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Long before cars could read the road, General Motors sold an option that watched it for you. The 1957 Oldsmobile Starfire 98 Convertible now listed on eBay Motors by West Coast Classics lists the Autronic Eye among its factory equipment, a dash-top electric eye that dipped the high beams on its own whenever it spotted oncoming headlights. The auction is scheduled to end Monday, October 26, at 4:22 a.m. Eastern.
What the Autronic Eye Actually Did
The system came out of GM's Guide Lamp Division in Anderson, Indiana. Guide Lamp announced it in February 1952 as an option on Cadillac and Oldsmobile, at roughly $53 according to Curbside Classic's history of the system. A phototube sat behind a lens in a pod on top of the dash and looked down the road. An amplifier under the hood, which GM's marketing nicknamed the "Autronic Brain," then triggered a relay that dropped the headlights from high beam to low. Guide Lamp claimed it reacted to oncoming lights roughly 900 to 1,000 feet away in clear weather, and a foot switch let the driver take over when the car got it wrong.
Drivers clearly wanted it. Chevrolet and Pontiac added it for 1953, and Guide Lamp reported more than 300,000 units sold on GM cars by January 1954.
Why It Never Took Over
The trouble was that a single photocell in 1950s glass could be fooled easily. It reportedly struggled with the taillights of a car ahead, dimmed late on curves and divided highways, and needed a clean spot on the windshield that the wipers did not always reach. A period road test of a 1953 Oldsmobile found the override was needed too often. GM kept refining it, renaming it Guide-Matic in 1960 and adding a sensitivity knob, and Buick introduced the separate Twilight Sentinel dusk-to-dawn headlight control the same year. But by 1966 most GM divisions had dropped the option. Cadillac held on to it into the 1980s.
It is the same kind of gadget-forward thinking we saw on the 1937 Cord 812 and its "Electric Hand" preselector, and a very different approach to headlights than the pop-up units on this 1980 Ferrari 308 GTSi.
The Car That Carries It
1957 was the only year Oldsmobile used the Starfire name across its entire Ninety-Eight line, and the convertible was the top of the range. RM Sotheby's puts the base price of a 1957 Starfire 98 at $3,838, the most expensive Oldsmobile that year, and counts 8,278 convertibles built. The seller says this one also has the optional J-2 setup on the 371-cubic-inch Rocket V8, three two-barrel carburetors good for 300 horsepower instead of 277. RM Sotheby's has put the J-2 at about $83 extra, and the listing describes it as very rarely ordered.
The rest of the factory equipment list reads like a 1957 luxury brochure: Jetaway Hydra-Matic, power top, power steering, brakes, windows and seat, tinted glass, original air conditioning, and a Wonder Bar Super Deluxe AM radio. According to the listing, the data plate decodes to a Lansing-built Starfire 98 convertible finished in Jade Mist Iridescent and Alcan White over a three-tone turquoise, green and white leather interior. The odometer shows 18,072 miles, and the seller reports an AACA Nationals prize in 2005 and a roughly 20-year single-owner stretch before the dealer took it in.
A Familiar Face
Regular readers may recognize it. We first covered this Starfire in January, when it was on Hagerty Marketplace with a $17,750 high bid and two days left. Hagerty's page shows the bidding there ended at $50,000 after 65 bids, and the chassis number on that listing, 579L04098, matches the one on the eBay ad. It has now resurfaced with West Coast Classics, a Torrance, California dealer, at a $74,625 opening bid with no bids and the reserve not yet met.
The seller says inspections are welcome before bidding, and that once the reserve is met the car sells as-is. As always, check the listing for the full terms, deposit and shipping details before you bid.
Oldsmobile was already pushing technology on its big convertibles when the Autronic Eye first arrived, as our look at the 1952 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Convertible shows. Today, automatic high beams are a standard feature on cars that cost a fraction of what this Olds will bring. In 1957, you had to order a robot eye.
Image: West Coast Classics via eBay Motors.
