What Years Did Jeeps Have Square Headlights?

There are few vehicles in the greater Jeep lineup that have proven quite as popular with consumers as the very utility vehicle that birthed the brand in the 1940s. Hard as it is to believe, Jeep has now been manufacturing some version of its WWII battlefield-tested 4x4 Willys for close to a century at this point.

Of course, at the end of the war, the Willys was rebranded as the Jeep CJ and made available for purchase by the general public. The aptly named vehicle has indeed had some model of its flagship vehicle in production since that 1945 debut, and will no doubt keep it around as long as the company itself is. Despite the Jeep's enduring appeal, the beloved build has boasted a few design changes over the years that have rubbed owners the wrong way, and few proved more divisive among the Jeepsters of the world than the move to square headlights.

As for the square headlight backlash, it stemmed largely from the fact that Jeeps had fronted rounded headlights since the first of the Willys rolled off the production line in the early 1940s. That being the case, when the squared headlights made their first appearance in the grills of the Jeep YJ in 1987, it came as a legit sort of culture shock to purists. Despite the vocal group of dissenters, Jeep kept the square headlights around for several more years, only reverting back to the rounded lights in the 1996 model year.

While the square headlight dissenters were no doubt happy to see the return to rounded frames in the Jeep Wrangler TJ, it is worth noting that the design change was just a small part of a massive overhaul — one undertaken amid growing concerns over the safety of the YJ's immediate predecessors, the closely related CJ-5 and CJ-7.

As it was, the Jeep CJ-5 was deemed the major problem child in the CJ lineup, with "60 Minutes" airing a segment during a 1980 episode that claimed the vehicles were particularly prone to dangerous rollovers. It was said that the vehicles and their roll-cage design didn't sufficiently protect drivers in the event of a rollover. While some have questioned the validity of those claims — which were based in part on a study conducted by the University of Michigan and a long line of settled lawsuits dating back to 1973 – the writing was on the wall for the entire CJ line once the news hit primetime.

The end of the CJ-5 in 1980 closed out a 35-year production run. Though the CJ-7 was ultimately deemed safer than the CJ-5, the company pulled the plug on it as well in 1986, closing out the tainted CJ line for good. As for the Jeep YJ, it debuted with a noticeably wider and longer base than its predecessors, a more driver-friendly interior, and numerous other upgrades to go along with those squared headlights, ultimately laying the blueprint for every Jeep that's come after.