Earlier today, I took receipt of a car part costing a little over $100. That’s not unusual, as cars aren’t exactly cheap to run, but this particular part is. It’s a bulb, and not a xenon one or a fancy LED one either, but an incandescent bulb. Perhaps the craziest part? If I had to, I’d buy one of these wildly expensive bulbs again.
I know what you’re thinking: $100 buys some much bigger, more important car parts. A single tire, a cheap replacement strut, even a new steel wheel. This little bulb can’t be that expensive to make, so why does it cost so much?
As you’ve probably guessed, this isn’t a normal incandescent bulb you can buy off the shelf at any local auto parts store, and that’s because it’s used to illuminate the Corona Rings in the headlights of an E90 BMW 3 Series, commonly known as angel eyes. Since these signature lighting elements came before the era of LED front lighting, how did they work?
While I did a whole story on this earlier, the short answer is that the rings are made of glass tubes and feature special refractive contouring, and they’re lit down the ends by an incandescent bulb with a special reflector. For this particular application, BMW—or more likely supplier ZKW—bonded the incandescent bulb into a chromed metal housing to ensure alignment with the ends of the glass tubes. The bulb and housing are all sold as one assembly, and partly because it’s a weird model-specific part for E90 3 Series sedans that isn’t even shared with the coupes and cabriolets, each bulb runs a pretty penny.
Sure, you can order unbranded replacements online, such as this one from FCP Euro for $44.89. However, convert that to Canadian dollars, add shipping, duties, and a potential 25 percent tariff just because, and it just isn’t cost-effective for me to buy the OE part online. Plus, I needed the bulb ASAP (you’ll soon see why), so I went on down to the dealership parts counter and ordered one for $140 Canadian. Considering the BMW-branded bulb goes for $110.19 from FCP Euro, and it’s still a three-figure incandescent bulb no matter which side of the border you’re on.
Amusingly, the knowledgeable and professional man behind the parts counter seemed a bit puzzled as to why I wouldn’t just buy cheap LED replacements from Amazon, but in an age when almost every new car from a Nissan Versa to a Bugatti Tourbillon is available with LED elements in the headlights, a warmer glow is different, and perhaps a bit nostalgic.
So yeah, a single incandescent bulb that costs as much as a decent date night sounds egregious, but if I have to, I’ll do it again. It’s a funny thing to love, but we often pay a premium for things that make us happy. Considering these bulbs often last for a decade or longer, a few dollars a year to have friendly, warm lighting doesn’t feel like a huge hardship.
Top graphic credit: Thomas Hundal
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Thanks Thomas! 😀
The ‘angel eyes’ first seen (by me) on older BMWs happens to be one of my favorite automotive design quirks of recent years, despite the fact that it’s been grossly overused in the aftermarket. It’s still much nicer than the whole clear Alteeza taillights craze, or the scowling faces on newer crossovers, etc…
Also, everything you said about just buying the part from the dealer parts counter instead of picking one from an unknown factory in China makes perfect sense. I’ve actually found this to be the case from time to time too… in that case, it was for VW parts, but the same logic applied… plus, you usually got a better part going with the dealer one: something Germanish sourced out of metal with nice clean edges, etc… instead of the cheaper thing stamped from sheet metal with iffy fittings, etc…
I forgot to include piano black interior plastics on my brief list of recent design trends. I hate that one even more than scowling car faces.
Reminds me of the Osram Diadem bulbs that were $64 apiece on my 2006 Range Rover Supercharged.
For 2006-2009, the ordinary Range Rover HSE had red rear lenses for brake, tail and rear fog duty. So you could get ordinary white/yellow bulbs and stick those in.
But the Supercharged had clear lenses with blue bulbs, which would light up red. And you needed two per side. One was a dual-filament, which I believe handled the tail and brake lights, while the other was a single-filament, for the rear fog light.
This forced me to go to the JLR dealership, in order to get them in short order, but they weren’t much cheaper elsewhere.
Yeah I wondered about those unnecessary decorative lights. If it was me, I’d just let them burn out.
Yup, BMW means Bring Money Willingly
Break My Wallet
Bring Mama’s Wallet
Way back when I had an upper manager that described employees as “lightbulbs”. Keeping employees happy and content was a waste of time, you could always just go get another. Unpaid OT, no-raises, constant firings over minor offenses and the like was his norm. He was a moron and got himself fired fairly quickly when he drove the company directly into an iceberg at speed.
