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?
People *hated* the YJ square headlights so much that I’m guessing the execs were like “I don’t care how everyone else makes headlights now, use the CJ headlights, don’t change a god-damned thing!”
There are two reasons they went with the square lights on the YJ, according to my friend that worked for AMC at the time.
1) The Cherokee/Comanchee used the square lights, so putting them into the YJ allowed them to use the same lights in both and simplify things.
2) The YJ was designed on a tight budget at a time when they wanted to differentiate the new product from the old CJ that Consumer Reports was lambasting for being rollover prone. Redesigning the face while still using pretty much the same body tub would let people know that this was not the CJ anymore.
I’m such a sucker for sealed beams. I’m really lucky to daily drive a car with them and I’m reminded of how great they are every time I have to change a dead light bulb at night (all three times that happened).
My other car has modern headlights; if a lightbulb happens to die, the whole bumper, grille and fender have to come off, as well as the indicator and the headlight, no matter which light bulb died (they’re separate pieces but must come out and go in assembled together).
So, basically dead bulb = a trip to the shop. And yes, if a bulb happens to die mid-trip at night, I just have to come to terms with the reduced safety and possibility of getting fined, because no insurance company will send a tow truck for a dead headlight.
The LED retina blasters have been a boon for people with classic trucks and other square/round sealed beam rides. They’re far better than even the short-lived ultra bright halogen glass lights.
However there’s really only 2 bloodlines I’ve found which are actually aimable/have some semblance of a beam cutoff line; the rest are basically big LED flashlights and horrible. I went through and bought/tested a couple a few years ago.
And they seemed to mount pretty well on straight in the times I’ve had to change them out, simple works.
90s BMWs had easier headlight bulbs to change than sealed beams, but other than that, I can’t think an easier setup than sealed beams. I’ve changed them in my Sprite, and Comanche, both were 10 minute jobs.
ford ranger, 2nd gen, headlight bulb change was under a minute. Until the plastic locking retainer snapped.
This was another step toward ruining car ownership. The bean-counters realised headlights, a frequently damaged part, were too easy and affordable for owners to replace.
Why spend $10 at Autozone when you could sink a month’s payment and 2 hours at a dealership getting what, by comparison, amounts to a bespoke piece?
It’s death by a thousand cuts.
I have a 2014 BMW F34 with the fancy xenon bulbs and LED halos, the replacement for a bi-xenon is $1,500 so it behooves me to eventually pop the bumper off and fix the lazy eye on the passenger side. There is a plastic ball joint that pops out of the knuckle in low impact crashes sometimes and mine was bought used post light fender bender just out of warranty. The passenger light points towards the ground and the asymmetry bugs me.
I want a TJ Wrangler Unlimited when I move to Oregon and it’s time to live as a hermit.
Sorry, our hermitages are full but may I interest you in a monastery? They have beer!
I miss sealed beams every time I have to wiggle my hand into the bay of my CX-5 to replace the bulbs.
If only Porsche would go back to round sealed beams they could then get rid of the four point motif they are currently enamored with. The four point ones looked cool at first, but have not aged well for me.
This. I too thought they were cool at first, but now, they look cheap and aftermarket-y to me.
My very first car repair was to replace the rectangular sealed beam on my parents 89 XJ Laredo. I picked up a phillips and in a few minutes had replaced it with just the removal of the trim ring that held it in place. Simple and easy. Yes, David Tracy, my first car repair (and eventually my first car) was a Jeep XJ.
The difference in replacing a headlamp on my XJ vs my wife’s Audi Q5 is just night and day (NPI). The old rectangular sealed beam…. Pop it out, pop it in. 10 minutes. The Audi… You have to be a brain surgeon or a German to think it’s a reasonable approach.
Interesting tidbit: Ford had prepared two headlamp versions for Mark VII just in case the NHTSA moved like the frozen molasses with the approval or not prior to the official introduction. The development cost was reportedly $1 million per version. I believe Car and Driver or Road & Track in late 1982 or early 1983 had spy photos of Mark VII with quad rectangle headlamps.
One of the primetime soap operas had a character driving a pre-production Mark VII with quad rectangle headlamps (I cannot remember which show: perhaps it was either Dallas or Falcon Crest).
I’ll never forget my first experience with sealed beams, when I re-imported a rust free (really hard to find over here in northern Europe) Spitfire mk1 from La Jolla in CA: The whole glass and reflector were stuck to the bulb, so you couldn’t just stick in a fresh pair of $3 H4s. I thought it was so strange and really a waste of materials..
Yes our old reflectors get rusty over here, but it’s usually enough just to “rechrome” them with spray paint to pass the inspection. And the posibiities for putting just the kind of bulb you like is a big plus.
You must be from NL
The odd reversal of this is a demand for US spec headlight assemblies for 70s and 80s European cars because it’s easy to find modern projector and LED units to upgrade old sealed beams but impossible to find stuff to modernize the original halogen composite lights.
“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.”
