It’s a given that every car traveling on the highways and country roads of the world has two headlights. But with today’s matrix LED headlight technology, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell exactly what a headlight is. And yes, motorcycles only have one, but even those special modes of transportation can have a bewildering variety of front lights. So let’s keep it simple: cars have two headlights. But there was a time in World War II when some only had one.

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In July 1943, Japan’s Automobile Technology Committee (ATC) agreed on new specifications for a truck to be used during the war. Between November 1943 and March 1947, Toyota built its Model KC truck with only one headlight due to a shortage of raw materials that were being diverted worldwide for the war effort. This was done to build aircraft, tanks, ships and other military vehicles and was by no means a Japanese phenomenon; all countries involved in the war were forced to do it.

In fact, all private automobile production in the United States came to a halt when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the establishment of the War Production Board in January 1942. This ban lasted until October 1945. During this time, only 139 regular cars were produced, compared to about 3 million in 1941, the year before the ban. Toyota’s KC truck was merely a wartime version of its previous model, the KB, and was built at the Koromo plant (now the Honsha plant) in September 1945.

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Raw materials – particularly steel – were so scarce that Toyota had to shave about 30% off the KB’s weight to meet new specifications from the country’s Automobile Technology Committee. Since the company could no longer produce drawn-from-solid steel tubing, it had to stop producing trucks with the push-tube system and switch to a Hotchkiss rear-wheel-drive configuration instead. The KC’s engine was the same 78 hp, water-cooled OHV inline-six that was used in the KB version.

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Both had the same wheelbase (157.5 inches), but the KC was 17 inches shorter (225 inches) than the KB (242 inches). Oddly, it was 2 inches wider (81 inches) than the KB (78 inches). Still, the curb weight of the KC chassis was 3,704 pounds (the KB was 4,112 pounds) and the gross vehicle weight was 5,908 pounds. The bed was nearly identical to that of the KB and other trucks of the era.

As the war progressed, raw materials became increasingly difficult to obtain, forcing Toyota to build the KC’s cabin out of wood panels rather than steel. To save as much metal as possible, the second headlight was eliminated and only a single lamp was placed in the center of the radiator casing. Interestingly, after the war ended, the Allies banned Japan from producing passenger cars until 1949, but Toyota began work on the prototype of the Model SA (its first post-war passenger car) in 1947.

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