As you may have noticed, there’s been a trend in modern automotive design where beltlines have been getting higher and greenhouses have been getting lower, making windows wider and longer but shorter. This can give cars and SUVs a more solid, even somewhat menacing look, perhaps inspired by old custom car “lead sled” designs, and while I know this is a generally popular look, there is one largely overlooked victim of this design trend: the rear window wiper. The proportions of rear windows on many modern SUVs is such that the only wipers that will actually fit in the limited vertical space are tiny — even absurdly tiny — ones. Compared to the bulk of the rest of the vehicle, they look even more absurd, and, even worse, they don’t function well, being only able to wipe bagel-sized arcs on the rear glass. It’s silly, so let’s do a bit of healthy pointing and mocking. And I’ll also make a suggestion on how automakers can end this scourge.
The new Chevy Blazer is one of the most obvious examples of this goofball trend. Just look at that crazy baby wiper sitting there in the middle of the tailgate. Is it even big enough to be left alone on the back of the car like that? It looks to be about the size of the wipers on my Beetle, only here it’s on a car about quadruple the size and bulk. It’s like a knight in full armor brandishing one of those cocktail toothpicks shaped like a sword. It just feels silly.
Then there’s the actual utility, which is about as pathetic as the looks are. Here, check it out:
That’s not a hell of a lot of window to clear with that dinky little wiper, this time on a recent Jeep Grand Cherokee L. If someone is sitting in the middle of the back seat, they’d obscure all your cleared area. Near-vertical rear windows on SUVs get dirty! A wiper is supposed to be useful! And the Jeeps could be if it could clear an area bigger than the circumference of a personal pan pizza.
[Editor’s Note: At first I called this a Cherokee, and then David, of all people, told me it was a Wagoneer! We were both wrong! Crap. – JT]
Just to compare, look at some other SUVs from a few years back, that didn’t have this issue:
Those wipers both don’t look like they’ve just stepped out of a cold shower, and they actually clean a lot of window area. The Mercedes-Benz up top pre-dates the low greenhouse trend, so it has more vertical room to exist, while the BMW below it takes a clever approach, where the glass continues up at an angle behind the rear spoiler, giving the look of the lower greenhouse while simultaneously providing enough vertical area for a longer, more useful wiper.
(Also, I like how the reflection of that airplane in the window is right there by the wiper)!
I’m not just here to complain; I have a solution! That’s what I do, remember, turning on the headlights of reason instead of cursing the darkness. This can be solved in a way that keeps all the styling intact while making the wipers make more visual sense for their small size, as well as providing more usable window-clearing ability. By simply doing this:
Multiple wipers! When paired up, the tiny wipers don’t look so ridiculous, and they now clear a much more usable window area! Just look:
Everyone wins! And before you start kvetching to me about extra cost or whatever, let me remind you that somehow Toyota pulled this off decades ago:
The Camry Wagon wasn’t some hyper-expensive luxury car, and it had two rear wipers, because Toyota knew that was the best solution for the task. [Editor’s Note: It’s not clear to me exactly why this Toyota even needed two rear wipers in the first place! -DT]. Chevy can add another wiper to the Blazer and keep it out of Bentley price territory, I’m pretty sure.
Stupidly tiny rear SUV wipers are a blight on our once-proud nation, but it won’t take much to fix this. Just add another wiper and make us proud to look at the back of our SUVs once again. Little wipers, like all of us, just need a buddy to be at their best.
Is it just me, or does that rendering of a dual wiper Chevy look like a red Cookie Monster?
Cressida had dual rear wipers too. Makes your case even stronger!
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/38/dd/07/38dd07fe83a0865b9daf63fa0466149d.jpg
Please God, send me some of these amazing Japanese wagons. Space efficiency, visibility, velour, what more could I want?
