<VV> BETTER HEADLIGHTS REVISITED

[John Kepler]

I was driving down into Mississippi ( in 1965 ) after dark where on the 
smaller highways ( no interstates back then ) livestock could  be standing 
in the middle of the road, in fact one night those lights kept me from 
hitting a big mule out on the highway so I guess they were not UNSAFE for 
me, anyway I would dim them if I was approching someone.


John

What's getting sorta lost in the shuffle here is just how BAD the stock
lights on our Corvairs were!  The specification for the old "Sealed-Beam"
headlights were established by the DOT in the mid-1930's when "Going like
60!" actually meant "fast"! (I have a copy of the old Toledo Times newspaper
dated in Nov. 1937 with a 72 pt. Banner headline about a car-chase in Toledo
(gangsters no less!) hitting 60 MPH in their "souped-up" Fords!)  What was a
"good idea" and "cutting edge" technology in 1935 was hopelessly obsolete
and terminally antiquated by the late 1950's...but "Da Gub'mint" specs
remained mired in the depths of the Depression based mainly on bureaucratic
inertia!  By the 1960's, these lights were ridiculously obsolete, completely
inadequate, with virtually everything on the road more than capable of
"out-driving" the lights under near-perfect conditions by a considerable
margin...a situation that was many times worse in even moderately inclement
weather!  Us "Motor-head types" of the road-racing/rally persuasion had our
own little "Underground Railroad" of sources for totally illegal Cibie and
Marchal replacement halogens (I became a Beck-Arnley dealer in 1970 just to
get "illegal" lights for my Buds and me!)!  So, while the law remained and
American cars were driving half-blind down the new Interstates with lights
you wouldn't have on a lawn-mower today....many of us were "going
Underground" to avoid "stretching" deer while heading up to the UP in my
TR-4A and hitting the moron whose car mysteriously died in the middle of the
passing-lane on I-75 just outside of Gladstone (all events from one eventful
trip in 1974 with my soon-to-be wife....she still loves convertibles, which
is why I have the 67!).

Even today, Europeans drive with better lights than you'll find "stock" on
any car in North America.  It's better today, but there's still a lot of
room for improvement....and it's being driven by the same "bureaucratic
inertia" that had us driving 75 MPH in the dark in the 1960's!  So...my 67
Monza has Cibie halogens.  I assume they're legal....but don't much give a
Tinker's Dam if they aren't....legal or not, it's one hell of a lot better
alternative than "stretching" a deer!