There’s not a lot of benefits of growing old. You lose the hair you want but grow hair where you don’t, amongst other things. However you also have the benefit of experience and cheap car insurance, so a pretty good trade-off I think?

Having grown up in the 80’s I saw proper cars in proper colours such as yellow or orange, with some questionable interiors in brown or green! They also had some fantastic decals applied to the sides, boot or bonnet. Sometimes all of them, sometimes none. And it’s hard to ignore the whole vinyl roof movement!

However the point of this article is the onwards march of technology. I have seen and worked on cars with a single carb through to twin or quad downdraught, before moving onto multiple carbs. They progressed into first mechanical fuel injection systems with their timed pumps and continuous injection which progressed to sequential fuel injection before the current direct injection.

The same for ignition systems, from points and condensers through electronic ignition modules inside the cap to the coil on plug design.

These examples are the obvious ones really, but have you thought about the headlight?

In its original form it started off as a flame inside a glass box which in turned into a basic bulb inside a glass reflector. The first modern technology applied was halogen gas filled bulbs. Why halogen? It reacted with the bulb filament to produce a brighter glow. That was cutting edge technology way back in the day! The reflector became the next focus of the design improvement as the headlight became more important to the frontal design of the modern car. Anyone remember the BMW ellipsoid headlights?

No matter what the reflector design offered, the bulb was always the limiting factor to really efficient bright lights, right up until the mid 90’s and the introduction of the Xenon bulb. This was a huge step forward in vehicle safety as they offered an amazing improvement in the light being offered and how far it travelled. I’d seen the Xenon headlights as fitted to Mercedes & BMW’s of the day, but I’d never personally experienced them until a Vauxhall Omega Elite I was given for a long weekend by Vauxhall, something I’ll talk about in a future article.

That was the light of choice for anyone driving at night, offering an almost daylight quality to the nocturnal driver. Over the years they went from being a very expensive option on high end cars to being a standard fitment to a lot of mainstream cars, and they did a fantastic job in moving safety forward. Right up to the introduction of the LED headlight. That wasn’t the same step forward as the Xenon bulb, but it did allow the manufacturers to design smaller or slimmer headlights. It also encouraged the technology of LED Matrix headlights, where the LED’s could turn on or off according to the vehicle conditions, which was a similar step forward.

That was then superseded by the laser headlight. Now who doesn’t want laser headlights on their car? Unfortunately, due to the cost involved and the improvement in LED design the laser is being phased out. But how cool is having lasers on your BMW?

The reason I talk about headlights this month is I believe they have been one of the biggest safety step forwards since the airbag. In fact you could argue it’s more important as it helps you avoid having an accident in the first place. Unfortunately, as people seem to have nothing to moan about, the modern headlight is being investigated for being too bright as they can dazzle oncoming drivers.

Two things, firstly that’s the general idea of a headlight and the brighter it is the better and safer it is. Secondly, if you look at the cars that dazzle you the most, from my experience, it’ll probably be a Tesla.

Not a hater, just saying.