Seeing Double: The Ups and Downs of Stacked Lights

The majority of headlamp designs adopt a broadly horizontal theme; clusters are laid out widthways to help the car seem lower and wider, or pulled backwards around a corner to disguise a long front overhang.

Stacking or vertical layering of lights has been relatively rare, but modern lighting technology offers much greater freedom in the shape, size and distribution of headlamp elements than previously, while the bluff faces of SUVs and crossovers provide a taller canvas. Pedestrian impact legislation has also acted to raise bonnet lines. As a result, vertically orientated or split-level lighting is becoming much more common.

Raised eyebrows

Hyundai’s Kona crossover (below) counts among the most recent examples. Revealed last month, it features what its maker calls a “composite light face”. DRLs and indicators are formed into dagger-shaped strips, floating above the headlamps like a pair of raised eyebrows. Foglamps are integrated into a chin intake below the grille.

Cladding that stretches from wheelarch to headlamp is an unusual touch, but in layout terms Hyundai’s treatment is very similar to Citroën’s current look.

Starting with the Technospace concept shown in Geneva in 2013, the French brand has developed a family of raised-eyebrow arrangements. Exemplified by the Cactus concept from Frankfurt 2013, the recipe has since been applied in various sizes from the tiny C1 city car to the rugged 2015 Aircross concept SUV.

Citroen’s high-level DRLs create a horizontal break in the car’s face. Above it, the hood is drawn back from the car’s nose and shortened. This helps to shift visual mass backwards – a helpful feature for front-drive platforms with chunky front overhangs. The resulting stepped effect can be seen clearly in the profile of this year’s C-Aircross concept.

Geely’s new Lynk & Co brand also adopts a split-level solution but with a different intent. VP of exterior design Simon Lamarre explained that the aim was to create a face that is very distinctive from a distance, with details that resolve as you approach the car.

Both the Lynk & Co 03 concept sedan and 01 crossover feature linear, light-guide DRLs running back along the tops of the front fenders, with headlamps integrated into a black, full-width grille below. Dark until lit, the headlamps effectively disappear into the grille during the day.

Mock rally lamps

Nissan’s 2010 Juke crossover, previewed by the 2009 Qazana concept, arrived as a polarising design with a very unusual DRG. Running lights and indicators were housed in a narrow lamp unit, standing proud along the crown of the fender. Large circular lamps below gave the Juke a strong whiff of rally car or beach buggy.

As our contemporary design development story detailed, single-layer solutions were explored but the split-level treatment emerged strongly during the Juke’s genesis. Exterior designer Matt Weaver explained that the high-level lamps helped to make the car appear more compact, while the mock rally lamps, separated from the grille by a band of body colour, gave the car a loose and sporty feel.

Circular secondary lamps, typically positioned lower than the main lamps and further inboard, are often used as a signifier of sportiness or fun. Skoda’s original Yeti looked joyful with its mock rally lamps and distinctly dour after the facelift that removed them.

The suggestion of rally lamps doesn’t always sit comfortably, however. A pair of too-small circles looked lost on the 2007 Ford S-Max, for example. By contrast Renault’s MkII Twingo appeared swivel-eyed when its facelift grafted on somewhat outsized circular lamps. Thankfully the third generation Twingo made its mock rally-lamp DRLs work much more neatly.

Fiat, meanwhile, has shown how placing secondary lamps below but further outboard than the main headlamps tends to miss out on any sporting vibe. The current 500, 500L and 500X all feature lower lamps that echo the outline of the cluster above, but set wider apart. The result is a slightly fishy, four-eyed look.

Placing bold secondary circles directly below the main lamps has a better pedigree, with glamorous precedents like the 1958 Alfa 2000 Spider. Late Aston Martin DB7s and the first Aston Vanquish, as well as the more prosaic Pontiac Solstice, benefited from gathering indicators and sidelights into eye-catching circular units positioned directly below the headlamp.

A similar suggestion of rally lamps also appeared, somewhat unexpectedly, stacked below rectangular clusters on the prow of the 2003 Rolls-Royce Phantom – the first to emerge under BMW control, designed by Marek Djordjevic. Shocking and divisive at the time, attracting comparisons to Frankenstein’s monster, the look was refined for the Phantom Coupé and Drophead Coupé by narrowing the rectangular unit into a horizontal LED eyebrow.

The shock gradually wore off and when the Phantom II arrived in 2012 CDN lamented the demise of the imperious portholes.

Double helpings

It’s fitting that the land of Big Macs and pancake stacks should have a strong history of many-layered lighting. American cars of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s frequently piled headlamp on headlamp at the front of the car. The result was often brash and imposing but also, occasionally, delightful and memorable.

Several generations of Pontiac GTO, for instance, looked very keenly focused on the horizon with a pair of stacked lamps at the leading edge of each fender, acting as bookends to a wide bisected grille.

Today a big double helping is more likely to be found on a pickup truck: step forward the 2017 Chevrolet Silverado Heavy Duty, by way of example. The more-is-more tactic of creating two repeated layers of grille and lighting is undeniably imposing. Doing nothing to reduce the apparent height of the vehicle is, presumably, part of the intended effect.

A slightly more subtle double helping of lamps and grille gave the 2007 Ford Interceptor concept a particularly bold front end. Created by British designers Peter Horbury and David Woodhouse, exploring the delights of American excess, the car took cues from the heavily layered DRG of the gigantic F-250 Super Chief concept truck shown a year earlier.

Vertical stacks

Three-layer stacks of lamps contributed to the spider-like visage of TVR’s 1998 Tuscan Speed 6, designed in-house by Damian McTaggart and memorably featured in the movie Swordfish. Large circular holes punched into the car’s grille echoed the scatter of recessed lights.

The exuberant result was evidently too much even for TVR’s extrovert customers and a 2005 facelift toned everything down, including the number of lamps.

TVR’s solution was very different to the vertical lamp stacks created by Cadillac around the same time. Kip Wasenko’s 1999 Evoq concept ushered in Cadillac’s sharp edged “Art and Science” form language. Two subsequent show cars at the two ends of the size spectrum featured equally striking vertical arrangements: the extremely long Sixteen concept of 2003 and the very short Urban Luxury Concept of 2010 both featured blade-like vertical clusters of four small headlamps, sandwiched between a running light at the top and fog lamp at the bottom.

Cadillac’s 2016 Escala concept marked the end of that form language, however, offering a new DRG with exceptionally narrow lamps.

Forming a C-shape around the area where a headlamp might normally sit, slim strips of OLED elements underscored the possibilities offered by the latest light technology.

Tomorrow’s lamps promise to arrive in a wide variety of forms; horizontal, vertical – or barely visible at all.