As a child of the 1980s who came of age in the early '90s, pop-up headlights are, in my mind, the peak of automotive cool.

Plenty of Japanese cars embraced pop-up lights, too. For a while there, heaps of JDM cars had them, and makers like Mazda and Toyota were very keen on the concept. Nissan was in on the act at the same ...

It hardly seemed to matter. Pop-up headlights were considered, at various peaks from the ’60s to the ’90s, the height of cool. Safety legislation and the emergence of visible headlight ...