Low-friction/ultralow-wear coatings allow “surface engineering” for improved performance and durability, and enable use of new light weight or low cost materials. The accepted correlation of wear resistance with hardness suggests use of ceramic carbides and nitrides, with diamond being the ultimate anti-wear coating. While any of these may be deposited by chemical vapor deposition, the high cost (due to low deposition rates and high capital costs) and (usually) high deposition temperatures makes CVD coating impractical for cost-sensitive automotive applications. While rarely as hard as their crystalline counterparts, hard amorphous films exhibit similar (and occasionally superior) tribological properties and may be deposited on virtually any material at low cost. The highly nonequilibrium deposition process - conformal plasma reactive ion plating (CP-RIP) - allows tailoring of film properties and exploration of completely new compositions with no crystalline counterparts. Factors controlling the mechanical and optical properties of amorphous hard coatings, and recent progress in their application will be reviewed.