Art & Colour became, as the late Dave Holls once described it, “The mother church of auto styling, the university that graduated design vice presidents for nearly all other U.S. Earl, who headed GM’s Art and Colour Section, developed the art of automotive styling. The next car to feature hidden headlights was a Harley Earl creation-America’s first concept car-the Y-Job. Though the Y-Job had many forward thinking features, the hidden headlights added a futuristic and sleek look to the one-of-a-kind convertible. The 1938 concept car was, at the time, probably the most radical automobile in existence. The next car to feature hidden headlights was a Harley Earl creation dubbed the Y-Job. The hidden headlight was about to emerge as a styling element that has yet to lose its allure after nearly 70 years. The Coffin nosed Cord 810 and 812 models rewrote the book on automotive styling and set designers on a new course. Instead, the lights were cranked by hand with separate handles under the dash. Buehrig wanted to make the lights retract via electric motors, but cost considerations prohibited it. The first use of hidden headlights for a production automobile was on the Gordon Buehrig-designed 1936 Cord 810. Making them work, however, would be a problem left for the engineers to consider. In 1933, Gordon Buehrig’s proposed “baby Duesenberg” sedan featured headlights that retracted into the fenders he patented the idea in 1934 and the hidden headlight became another idea for the stylists to use. Although the Cord 810 and 812 were not long-lived, Buehrig’s concept for concealed headlights is still used by automakers nearly 70 years later. The landmark design did away with the traditional grille and concealed the headlights within the fenders. It began as part of the design for a “Baby Duesenberg” but Gordon Miller Buehrig’s groundbreaking concept rewrote the book on American automobile styling when it debuted in 1936 as the Cord 810. The austere headlamp had evolved into a streamlined pod as aerodynamics became the styling vogue. Pierce-Arrow was the first to integrate the headlight into the fender’s design as a styling element, and, by the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, the headlight became a part of an automobile’s character. When electric headlights finally replaced the original kerosene and carbide-fueled lanterns used to illuminate the evening road, they were large, cylindrical units mounted atop the fenders.
Buehrig’s design for the hidden headlight attached the light housing to the cover, which, in the case of the Cord, was cranked open by a lever on either side of the dash, one for each light.
Eventually, after they caught on, every aspect of an automobile was designed with appearance in mind, including the headlights. In other words, motorcars were simply functional, but not especially stylish. In the beginning, motorcars were simply a new mode of transportation that looked very much like the horse-drawn carriages they were designed to replace.
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