Morning coffee

[djfordmanjack]

Joe I have to admit that One eyed Jake looks better then 2 eyed Ray !    ....

all kidding aside, seeing those different versions of your Fairlane, makes it very clear that the oem single headlights look a lot better and classier. I think maybe a lot of that is also owed to the plain tube grill on the 4x version, which I never really liked, especially not on 57 Fords.
 For my Del Rio I have reworked ( peaked ) a 59 Ford Grill insert (the one with all the floating stars), and I think that they could very well work together nicely with the 58 quad headlights. In any case I want the custom application be a bolt on modification, and maybe I can make the whole fender tip a removable bolt on piece (drilling out og spot welds and replacing with screws, bolts or rivets). I have to do rust repair to the og fender tips anyways , so not much is lost with such a mod.

Just a little..... lol

[CobraJoe]

I thought the same Guenther, that's why I swapped out the grill ASAP; sadly, it made no difference IMO

[djfordmanjack]

you are right, Joe, it doesn't look very balanced either from this perspective! Let's see when I find the time to put my Del Rio together and try fit the quads with the 59 grill insert. If it doesn't look spectacular, I'll just rebuild the oem single headlights.

[Ecode70D]

  I'm a troublemaker. Just to let you know, some guy left a 57 tubular grill and a complete set of 58  dual quad headlights in my shop. If I pop rivet all that stuff on my 57, it should  look real nice. I'll try to blend it in  with some left over white paint. 
        Then they will stop calling my car a plain Jane. 

[hiball3985]

I'm a troublemaker. Just to let you know, some guy left a 57 tubular grill and a complete set of 58  dual quad headlights in my shop. If I pop rivet all that stuff on my 57, it should  look real nice. I'll try to blend it in  with some left over white paint. 
        Then they will stop calling my car a plain Jane. 

Don't you do that 

[djfordmanjack]

Beware everybody, Captain Jake Sparrow is on the move again ! 

[CobraJoe]

      I took a ride down by the Land of the Pilgrims this morning to meet up with a guy who I spoke with on the phone and he told me that he had some '39 and '57 Ford parts that I was looking for. He was a pleasant enough gentlemen who has obviously been around the block a few times and I really enjoyed the time I spent with him. I can't tell you enough how extremely pleased I was that he had all of the items that I was looking for (he even had one additional item/assembly that was not mentioned during our phone conversation that I never, ever thought I would find, at least without paying a million dollars for!), but even then, all the while, I felt a little uneasy. It was almost as if someone or something was watching me, I don't know how to explain it, (you know that feeling you get that something just isn't quite right) well it really creeped me out and made me feel very uncomfortable.
      After we had disassembled a couple of the items in his shop and loaded them in my truck we then went back in negotiated a final price, it's when I saw them! They were peering down at me, almost eerily, from a high vantage spot over the doorway. I swear I couldn't get out of there fast enough and I don't think I will ever forget those 4 menacing eyes watching my every move for the rest of my life! It felt like almost Deja Vu!! Or, maybe it was something even creepier like from The Deliverance! I ran out the door but managed to turn quickly and take this picture as I was leaving just as they pretended to look up and away; Oh the horror!!!

[mustang6984]

Cousins of Christine perhaps? Following you around town...

[abe_lugo]

FYI guys. I believe the was a kit to add quads to a single headlight space for 57 Ford that was bolt in.  It was like and JC Whitney add on kit.

I can recall where I saw it. But it was an ad with a line drawing of the kit added.   

[mustang6984]

Bet they didn't sell many of them. YUCK! I agree with Joe...made the car look squat and fat. 

[CobraJoe]

Yes they did, I have a pic of some of the ads.







Mine were not a conversion, there were actual 1958 Ford assemblies, complete with part numbers.

