HID lights in classic vehicles.........legality?

Not sure where you stand if you get stopped by police with them, but they need some sort of leveling device to stop other drivers getting blinded, if not fitted with such a device they will not pass an mot, i brought a car earlier this year with them fitted and tbh they still are fitted and yes they are good giving out plenty of white light, i keep meaning to take them off..

Don't just need projectors. Some Lexus have HID's in reflector housings, but a special kind of reflector housing.

You won't get the cut-off with stock lenses regardless of what any numpty tells you.
You WILL dazzle other drivers. As stated above, you need auto levelers and washers too.

I too was under the impression it was illegal (and I now see that it is) so I thought it strange that Retro Cars magazine just did a feature on how to fit them!

it also says in the feature that they are illegal to fit for road use in the feature tho
for the aggro of fitting them, they don't in my opinion make a decent enough difference over a set of good Osram/Philips bulbs ;D

I guess they see it as being no different on giving a guide on how to fit a decat to a certain type of car as a number of magazines used to do not so long ago. Another item that I believe has been illegal for some time.

That's part of the problem I have with them. Retro-fitted they always seem to be fitted to the dipped beams, and not the full beams. I'd have no problem at all with fitting them just to the full beams, but you really don't need such bright dipped beams.

Even with the (arguably) more precise beam pattern that proper HID's fitted to modern cars have, they still blind you badly on the slightest bump, crest or bend in the road, and in fact the sudden change in brightness it gives when you do inevitably end up with your eyes/mirrors in the beam pattern is quite distracting and can often seem like you're being flashed as it's so sudden.

Plus in theory, the whole concept behind them being 'safer' can be seen as somewhat flawed. Think about it, if you can only light a certain portion of the area in front of you properly, but really you want to see everything in front of you, not just that small segment, then it's pretty clear that the best way to go about it is not to massively illuminate what area you can. If you do then the darker areas not included in the lit section will in contrast appear even darker. You're effectively decreasing your view of 60% of your environment in order to see the other 40% better, when really, you didn't need to see it better anyway, as most of the time you should be looking well in front of where your dipped beams actually reach.

All depends on the beam pattern of the lamp. Just because they work ok in one lamp [ie: your van], doesn't mean they wont dazzle on another car's lamp assembly. It's more luck than anything else that yours appeared to be ok.

All my cars have clear lenses with no beam pattern the patten is on the reflector. I think this and poor adjustment is where people go wrong with hids as when fitted correctly they give far better light than standard bulbs without the dazzling you get from alot of the so called upgrade standard fit curse word most cars seem to have fitted.the headlights in my audi came with projector lenses and upgraded bulbs and its absaloute curse word beam patten that is just a straight across the road and as dull as dish water and yet still manages to dazzle even though they are adjusted spot on if it wasn't for the good high beams on it you couldn't see more than about 20 foot in front on an unlit road so sorry but I'm all for fitting hids on a safety reason weather they are aloud or not they will be on my cars

Old yellowy Lucas sealed beams and liberal use of "The Force" seems to work OK for me.