Aside from their functional use, headlights are also an exceedingly important design element of a car that many nevertheless take for granted. At least until they stop working right. Most car companies don’t go for anything flashy (pun intended), just simple lights that handle the road well, both for the driver and oncoming vehicles. And while most car companies stick with the proven recipe of making the headlights both pretty and functional, others use them as a standout feature of the car...which can make or break a car's design.

Some are just odd, especially the lousy idea that adding more lights makes it better. There are also poor designs with lights too big or too large and placed in the wrong spots. Some headlights just look weird and distracting in the wrong way, while in some cases, it’s almost as if there are no lights at all.

Without further ado, here are ten of the weirdest headlights ever put on production cars that made us marvel at how companies can mess up something so simple and obvious.

10 1968 Oldsmobile Toronado

The Toronado was never an example of a car with well-designed headlights, but the 1968 model takes the cake. While it was a decent car for its era, the Toronado gets this spot because of its two incredibly bland and simple corner headlights. The grille was huge and protruding out of the front of the car like a snout, but the headlights are the ones that make the design so unusual, being integrated into the grille.

Oldsmobile tried to change it up by breaking the grilles into ill-fitting panels for lights that didn’t seem to fit the style. The shame is the Toronado had plenty of strengths, but those lights, in either configuration, did it no favors.

9 Hyundai Tiburon

It’s never a good sign when a car gives too many options for how the headlights are arranged. Amazingly, the Hyundai Tiburon gave no less than five different ports for headlights of vastly different sizes and shapes.

There are just too many of them with six along the top, all different shapes and sizes, a pair lower, and then another pair of fog lights below that (if optioned). It’s as if they couldn’t figure what design of headlights to go for and so threw them all together for a bad mix.

8 Chevy SSR

One of the more infamous flops in GM’s history, the Chevy SSR was a “flying fish” as a pickup convertible was a foolish idea. There’s a lot wrong with the design, but the headlights aren’t good with the weird idea of “bisecting them” with the longer grille design.

Setting the fog lights super-low was also a poor design choice. Some modders have adjusted it with larger lights which work better as the headlights are another reason the SSR didn’t work as well as the company wanted.

Related: Chevy SSR and 9 Other Ridiculous Chevrolets That Should Have Never Been Made

7 Corbin Sparrow

No, this is not a theme park attraction ride. The Corbin Sparrow is an actual automobile produced from 1999 to the early 2010s. It actually outlived its company as Corbin went bankrupt in 2003. It’s not hard to see why given this ridiculous car that looks like something from a Dr. Seuss story.

There’s so much wrong with it, but the fact it has a single cycloptic headlight set high on the front hood may be the topper. Only 300 of these were made, yet astounding it ever got off the design stage as solo lights belong on motorcycles.

6 1992 MX5 Miata

The MX5 Miata has gone through a few turns over the years, good and bad. On the one hand, the 1992 model has a great engine, a cool style, and looks terrific...except for the headlights.

And while some may find the surprised look these headlights give the car amusing or even endearing, we can't get over the fact that they were just a bad design decision in what should have been a beautiful convertible sports car. Between the size, design, and the front grille, when those headlights come up, it looks for all the world like some cartoon car that’s about to start talking. It looks great as long as the pop-ups are down, but the headlights turn an otherwise strong vehicle into a joke.

Related: 8 Cars That Are Somehow Uglier Than A Fiat Multipla

5 Fiat Multipla

It’s almost unfair to keep picking on the Fiat Multipla, a car that regularly tops lists of the ugliest vehicles ever to hit the road. Yet it’s still mind-boggling how awful this car looks. The headlights so high up near the windows aren’t fog lights, but legit regular road lights are amazing.

The lower lights aren’t much better as they’re way too small to be spotted until you’re very close and thus harder to handle. The headlights are just one of the many reasons why mocking the Multipla is a popular pastime.

4 TVR Tuscan

It must have made sense to someone in 1960s England, but it’s confusing who. The TVR Tuscan actually has a pretty nice style for the most part, an underrated sports car that could have been great...if not for those headlights.

Having a trio of lights stacked on top of each other like a game of tic-tac-toe was nutty, but crazier is that the top one is a turn signal. That’s combined with the weird mesh on the front. Even a little rearranging of the lights could have made the Tuscan a better car.

3 1968-70 Dodge Charger

If anything proves safety regulations were much lower in the late 1960s, this version of the Charger is it. The issue with these headlights should be obvious: they're not there. Of course, we know they're hiding behind the grille, which is an interesting design solution on Dodge's part, but we can't consider something we can't see to be good-looking. Putting thick mesh grating in front of the lights makes it harder for another car to see them and also limits what the driver can see.

It thankfully didn’t last long, yet it’s still a terrible idea as it doesn’t even add to the car’s design. Even the worst pop-up headlights are better than almost nothing at all.

Related: 10 Worst Muscle Car Redesigns That Never Should Have Happened

2 Aston Martin Lagonda

Never known as an attractive car, the Aston Martin Lagonda’s headlights weren’t that great either. Pop-up headlights should work, but the Lagonda’s just seemed off. They were way too boxy and the lower lights made them seem worse.

It just seemed better to avoid the pop-ups as the regular lights seemed pretty okay. But these headlights just added to the Lagonda’s poor reputation as one the ugliest cars around despite a good performance.

1 Cizeta V16T

Too many car companies make the mistake of thinking doubling down on some feature makes it better. In this case, the Cizeta V16T has the unfortunate design of having not one but two sets of pop-up headlights, one set over the other. The result is horrible, to say the least.

That’s combined with lower lights, so all told, it’s almost eight, which is way too much. Oddly, it looks much better before the pop-ups come on and the V16T proof that cutting down on lights is a better idea.