New & brighter bulbs from Osram/Phillips

Clean cloudy plastic headlights with toothpaste & baking soda

The headlights on our 1.0 TSi Fabia (same car as the Audi with a different body) were also totally r****** to the point of being almost dangerous. Looked at fitting some of the higher rated but still legal halogen bulbs but they were expensive and seemed to have a pretty short life.

Our solution was not to use it in the dark unless absolutely essential. Our other car, a Skoda Superb has LED lamps which are brilliant.

Fabia was replaced by a Toyota Yaris which in the Design trim also has LED lamps and they are equally brilliant so no issues now. Feel sorry for people who have bought the Icon spec Yaris which has halogen lamps with no option to upgrade (our local plod has those so no chance of getting seen and caught).

Don't fit aftermarket LED bulbs, they are illegal on cars made after some time in the 80's (strange construction and use rules). It would be an automatic MOT failure and potentially invalidate your insurance since technically the car would not be legal on the public road.

The law on LED has been recently changed.

See MOT rules now, it's NOT illegal to fit aftermarket led bulbs as an upgrade.

As long as the direction of the lights are within mot guidelines, it's a pass!

You often read of supposed short life of the higher quality legal upgrade bulbs, have used Osram and Philips (only those makes) upgrades for years, can vaguely recall one bulb failure but couldn't tell you which car or bulb make was involved and it must be many years ago now.

Sometimes headlights are simply set too low from the start, maybe if you feel qualified and can locate the adjuster screws you might think about bringing the settings up a tad, i had to do this with my last truck, also made by VW group, the lights as fitted were appalling, lots of illumination to the nearside hedgerow and nothing at all where needed, i also fiited higher rated bulbs to that which helped a little (Osram Truckmate), some German marques have sharlyp cut of beam patterns and as noted by Andrew anything beyond the beam was in complete darkness...thankfully present Swedish truck has LEDs and are the best headlights i've ever had on any vehicle, spotlights also LEDs which light the road up for a mile or so ahead, not as you get many opportunities for full beam these days.

Don't forget spotlessly clean windows and mirrors help no end, facing bright oncoming lights and those crass ridiculously bright illuminated advertising boards is bad enough anyway but when you have grimy windows the light attack diffuses across the whole window.