That is (was) a good family of lamps -- very efficient fog, "driving" (aux high beam) and for awhile it also included an aux low beam lamp.
Very correct. There's a giant mountain of junk on the market -- much more junk than good stuff. And of course all of it is marketed as a quality, high-performance upgrade.
Marchal is an extinct brand and Cibie has been teetering back and forth on the edge of extinction; both brand names have belonged to Valeo since the early '70s, a French-based auto parts conglomerate with a long history of making very good lights and spastic, random approaches to selling them in the aftermarket. Numerous parts with one part number...one part with numerous part numbers...stuff you can't buy but it's in the catalog...stuff that's not in the catalog but you can buy it (if you know the part number and happen to talk to the right person at the right office on the right day). They've always been like this. I've lost count of how many ridiculously good lamps they've put out, not catalogued, not promoted, made it difficult to buy, then discontinued because "Well, nobody was buying them". And their killing of the Marchal brand is somewhere on the border between dumb and criminal -- a brand with decades of famous recognition and a
perfect logo (cats can see in the dark, get it?) and they decided "Yawn...guess we don't need this any more". In Japan, the trademark rights were bought by a marketing outfit that slaps it on cheap junk from China. Sad. But some of the excellent old Cibie auxiliary lights are still in production, and they've got a really good new line of LED driving lamps.
Hella is a generally reliable German brand with a giant aftermarket product line that is well managed (none of the now-you-see-it/now-you-don't part number and catalog shenanigans), but the Hella name is not necessarily a guarantee of getting a good lamp any more. They've expanded their product line to include cheap Chinese trinkets, too. It's easy enough to avoid the junk, with knowledgeable advice.
Lucas is an old English brand now owned by a marketing company in India. There haven't been any real Lucas car lights made in decades. Through the '70s Lucas were generally known for extremely bad vehicle electrics ("What were Lucas' last words to his wife as he lay on his death bed? 'Don't drive at night!'"
"If Lucas made guns, wars wouldn't start!"
"Why do the English drink warm beer? Because they have Lucas refrigerators!" "Have you heard about the Lucas 3-position switch? Yeah, off-flicker-dim!") although they had some decent lights at that time. In the '80s they put out a burst of innovation including some very good auxiliary fog and driving lamps. By the mid '90s it was all over; the last of the original Lucas company had been sold and resold and resold and the name went away for awhile until it got picked up by the Indians.
PIAA's a Japanese brand. Their entire lighting line is between bad and fraudulent. They spend a lot of money on sexy packaging and breathless hype; their actual products are overhyped junk, but they sponsor race teams and price it stratospherically so people will think "Wow, I saw that name on a race car, and for this much money it's just gotta be good!". Unfortunately, it worksmarketing psychology 101. It's the "Slick-50 Effect". You can do a lot better for your money.
It's like anything else: there are some excellent LED auxiliary lamps, some good ones, some decent ones, and a lot of junk. Good lamps are better than bad lamps, no matter what technology they use. There are excellent American-made LED fog and driving lamps from
JW Speaker, but they are expensive.
Old-tech fog lamps, yes. Newer designs with complex reflectors have window-clear lenses. (Note "old tech" doesn't mean inferior; there have been many, many old-tech fog lamps that beat the pants off of many new-tech fog lamps.
Fog lamps are defined by their wide beam with a sharp top cutoff.
That's a common myth, but it's not quite correct. See
here for the full skinny on yellow fog lamps (and the French yellow-headlamp mandate).
Actually, yellow headlamps are still legal in France on any vehicle, no matter when it was registered. Very few vehicles in France have yellow lights any more, but you see one once in awhile. Usually an older model, but not always; occasionally someone goes to the trouble of putting yellow lights on a newer car.
No, driving lamps generally don't have a distinct light/dark cutoff. That's for low beams and fog lamps.
