In America, between 1940 and 1975, there was only really one headlight game in town: round, sealed beams. Sure, since 1957 you could have four 5.75-inch lamps instead of just two 7-inch lamps, but that was all the change you were allowed. Designers did their absolute best with those restrictions, but for many decades you could trot into an auto parts store and ask for a headlight, and nobody would ask or care if you were going to put it in a Plymouth or Studebaker or AMC or Datsun or Volkswagen or Fiat or whatever, because it would work. Because there was just one kind of light! So, when the benevolent tyranny of the Emperor Sealed Beam ended around 1983, most car designers jumped into the exciting ocean of composite, shaped plastic lights and never looked back. There were a few holdouts, though, and today I just want to take a look at the last bastions of those round sealed beam lights, and find out which car was the last one standing.
The desire for some lighting variety in America was partially sated in 1975 when rectangular sealed beams became available. In the late ’70s and all through the 1980s, many, many cars adopted rectangular sealed beam headlights, just for the sheer novelty of something like corners on their lights. We’ve actually dug into the last holdouts of rectangular sealed beam lights before, which lasted all the way until 2017, thanks to the Chevy Express:
So, while that van is very likely the last mass-produced example of a car with sealed-beam lights, I want to know the last mass-produced car with round sealed-beams — the originals. It really is remarkable just how little these lights changed from their introduction around 1940, when you think about it. While there were certainly changes in production methods and chemistry (halogen lights, etc.) the fundamental design of the round sealed beam never changed, for decades. It was likely the only car part you could find in a time capsule from the WWII era and install it with zero problems on a car from, say, the 1990s. Think about that! That’s astounding!
Sealed beams lasted so long because they just worked, period. Where earlier cars had separate lenses and housings and reflectors and bulbs, and to change a bulb you had to open up the unit, which permitted moisture and grime and possibly even moths to get inside the headlamp, causing short bulb life and reduced light output and condensation and all sorts of other problems, the sealed beam was just that – sealed. It was one whole, replaceable unit that combined lens and reflector and filament all in one handy, easy-to-swap unit.
Even today, common problems you may see in modern, advanced headlight units – cloudy lenses, condensation inside, expensive and difficult replacement and repair – none of these were issues for the humble sealed beam. Sure, we got sick of designing cars around them, but, damn, they did work.
Also, note in that ad the name Mazda; that’s not in reference to the Japanese company that loved rotary engines and gave unto the world the Miata. It was a trademarked name for GE’s light bulbs, dating back to 1909, and the inspiration of that name — the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda — dates back to over 550 years before the guy named JC with a lot of wild ideas your cool youth pastor told you about was even born.
Okay, so after 1983, when Lincoln opened the floodgates to plastic, shaped, composite lights, pretty much every automaker was excited to drop old-school sealed beam lights to let them shatter on the tarmac as they dove into the decadent luxury of composite headlights. But not everywhere. As we established, rectangular sealed beams staked out a little corner of the commercial vehicle market for a long time, but round sealed beams weren’t so lucky.
Even cars that had kept single round lamps pretty late, well into the 1990s, later were fitted with same-size-and-shape composite headlamp units that fit into the old body panels, but featured modern projector optics inside, modernizing the look and giving better illumination. The Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen is a great example of this, switching to round modern composite lights in the mid-late 1990s:
There were still a few holdouts in the mid 1990s: the VW Cabrio, still based on the Mk1 Golf until 1994, the Land Rover Defender, which retained round sealed beams until they stopped coming to America in 1997 (in the rest of the world, they eventually got round composite lights like the G-Wagen), and, surprisingly, the Rolls-Royce Corniche, which held on to quad round sealed beam lights all the way until 1996.
All of these cars are well within the composite light era; these round sealed beams are very much an anachronism. And yet there is still one car that outlasted them all: the Jeep Wrangler.
Yes, the TJ Wrangler used normal old round sealed-beam lights all the way until 2006. Think about that! The headlights had to be the only part on a 2006 Jeep that you could swap with no changes from a 1945 Jeep CJ-2A. Well, hm, maybe those would have been 6-volt, but still, it would have fit. The Jeep CJ5 went to 12-volt lighting in 1956, so that means you could install a 50 year old headlight into your brand new Jeep in 2006 and it would have worked.
Incredible, right? A lot of the reason why I think the Jeep ended up holding out as long as it did was because it was so tied to an old design; not so much retro, like what VW did with the New Beetle, but more evolutionary, like the Porsche 911. And the key elements of the Jeep face were round lights, because that’s all that was available when it was designed. So why mess with something that just works?
Today, the 2023 Jeep Wrangler still has round headlights, but they’re modern composite lights that just happen to be round. If you need to replace them, they range in price from $200 to $600+. You can get a round sealed-beam headlight for under $10. I guess that’s progress?
I like what modern headlights can do, but some of the folks (particularly in the Jeep community) retrofitting their headlights just seem unable to set the lights up so they aren’t blinding oncoming traffic.
More like they purposely set it up to blind oncoming traffic. Had a Wrangler with the full light bar in my mirror yesterday and they were fully aware it was on.
My Mercedes w123 is an ’82, and it had sealed beams when I got it. Of course I had to be cool and swap them for the euro market composite housings.
It was actually because the Yuppy Jeep (YJ) tried to go rectangular square beams and the majority of the jeep crowd nearly mutinied.
I think the HMMWV still runs round sealed beams BTW.
The switch from vertically stacked round sealed beam lights in 1969 marked the end of the golden era of Cadillac hearses for me, switching to square lights in ’75 was the final nail in the coffin.
If I could somehow have the 6th Gen F150 grill with the round headlights on my 9th gen short bed/regular cab I would be a happier person today.
and as @James says – the round-sealed bulbs popping up on an NA Miata are joyous. They bring me the kind of happiness usually reserved for Lotus 7’s, MG-Bs, and my all-time favorite, Triumph TR3As.
They also still look good on motorcycles.
Sealed beams. Easy to change but shitty light output. Even the halogen sealed beams are not very good.
The Holley RetroBright LEDs are a massive improvement at only 10x the price of the incandescent lights they replace. https://www.holley.com/products/restoration/lamps_and_lighting/retrobright/round_headlights/
I certainly miss the round sealed bulbs given that new sharp angular headlights which follow the body line make cars default to having angry faces. Happy round sealed bulbs make for joyful, even soulful visages, think bugeyed Sprites, and Miatas.
That said there is still an in-production, angry killer of a vehicle on the road today that still uses round sealed bulbs; the HUMVEE. A quick check of an online parts catalogues show that these are indeed sealed one piece parts.
My first gen Montero has these, they are still cheap to obtain thankfully!