[Jeff Norwell]

HAHAHAHAHAH  .Joe beat me to it!
yes, JC Whitney, and hundreds of others had the conversion kits..... I have heard rumours that Govt. legislation put dual headlights on nearly every brand of the big three... not sure if thats true.
I love a 58 Ford and may be the only one who likes a dual headlight.
Design wise.. Mopar had the best look.. Like what Abe is doing. The sheet metal that holds the headlights is indented and is. a much better appealing style.Ford is just flat .

The only thing I don't like on a 58 Ford is the rear tail lights..... but I have seen guys using a 60 Pontiac tail light red Bezel that I believe is a bolt on.... really cleans it up.trying to find 60 Pontiac tail light Lenses would be a tough chase today.

I really want a 58 Ranchero,. because it has the styling of a 57 ford in the rear and 58 up front.
A very sharp design

[Jeff Norwell]

And Ford did offer the conversion as an over the counter option as well..(As Joe has shown)

[hiball3985]

Jeff, I doubt it was a Gov regulation unless it was for full size cars as many cars in the 60's still had single, like Falcons, Mustangs etc..

[CobraJoe]

1961 DeSoto

"In the US in the 1950s, automotive lighting was governed by a patchwork of state regulations and industry standards. Starting in 1957, most (but not all) states permitted the use of separate low and high beam bulbs. However, because they were not universally permitted, very few 1957 cars were offered with quad headlights. Of the few 1957 cars that were offered for sale with quad headlamps (such as the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, 1957 Nash Ambassador, and 1957 Mercury) many had alternate single headlight front-ends to sell in states that prohibited quad headlamps.

This changed in 1958, with quad headlamps becoming legal in all 48 states. Most manufacturers switched over to the new look almost immediately (Think back to how square headlights popped up almost overnight on every car when they first became legal in 1975).

So the question with quad headlights became how to arrange them. Most manufacturers went with a side-by-side arrangement for their low and high-beam bulbs, although a few, like the aforementioned Nash, went with a vertically stacked arrangement (a look that Pontiac would popularize in the mid-60s).[/i]

1958 Lincoln Continental Mark III

And then there was Lincoln. In 1958, they were the first (and only) manufacturer to nix both the side-by-side and stacked headlight arrangement and instead lined up their headlights diagonally. I'm not really sure what the thought process was behind the canted headlights, but when you look at it in the context of the overall car, I think it is pretty obvious: Lincoln was trying to make a statement here.

Lincoln, a perennial #2 in the luxury car race (behind Cadillac), upon seeing the success that Cadillac was having with their ever more flamboyant designs, said to Cadillac, "Hold my beer." Everything about the 1958 Lincoln was designed to scream "Hey, look at me!" from the reverse-canted "Breezeway" rear window on the Continental to the expansive 131" wheelbase to the large scallops on the front and rear fenders. Honestly, I'm surprised they didn't try adding a third axle or a second floor. Canted headlights were just the icing on the crazy cake

1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV

For 1959, perhaps realizing that they had gone a little overboard, Lincoln tried toning down the look just a little, integrating the canted headlights into the grille (eliminating the separate pods), and smoothing out the front and rear fenders a bit.

1959 Buick Electra 225

1959 was also the year that Buick decided to stick their toe in the canted headlight waters. This would mark Buick's (and GM's, for that matter) only foray into canted headlights. A one-year-only entry, Buick returned to side-by-side headlights in 1960.

By 1961, even Lincoln had switched over to the side-by-side headlight arrangement, leaving the canted headlights for dead, or so it seemed. This is where Chrysler picks up the look, and the Mopar folks went in on canted headlights in a big way in 1961. You've already seen the 1961 DeSoto, in the hero image at the top of this article. Above is the 1961 Chrysler. Even the turn signals are canted!




By 1963, DeSoto was gone, and Chrysler and Plymouth had gone back to side-by-side headlights. This left Dodge as the lone domestic holdout for canted headlights. They went to a slightly more conventional layout for 1963 (if such a thing can be said about diagonally canted headlights).



And finally, the Triumph Vitesse employed diagonal quad headlights during its entire run from 1962 to 1971, making it one of the few cars to carry this look all the way into the 1970s.