But he wasn’t wrong. Every employee in every company is replaceable, just like a lightbulb. The issue is exactly like this real lightbulb, some employees are hard to find replacements for and you will have to pay for them when you do find one.
But this cuts both ways. Back to actual lightbulbs. It took time and money for Thomas to find a replacement bulb for this unique application. But it also took time for the guy he bought the bulb from to find a buyer.
I struggle with that last one. I’ll read a job posting and not know 90% of the terminology that they are talking about. But I’ll know enough about the main subject that I could be an instructor to their experts. It’s really hard to get past the HR department where I am not checking any of the boxes that managers say they need. So, although there have been times I’ve been pissed enough to go job hunting, it’s a TON more work than if I had normal skills instead of niche ones.
“I’ll read a job posting and not know 90% of the terminology that they are talking about”
Much of the time, I find ‘terminology’ some use is just meaningless word salad to give the impression that the given person has more knowledge and intelligence than they actually do.
Same deal with acronyms. I hate acronyms.
What I find is that the HR department cheats on the job requirements. Someone just quit and we need to replace them. Let’s get a copy of their resume. Now use the buzz words that they put on their resume to put in our job posting.
It’s like when you have a blown out weird lightbulb and you do a google search for all the numbers that are on it.
The problem is that the perfect candidate for your job opening is the person that just left (by choice or not).
We had a guy that quit a couple years ago. He had horrible people skills and didn’t fit in with our culture and there was a lot of joy when he left. By the time, everyone got their crap together to look for his replacement, he had worn out his welcome at his new company and was a “perfect fit” for us. Upper management really wanted to hire him because he checked every box, even though he had a proven track record of not playing well with others.
Back in the day, it could be a quick way to filter folks. Every industry and department has its own jargon. Fluency generally meant you’d at least had some exposure to it so you probably weren’t completely clueless.
Now it just means the janky software used to vet candidates filters people out who don’t write their resume to conform to the algorithm.
When I had an e90 335i years ago – I loved that car – I replaced my angel eyes with LED bulbs from a company called LUX. They worked really well and the company stood behind their product. They were less than $200 usd for a pair. Bonus: they were much whiter and brighter than the OEM halogen bulbs.
I don’t think Thomas sees bright white halos as a bonus.
Yeah, I hear ya. If you’re going for the OG OEM look, those aren’t for you. I will say that my particular product was a pretty warm white and was really similar with the later LCI models that had the brighter angel eye rings.
I turned the corona ring lights off on my E90 for this reason.
On my 90’s-era cars, opening the door to a dim, incandescent dome light tells me that I’m about to have to pull out the jumper cables. The Cherokee gave an audio warning too as the very analog buzzer that lets you know both that the lights are on and the key is in the ignition gets noticeably softer with a low battery.
I understand your choice, back when I had an e39 M5, I always liked the incandescent color and smooth appearance of the light rings.
Back in 2018, I needed a sealed beam headlight for my 1956 Lincoln. I walked into the closest auto parts store in town and asked. Not only did they have one in stock, it was also….$5.99 plus tax. Amazing. Oh, and I didn’t need to have 3 wrists and disassemble the back of the housing under the hood. I did it from the outside with 3 screws in about 5 minutes.
I’d say it’s a win, but some tech like lighting and safety has come a long way since then. My point is that I wish they still made cars less complex and easiert to service.
And the thing is… modern lights don’t NEED to be expensive. OEMs could design headlights that use common/cheap bulb sizes, but many like BMW choose not to.
“because luxury”.
Agreed, it’s annoying that there are standards of components and they get ignored for “reasons”. Now brands are putting logos inside the lens housing so that they can charge more for OEM to insurance companies. If you replace your cracked headlight and it doesn’t say RAM, or have the Audi 4 rings, then it’s clearly an aftermarket part. Ugh. Such a scam, but it’s nothing new.
I find this a very odd post. You wanted something, you could afford it, you could justify it to yourself, and you bought it. I usually don’t respond negatively (out loud), but it feels weird that you decided to share it with us.
…because “get the cheap knockoff” is the default route for most people, not even counting the natural skinflint tendencies of the engineering-minded? Because the fact that LEDs look different from halogens doesn’t register on a lot of folks? Because we needed some pleasantly Canadian filler for a Friday morning?
“$100 buys you a single tire”
Man, I wish
If you’re DT, $100 buys you a couple jeeps.
I’ve purchased 4 tires for my Austin Healey for $100. The trick is owning a car with small tires.
