The Two Types Of Triclops Cars

I was over at The Sealed Bean, a combination headlight-enthusiast bar and chili hut, enjoying a pair of mugs filled with almost indistinguishable dark near-liquids, one with Guinness, one with their special black bean “sippin’ chili.” While double-fisting my dinner, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on the couple seated at the bar next to me, which seemed to be a first date. The guy was talking very loudly and nearly nonstop, pausing only to loudly slurp more chili into his mouth through a 2″ diameter chili straw.

The guy was a hardcore headlight fetishist, and was attempting to regale his date with a vigorous and relentless mansplanation of the theories about “triclops cars” – that is, cars with three headlamps. I recognized his date from some talks she had given at the Glowing Orb Headlight Lounge a few weeks back about “town lights” and parking lights. I think she was humoring the guy, because I’m pretty sure she knows her headlights.

But, maybe not everyone does! So, if you’d like, I’ll encapsulate the basics of what this guy was droning on and on about. It’s pretty simple, really, and I think he was vastly overcomplicating it to seem smarter.

Fundamentally, here’s the thing: there aren’t many cars that came from the factory with three headlamps –hence the “triclops” name. And, of these cars that did come with three headlights, there are two main categories these triclopses can fall into – though I would also like to propose a very rare third kind as well.

Let’s look at the first category, which is quite rare: the trio of equals. That means these triclopses have three headlights of equal size and brightness, like that Tatra T 603-1 up above there. The initial run of 603s had a three-headlight setup like you see there. Tatra had been using three headlight designs for quite a while, starting with the T77 of the 1930s:

Then, there was the Tatra T87 of the ’40s and into the ’50s, which also had a middle headlight:

I think the most famous example of a triple-headlight setup, though, has to be the Tucker 48, which had a central headlight that turned with the steering wheel:

There may be a few more examples of these, but there’s not terribly many. Slightly more common – though still by no means common-common, are the second type of triclops, where the central lamp is not exactly a full headlight: it’s a smaller driving or foglamp, meant to assist the headlights, but not exactly an equal.

That Fiat 1100 at the top of the article is an example of this, as is the Fiat 1400 B:

You can see the brochure calls it an “antifog lamp.” This was a factory central light, just not the same as the headlights.

Panhard did something very similar with their Dyna Z:

See the rectangular-oblong light there in the middle of the bumper/grille area?

That was more of an auxiliary driving/fog lamp, like the Fiat. They are really cool, though. A more recent example of this, and far more crappy, was the Zap Xebra, a fairly crappy little three-wheeled electric car that came to the US in 2006 and only lasted until 2009.

The little car was made by the Quingqi Group Motorcycle Co. of China, which, after two brake recalls, was ordered by NHTSA to buy back all 700 2008 model year Xebras because of the faulty brakes. Still, it did have a little central driving lamp!

Maybe the best-known example of this type of Triclops in America are 1980s Subarus that had the optional “passing lamp,” better known as the “cyclops eye”:

I always liked those.

Okay, so our two basic categories of triclopses are Three Equal Headlights, Two Equals and One Lesser, and while that covers most of them, I think there is still one category that needs to be mentioned. It’s by far the rarest, especially because I think modern lighting regulations make it illegal. But it’s this:

One large, primary headlamp, and two smaller auxiliary lamps! I think most cars with this layout were likely made before 1950 or so, but they are a thing, like on this incredible 1948 Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport Figoni Fastback Coupé David and I saw at Pebble Beach.

We actually did a little video about this car that remains one of my favorite videos we’ve done:

You have to watch to the end, trust me.

Anyway, I wonder how the rest of the date went?