What about the Schrader valve stems (or at least the valve cores) for tires? Basically unchanged from the days of horseless carriages through the present. Theoretically, you could park your chiseled 2024 Lexus GX 550 next to a Curved Dash Oldsmobile at Cars and Coffee and swap out the Schrader valve stem cores between those two cars…
A few other parts come to mind too. Ignition coils didn’t change at all for a very long time(although by the 90s most cars had an electronic ignition). Spark plugs aren’t much different, although I doubt that there’s much commonality in thread sizes, ect.
When I was ordering shocks for the 89 Comanche, I was surprised to see that some of the other listed applications for that part included Studebakers from the early 50s. I have no doubt that there are at least one or two form factors of shock that would bolt onto a car from the 40s and a car from the 90s.
It’s worth noting that the 2006 Jeep Wrangler’s sealed beam headlights were awful. I was driving down the interstate in a snowstorm and when a car started to pass me, I placed everyone at risk by choosing to keep up with them because finally I could actually see.
That was the moment I decided I had to upgrade to LED lights.
Try aiming headlights sometimes. Believe it or not, people did just fine with those exact headlights from 1940-1983.
TJ owner here who drives it in the snow frequently. What you described is a common occurrence during wet snowfall. Because the 6012s are set relatively deep in the TJ’s fascia, under the right conditions snow can get packed into the headlamps periphery, which as the snow builds up, renders the headlamps almost useless. The only solution is to pull over and scoop out the snow. This is easier said than done on a mountain road.
I swapped in Hella Vision Plus 7″ Round Conversion Headlamps that use H4 bulbs. The beam is tighter and results in a better driving experience. However, the Hellas do nothing for the snow-packing problem
There’s a need for a mod – a low-powered heating element similar to heated mirrors that will melt the snow before it packs up. Wouldn’t have to warm it any higher that a few degrees above freezing.
my pre-crashed 95 NA miata had sealed beams.
when one blew out, i asked at parts store for “punk-ass-bright headlights”.
they ordered brightest sealed beams available for me – weren’t punk-ass-bright tho…
It’s mostly about lights so.. right in his wheelhouse.
More akin to David writing about a VW’s suspension.
David was a cooling system engineer, so not much for him to write about for Beetle
True, but VW is much more than just the Beetle and David is no one trick pony either.
I’m pretty sure he’s always the first one one out of the Autopian writers room to dive under a vehicle and get some pictures (spiders and snakes be damned).
His articles are filled with them.
Not a car, but I think UPS’s step vans from Morgan Olson are still delivered with sealed beam round headlights…
“Today, the 2023 Jeep Wrangler still has round headlights”
None that I see. They all seem to be giving me the evil eyes. It’s a modification I know, but they all have it. Well, at least the ones owned by idiots that live four inches from my rear bumper in traffic.
Why would you do that? Round headlights should be appreciated for the oddity they have become, not made to look all squinty like every other blah blah sold today.
Angry grilles are an abomination provoked by the fact that the previous generation had an excruciatingly boring front end, because Daimler apparently sucked all the life out of Chrysler when it was being designed.
Angry grilles are an abomination provoked by “poutrage” right-wing media, where everyone’s angry all the time by people who don’t agree with them 100% of the time. Professional snowflakes following in the footsteps of Rush Limbaugh.
They say what they are told to say. (No, I am not kidding.)
Yes. This was right around the time Jeep’s image shifted from Daisy Duke to David Duke (a trajectory shared by Dodge). At least some of the old fans still had use for their Confederate flag.
We could debate the differences between the right wing and the left wing of a turkey till the cows come home.
But I think we both know that would be a waste of time.
Left, right? Ass, crotch?
Divisiveness is written into the code of every social media platform because that’s what garners clicks, and repeat customers. It feels good to have a cause to fight for, so they manufacture nonsense ones for both sides to disagree on. And that model works well. So we squabble over nothing important as polite society collapses around us neglected and forgotten.
The death of reason comes at the hands of needing to be right, and forgetting about any other way of looking at things.
I could be wrong… but I’m pretty sure political views don’t come into play in most folks choice of Jeep grilles.
It’s most likely personal preference and the general lack of style of the the masses that leads to the angry eye light thing.
So somehow a hundred years later most cars still have four round tires, a few cylinders with pistons going up and down in them, gears, seats and a steering wheel, but we have to have $400 headlights instead of $10 ones. As stupid of an advance as radios having tiny buttons instead of a dial you can reach without looking.
It is not stupid to advance from a system where you have to chuck out a perfectly good reflector and lens just because the bulb filament broke to one where you can just replace the bulb and keep the rest. While the whole headlight might be $400, the bulb is maybe $1.50, and that is all that you replace.
Fine, except that modern HID, xenon and LED assemblies don’t use $1.50 bulbs. Four hundred would be cheap for one of those assemblies, and they have taken over a huge part of the market over the last 10 years.
HID will last for decades, LEDs will last for decades after the car is in the junkyard
I dunno, I’ve already seen some LED taillights that are burned out, and some LED running lights too. And then you’re looking at a very expensive replacement.