Hah! That was the first thing I thought as well, having just paid nearly $800 for 4 tires.
When I had my e90 it needed a certain bulb, 100$ for the BMW one. I did a bit of googling, and found out the German light company (osram? Something like that) makes lots of different brand bulbs. I went to my local Canadian Tire, and the cheap in house brand was made by the same company that produced the BMW brand. $60 vs $100. Fuck I hated that BMW. I remember you had to go through the wheel well to change those bulbs or something along those lines. German engineering at its finest. Never again.
Osram D1S… I know them well!
I recognized that bulb immediately. I replaced mine with the LEDs, and while they were brighter, the overall design of the angel eye elements is terrible and they were always unbalanced. After spending a couple hundred on those I gave up and replaced the entire headlights with new LEDs in the stock style and they looks so much better.
I read today that the tariffs were not going to be on car parts just completed cars. Did I get that wrong?
Parts too:
> The tariffs will go into effect on April 3 and apply both to finished cars and trucks that are shipped into the United States and to imported parts that are assembled into cars at American auto plants
And sub components (screws and such). It is the whole process chain being tariffed and it’s an ugly confusing mess.
Nobody tell Thomas you can get LED bulbs in a variety of color temperatures, including nice warm 2700k-3000k ones.
I wish they did make decent ones for this application. The “amber” ones are too warm (~2,300k), the “white” ones are too cool, and the RGB ones seem to have awful quality control.
If you can find me LED headlight bulbs from a name brand in the 3500-4500k range, I’m ready to throw my money at them. But I haven’t had luck yet.
Philips Ultinon Classic are 3500k
Oh, gee, I wish I had known about this before buying the LED H7 and H1 bulbs for my 2009 VW Polo. While I like the improved output very much, I am not too sure about the cooler colour temperature, though.
I just looked up the German Philips website and couldn’t find this specific bulb. I guess they’re not approved by Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt yet. In Germany and many European countries, the LED bulbs must be certified specifically for each vehicle. If your vehicle isn’t on the compability list, you can’t install them in your car.
I waited almost two years for my Polo to be approved. Once I obtained the H7 and H1 LED bulbs along with ones for front position lamps, I had to print out the compliance letters to put in the glove box and affix the stickers to the headlamp housings.
So a $100 vanity part?
Seems cheap for the brand.
That’s literally what I say to everybody that comes in and tries to buy those bulbs at the dealership I work at. The LED ones look better, as long as you get one that’s a straight white color temperature rather than the blue-white.
Color temp is a huge part of LED sorting. I replaced my interior lights with LED’s, but I spent a lot of time finding lower 3000k versions to make it that warmer look.
Absolutely. I hate the blue LED’s as much as everyone else, I’ve always sought out a warmer toned LED for angel eye bulbs.
I may be in the minority here, but I think LED bulbs look terrible, their appearance and the light quality
I don’t care for the bluer light myself, but compared to halogens they definitely help me see further (Prius v, so I promise they’re not getting in anyone’s eyes on flat terrain), and I appreciate the lower power draw
After Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA) in Germany approved the LED bulbs for my 2009 VW Polo (after almost two-year waiting), I quickly installed them. I noticed the huge improvement in output, especially on the dark roads. However, I wish I could get the warmer colour temperature.
Some people can see the pulse of LED’s unconsciously and that makes them uncomfortable. How do you like neon lighting?
I hate LED’s in most applications (especially around the interior, ick) but for angel eyes they can look pretty nice, especially if you pick the right color temperature. The brighter LED means it can be seen in the daytime so it makes for a more stylish daytime running light.
They match the Xenon bulbs better as well IMO.
Back in the early 2000’s when BMW was the style leader and there were parts to put angel eyes and aerodynamic side view mirrors for any car readily available at Pep Boy’s.
I’ve always been jealous of the blue tint side mirrors.
Haha as soon as I saw the picture I knew what this was for. For the record the LED ones off eBay suck, I went through two different sets that each lasted about a week before biting the bullet and going genuine. I ended up finding an eBay seller based in Latvia of all places selling them for AU$60 (about US$40 at the time) each plus about $10 postage. Only downside was a 2 week wait
I’ve had very good luck with the $15 ones on eBay. Have them on two E90s, and they are two and four years old at this point. I think the color matches the Xenon lights as well.
If I still had my E90 I’d ask you what brand you got! I did prefer the white light matching the xenons for sure.