Giant light bars give you useful visibly in foul weather and the pitch-black of remote trails. But let's be real; 99% of the time you can navigate the night just fine with the two headlights god gave you. Who cares, extra lights will instantly make your car look extra awesome.
I'm a grumpy old man, so I'm a fan of the old-school spotties. Round, not this newfangled squareshit you kids cram between Monster Energy stickers. (Actually, I finally got to use a rectangular LED light bar in the Mojave last week and it was like summoning the freaking sun.)
LEDs of course have many advantages over halogens; they use way less power, make less heat, and the flat ones give you less of an aerodynamic penalty at higher speed. I'll probably strike a compromise and get some round ones for my Scout when it finally comes to life. Or not, nothing wrong with decorating a lawn ornament right?
Can you go overboard with extra lights? Sure. But a coupe torches tucked into the front bumper, or best of all an extra rack of four across the top (homersimpsondrool.jpg) just looks boss.
Case in point, I submit my old Land Rover. Look how much cooler it got with $100 worth of Hellas and a few pieces of hardware!
Come on:
Kia knew they had to make their Trail'ster concept look cooler and off-roady but they didn't want to actually do anything. The solution? Toss a couple bigass lights on there! And you bet it worked:
Also an obviously improvement (thanks Jacob):
Even this is an upgrade:
Okay, this guy might be overdoing it:
(In that Wrangler's defense, it was a demo vehicle for an LED vendor.)
So bring on the counterpoints. And who's in for round versus square on extra lights?
Images by the author, Jeep, KC Hilights, Rob/Flickr
Andrew P. Collins is Jalopnik's off-road and adventure guy. Shoot him an email or hit him up on Twitter to talk trucks.