Cars With Three Headlights That Shaped Modern Lighting Systems

An overview of historic cars with three headlights and how these early designs influenced modern adaptive lighting technologies. Explore the origins and evolution.

Automotive history has a habit of surprising us. What is often presented today as a breakthrough technology turns out to be a refined version of ideas conceived decades ago. Modern cars, filled with electronics and algorithms, continue a conversation that engineers began back in the mid-20th century.

One striking example is the so-called “cyclops eye” used on the production Ter 48. This feature consisted of a third headlamp placed exactly in the center, rotating together with the wheels. It illuminated the dark part of a corner that conventional headlights could not reach. Today, the same function is performed by matrix headlights, now found on most modern vehicles, even though the concept of adaptive lighting was developed long before digital systems became common.

Another remarkable case dates back to the 1956 Buick Centurion concept car. It showcased an early version of a rear-view camera. The display was extremely small by today’s standards, offering limited practicality, as drivers often found it easier to turn around and look through the glass roof. Still, the idea of visually monitoring the space behind the vehicle proved to be forward-thinking and eventually evolved into a standard feature.

By the late 1980s, Japanese manufacturers introduced the world’s first rear-wheel steering systems. In the Honda Prelude, the system was purely mechanical and directly linked to the steering angle. Nissan Skyline took a different approach, using a computer-controlled algorithm to adjust the rear wheels automatically. These solutions laid the groundwork for today’s advanced chassis control systems.

Even active suspension, heavily promoted in modern Chinese car advertising, is far from a new invention. French engineers developed it around 70 years ago. At the time, however, production costs were too high, preventing the technology from reaching mass-market vehicles.

Taken together, these examples show that automotive progress rarely moves in a straight line. It follows a spiral path, where ideas return, enhanced by new capabilities, and finally find their moment. Today’s technologies may look revolutionary, but many of them are rooted in concepts that were simply ahead of their time.