All the cars from the PSA part of stellantis, have one of 2 of their running lights dead. Still today, few months out of factory.
While average life is much longer, I’ve had to replace three HID assemblies and in doing so, spent more than a lifetime’s worth of sealed beam money.
Ask Cadillac XLR owners about their LED tail lights. Cars have been totalled over $3,500 LED tail light assemblies that aren’t even available.
Dodge “Racetrack” LED taillight assemblies frequently have one or more segments burnt out; LED headlights are the same technology with higher power and higher output, and the accompanying higher failure rate.
Yeah right, tell that to mercedes, audi and cadillac from the 00s’ owners.
Make that $15. That’s the going rate for a bulb for my car. Which is highway robbery.
Related, that economic reason is why those cheap LED bulbs have proliferated. $30-40 for bulbs that burn out every year or so or the same for LED bulbs that won’t burn out for longer. Not advocating for them.
So you save $10 each time. How often do you have to replace the bulb, anyhow? (My 2015 still has the OEM bulbs.) Replacing reflector & lens included (no extra labor or cost!) with the sealed beam. And the sealed beam doesn’t have plastic lenses that become translucent over time.
Wake up
One of the rectangular sealed beams on my ’94 Pickup are original. I know this because it is a H6052 bulb. I am the 2nd owner, and got the truck in 2010. The first bulb blow a few years after I got it.
They stopped making H6052 bulbs, I think, and only supply H6054’s now. I sold auto parts in the late 90’s, and we were still selling 6052’s, but not many. Mostly to people to match what they had.
I could be wrong about this. Maybe I’ll do a bit of research…
The only difference between a 6052 and an H6054 is the latter is halogen. I don’t think “H6052” was ever a thing. Why they didn’t keep the number the same I have no idea, but same thing with 6014-H6024 or 4652-H4656, but strangely not 4651-H4651.
As far as I know the old non-halogen numbers are still available, but it’s been so long since someone has requested one I honestly am not sure. I don’t believe we have any on hand anymore.
So it turns out that (non-halogen) 6052’s are no longer available, but curiously 6014’s are, and I carry a pair. For classic owners really looking for that old car experience, I guess!
I might be contrarian to the styling geeks here, but I would totally champion a return to standard headlight modules like sealed beams. They could be designed to uniform specification ensuring actual illumination standards instead of styling tricks compromising and causing bad illumination, have glass lenses that don’t degrade and be easy for replacement (with some alignment rules). Besides, now that so many vehicles have 4ft high butch front ends, what’s the point of ‘areo’ styled lights anyway?
My ‘old man yells at clouds’ moment: Get rid of poly carbonate lenses!
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that sealed beams were really not a hindrance at all in terms of styling – the most creative period in American car design was the 1950s and 1960s, when round sealed beams were all there was, and designers had no trouble coming out with wildly outlandish and unique designs across the industry.
I have a ’88 car with sealed beams and it’s the prettiest thing.
Put me down for some glass lenses!
I kinda thought the Express still used sealed beams, but I guess it’s just because new ones still look the same so haven’t paid attention to how new they are.
Are the mini-quad headlights like on the W-body Cutlass Supreme & Grand Prix coupes then the smallest sealed beam units ever used?
You’re not entirely right, but Torch is definitely wrong. I have application data for the H6054 headlight on the Express through the 2021 model year. In 2022 they went composite as far as I can tell, or maybe LED.
The Cutlass headlights you’re thinking about were the H4352/H4351 twins, and were used on Camaros and Storms for a while also. They are thinner, but in terms of area the H4703/H4703 twins used on the early GMT400 GM trucks might be almost as small.
Yeah, the GMT400s were one that hadn’t really clicked for me as being the same “type” of light until I was trying to remember any different term other than “mini-quad lights” and truck forums popped up first for most searches. I’d have assumed all the same light if you hadn’t mentioned the light/part number.
Also there have been trim configurations of the Express that had composite lights for decades already before they were totally axed.
Did the G-Wagens ever use actual sealed beam headlights? Given that they didn’t enter the US market officially until 2002 my guess is the older ones used ECE-code glass housings with replaceable H4 bulbs like most other older non US-market Euro cars I’ve seen.
I guess Torch blotted out that square headlight Jeep.
Do any motorcycles still use fixed beam lights, or have the ones with classic looking round bulbs all also gone to replaceable H4 fixtures as well?
Like this question; I’m betting some did at least through the 2010s. Something less chic like a Honda Rebel maybe?
FWIW my Yamaha FZ6R uses an H4-style bulb; the light isn’t round, though.
Ironically the vintage bikes will have more modern LED lighting. I suppose we could call those sealed-beam: they are one-piece enclosures with individual LEDs rather than a central, removable bulb.
Just checked: one I bought a while back on Amazon is listed as a “DOT approved sealed beam”, so I guess we can call them that. 🙂
“DOT Approved” is marketing doublespeak. DOT sets the allowable brightness and physical dimensions and that’s it. They leave it to industry to self police. There’s no approval as such.
Descriptions on Amazon are often… creative.