FASTER cars need better headlights, said an Audi ad in 1988. Particularly models such as the 136bhp Audi 90 (136BHP? Steady…).
What’s more, it added, congested roads mean less opportunity to drive on main beam.
Audi’s solution? To extend the width of its wide-beam asymmetric headlamps. This increased beam breadth and range, on both dip and main beam, by 20 percent. Achieved because, apparently, doubling the width of the reflector doubled the luminous intensity at the side of the road.
Now, some marketing wizardry. Why doesn’t everyone just double the size of their headlights, Audi asked. Because, Audi answered, with conventional round headlights, when you increase the size of the reflector, you may also increase the height of the car’s frontal area. Result: worse aero. A slower top speed. Defeating, guffawed Audi, the point of bigger headlights in the first place.
Some manufacturers, it added, naming no names, have ‘solved’ this by using four round headlamps instead. Imagine; the very thing. Because, of course, to achieve sufficient illumination on dip beam, when only one set of lights is used, they (would) have to resort to ellipsoid lenses.
Great for fog lamps, pooh-poohed Audi, but they fail to produce breadth of beam as wide-beam asymmetric lamps. They also give an over-intense ‘white’ light. This will upset oncoming motorists, rather than the ‘soft’ light of asymmetrics.
And, driving behind an intense beam strains vision and leads to tiredness. Thanks God no foolish manufacturer did such a thing, Vorsprung Durch Technik’d the ad-reading reader.
But, hang on: four headlamps? Didn’t Audi rivals BM…?
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