pretty sure this is the crowd to let me know what that is, so if you have ideas, shove them in the comments so I can see! And learn! And live! And love!

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Mercedes Streeter

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46 thoughts on “This Seems To Be The Only Car With Exposed Headlights And Pop-Up Driving Lights”

  1. Lamborghini also raided the part bins for its Espada through the production years:

    • Alfa Romeo 1750 Berlina (1968–1971)
    • Alfa Romeo 2000 Berlina (1971–1976), also used on several other Italian cars
    • Altissimo taillamps with pointed amber turn signal indicators

  3. Ferrari often had different indicator setups for different markets. The 365GTB4 Daytona had I believe three versions for the front indicator. A white and orange unit for the French, Italian and possibly Swiss markets and an all-orange version for the German, UK (and by inference al other RHD markets) and US markets. Of those three markets I think some came with a Prancing horse emblem in the indicator and some without although that also maybe model year specific.

    1. …I feel like reverse lights are the only ones that that’s remotely viable for, as a functional matter. When you turn on brakes, turn signals, or flashers, it’s important they come on immediately. Taillights are somewhere in the middle, but since they’re often the same as the brakelights or directly adjacent, it feels like a waste.

      So reverse lights feel like the only time they could work, but even then–practicing parallel parking would be a workout for them, for example. Up-down-up-down-up-down….

      Aesthetically, I don’t even know what they’d look good on. I feel like sedans are the only thing they’d make sense on, except the trunk would need to be narrow for there to be space for them on the edges.

      1. I’m thinking fixed turn signals and maybe popup tail lights as part of a moving spoiler …I dunno…I want flashy lights on something that moves goddammit.

          2. They’ll never get used, and for part-sharing reasons with one variant of a weird model nobody buys, the turn signal will have both an oil and a coolant passage blocked off with a gasket that will leak every 2 years unless it’s replaced ahead of time.

    2. So we’re reintroducing trafficators now? I’m not complaining, I just don’t want to be the last person in the cult to get updates AGAIN.

      Are we adding them to the official automotive ideal? A brown, AWD, manual transmission station wagon with amber trafficators?

      1. My DD is a black, AWD, manual transmission station wagon. But since I basically never wash it, and commute 100 or so miles a day, its a shade of brown usually. I win!

  7. As a teenager I once drew a Lancia Stratos with pop-up rally lights. So, the entire front end was just a row of pop-ups. Now, I shudder to think what that would do to the aerodynamics.

  9. There’s at least one motorcycle with that setup. European versions of the BMW R100RT had optional pop out driving lights where the air vents were on either side of the headlight.

  10. Those crazy combinations of taillights also have me wondering if there is an optimal sequence for taillights that are of a uniform size/shape/colour, or if that should vary based on the car. There are lots of classic cars with simple round lights straight from the Lucas parts bin – it would be fun to build out the taxonomy for the various combinations:

    Corvette – double or triple, all red
    Aston DB5 – vertical stack, red/amber/white
    Chevy Impala – triple, red/white/red
    Ferrari & Opel – double, red/amber
    Edsel – triple, red/red/white
    Whatever this is – jetpack, red/red/amber

        3. Many do. Ironically, based on my observations it was Nissan, Honda and Toyota that were most consistent in providing a manual method for raising the headlights. Ironic because they also tended to have the most reliable headlight mechanisms, and thus the least need for the manual backups.

    2. Lotus Elans had pop-up headlamps raised by engine vacuum acting on vacuum diaphragm devices. Originally, they were held up by vacuum and held down (when off or when the system leaked) by a spring. No vacuum, no headlamps. Some ways through the production run, they reversed that – now held down by vacuum, and up by a spring (the so-called ‘Fail-safe’ system – maybe in response to us safety regs). This means that in Fail-safe cars, the headlamps gradually rise as the car sits, as the vacuum devices inevitably leak. Also, you had to do two things to turn on the headlamps – flip the electrical switch, and then pull a knob that actuated the vacuum connection to raise the lamps.

    1. The Montreal doesn’t have driving lights at all. Those are high and low beams.

      The Bulldog does seem to meet the criteria, even if it’s a one-off.

  15. I love this article Jason, but how confident are you that the driving lamps were the same across all 14 cars?

    Is there a chance that on some, the driving lights were actually the main lenses and the headlights were pop-ups? Or others where those pop-ups hid beautifully crafted Italian amber lenses? Or maybe on the last unit of the line, it was just a free-for-all and no matter which lights you selected on the dash, the car delivered a completely random array of white, amber, and blue illumination up front?
    (I believe that was standard on most British automobiles of this era, but in their case it was a bug rather than a feature)

    This is the kind of investigative journalism we need!

        1. If it is any consolation, I also thought of the 2000 GT when reading Torch’s article. I wasn’t sure which were the actual headlights until reading the wiki.

        1. That’s true, they could have done it opposite for other markets. It would be weird, but that hasn’t stopped quite a few manufacturers over the years. The lighting height change screwed up a number of cars, like resulting in raised ride heights to pass or making them even more goofy, like the SIII E-Type. They also forced the removal of plastic covers for faired in lights, though IMO, for the better on the Ferrari 365 GTB/4, which got pop up lights in the US and I can’t think of another positive instance off the top of my head. Some clever solutions were thought up for cars that came out after, but the looks of ones that came out before whose production ran afterwards took a beating.

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