Why Should I Upgrade My Automotive Lighting?
Other than your brakes, no other safety feature on your vehicle is as important as your lights. Without them, everyone's drive time would be limited to the brief period between sunrise and sunset. Workers wouldn't be able to get home in the evenings, semis would take a month to haul their load cross country, and drive-in movie theaters across the nation would be forced to close their doors.
A quality set of lights gives all of us the freedom of movement to venture out onto the road no matter what the driving conditions are. Moonless nights, foggy mornings, or stormy afternoons are no match for an arsenal of bright lights safely guiding you to your destination. Besides improving the safety of your vehicle, automotive lights give you the chance to redesign its overall look by adding new lights or altering the style and color of your existing ones.
Upgrading your automotive lighting lets you:
- Revamp your stock lighting system to reflect your own personal sense of style
- Add auxiliary lights to enhance your visibility for just about any driving condition
- Mount a heavy-duty set of protected off-road lights for your outdoor adventures
Let's face it: most stock lighting systems are about as visually appealing as an old brick. What's worse, this lack of design flare is an epidemic in almost the entire automotive industry. New cars, trucks and SUVs may have imaginatively shaped bodies, but their lights are usually just bland rehashes of old styles. Of course, you have the power to break free from this boring OEM world. Add an edge of excitement and a personal touch to your vehicle's attitude by upgrading your factory-installed lights. We make it easy to brightening up your front with a slick set of headlights or to outfit your rear with the hottest European-inspired tail lights. Check out our Guide to OEM Light Upgrades to learn more.
Certain driving situations call for special lights. When you're feeling your way through a dense patch of fog or a nasty blizzard, your low beams and high beams can actually make your visibility worse. Even on clear, star-filled nights, your headlights might not have enough juice to completely illuminate the unknown road ahead. AutoAnything has plenty of auxiliary lights, such as fog lights and driving lights, to add safety and style to your vehicle. Read through our Guide to Auxiliary Lights to get the inside scoop.
When you're slogging across rocky badlands, shredding down the face of sand dunes or heading out on a wild camping expedition, you need all the light you can get. Not enough lighting could mean the difference between getting home safely or being stuck in a ditch with a snapped axle and dwindling food rations. Before you hit the dusty trails, equip your rig with a powerful set of off-road lights. They're specially designed to withstand harsh environments. Take a look at our Guide to Off-Road Lights for more details.
In 1886 the world's first gasoline-powered automobiles rolled out of the European workshops of Carl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach and Siegfried Marcus. Besides lacking such modern amenities as air conditioning and in-dash DVD players, these early automobiles also lacked electrical lighting. Instead, their lamps were fueled by oil or acetylene, both of which could be quickly snubbed out by a strong gust of wind or rain storm. Needless to say, navigating across winding mountain roads at night could be quite precarious.
The technological breakthrough came in 1912, when Cadillac had the ingenious idea of moving away from oil and connecting the lights to the electric ignition system. Not only did this design revolutionize automotive lighting, it's still the system used on modern vehicles. Since this switch to electronic control, other innovations followed, including sealed beam headlights, foul weather fog lights and the ultra-modern HID xenon lights.
Today, optical engineers are making all sorts of new and exciting discoveries. Intelligent lighting systems are connected to GPS units, which use advanced topographical maps to swivel your headlights in expectation of turning a corner. In other words, your lights now know where you're going even before you do!