Cars by Headlights — Rules for the Ultimate Petrolhead Quiz

This is the hardest quiz in the garage: 30 cars, each shown as nothing but a tight crop of a single headlight. No grille, no silhouette, no badge — if you can name a car from one light cluster, you've earned the petrolhead title.

It's more doable than it sounds, because lighting is where designers hide a car's signature: pop-up lids, halo rings, hammer-shaped running lights, split-level clusters. The set spans classic icons through modern LED-era supercars, hot hatches, and EVs, so every era of headlight design gets its moment.

How to play

• Type the model name — matching runs live on every keystroke, and a correct answer flips the card to reveal the car.
• You don't need the full formal name: well-known short forms like "Miata", "GTI", and "911" are accepted, with or without the brand in front.
• Solving a card also reveals a generation hint, so you learn exactly which version of the car you were squinting at.
• This is rated 5/5 difficulty — leaning on Give Up your first run is normal, and it shows every answer you missed.
• The timer counts up from your first keystroke, and runs autosave, so a refresh won't cost you your progress.

What counts in this quiz

• 30 recognizable production cars, each represented by a photo cropped to just one headlight.
• Answers are model-level: the model name is what solves the card, and popular nicknames for a model count too.
• The mix runs from classic round lamps and pop-ups to today's sculpted LED signatures — recognizing the era is half the clue.

What's not included — and why

• A bare brand name never solves a card — this is a model quiz, so typing just the manufacturer gets you nothing.
• Badges and wordmarks were deliberately kept out of frame when the photos were cropped, so there are no logo clues hiding in the shots.

Good to know

• Pop-up headlights died because of pedestrian-safety regulations — the last two cars sold with them were the Lotus Esprit and the Chevrolet Corvette, both in 2004.
• BMW's "angel eyes" halo rings debuted on the facelifted E39 5 Series around 2000 and became so iconic that aftermarket kits spread them to almost everything.
• Volvo officially nicknames its T-shaped daytime running light "Thor's hammer" — one of the few design elements a brand names after a Norse god.
• People really do see faces in cars: headlights read as eyes, which is why designers talk seriously about a car's "expression" — friendly, aggressive, or sleepy.