Modern SUVs, were you shortchanged where it really counts? Would you like to do something about it? Click here to learn about Dr. Extendo’s non-surgical procedure for bulletproof back window cleaning performance. Drive in an embarrassing wiper runt and drive out a far more impressive you.
Tucking the wiper(s) up under the obligatory spoiler (at the top of the window) does a better job of protecting the wiper(s) in an automated carwash . . .
I’ve driven Caprice and Electra station wagons without, Astro, Safari, Grand Caravan vans with, Silverados, Colorados, F150s without, Vue, Equinox, Compass with. Didn’t miss them when they didn’t have them, didn’t use them when they did have them. So, I guess I’d go with zero, rather than spend more money on extras.
Arguably, David, the Toyota needs a wiper more than current SUVs because its window is so much closer to the ground, so it’ll get even more junk kicked up onto it, whereas that same junk is only sitting on the tailgate and obscuring the license plate of an SUV.
When considering the rear wake of a vehicle picks up dirty water, dust, and debris to coat the whole back vertical surface of a vehicle, the height isn’t really important in deposition rate
Interesting proposal but the dual wiper setup would look much better if both blades were oriented towards the outer edges of the windshield for symmetry.
So they clap together at the top of the arc? That’ll leave a vertical uncleared line or triangle in the center of the window if they’re synchronized, and look pretty goofy if they aren’t
It doesn’t really matter because you can’t see out of modern rear windows anyway, wiper or not.
Hear, hear. And don’t get me started about finding and installing replacements for some of those tiny wipers.
Dual wiper setups have nothing on this Lancia:
https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/car-design/a19871871/we-need-to-talk-about-lancias-ultra-luxurious-quadruple-rear-windshield-wipers/
Holy crap. That’s amazing. I was going to go a little crazy and suggest a 3 wiper solution like on later MGB’s but this goes far beyond my idea.
For me, these stunted rear wipers evoke the image of a dog with its tail docked.
Multiple wipers are always the answer to a narrow window, the MGB had three windshield wipers because of the aspect ratio. I suppose the VW Scirocco maintained karmic balance by having one wiper. AFAIK Toyota is the only manufacturer to have used two rear wipers so I challenge Torch to prove me wrong.
I’ve never even bothered to use the rear wiper on any car I’ve owned. No one needs them at all IMO.
Your opinion is as wrong as the recumbent rider who got dragged on Bike Forum for claiming 1x drive trains were heresy and triples were the one true crank. If you drive a hatchback with a sloped rear or anything with a vertical rear you need a rear wiper because water and crud accumulate. I’ve even seen vans with rear wipers.
Yeah, but, like, use your mirrors until you get a chance to wash it?
You don’t have to drive commercial vehicles very long before you consider rear windows a bonus feature. Convenient, but not necessary. Like heated seats.
No, they are very useful, especially for the rear windscreen that is close to vertical. I will let this article explains this phenomenon better:
https://www.autobulbsdirect.co.uk/blog/why-do-rear-windscreens-get-dirty/
They are most useful in areas that use a lot of salt and brine on their roads in the winter. Drive around for five minutes and your rear window is nearly opaque with salt spray. I can’t stand not having rearward visibility so I use the rear wiper on my Sportwagen often, even if it’s just raining. It’s already there and on the car, may as well use it to my advantage.
Toyota wagon = love
I concede that I haven’t read the other comments due to personal time constraints, but did it occur to anyone else that the insane part is that the was ever one wiper in back in the first place? I mean, windshields almost universally have two (or maybe even three), but a single wiper on a wide window is stupid. Remember that funky Mercedes Thrustmaster contraption? It looked so goofy because it was an overly complicated solution to an already solved problem. I remain convinced that a single wiper on wide aspect backlights is purely a cost cutting measure. If the manufacturers can’t charge you extra for it and they have to put them on every single trim, then they are going to cost optimize the shit out of that shit. Jason is totally correct, the painfully obvious, incredibly sensible answer is multiple wipers for any wide aspect window, front or rear.
I want one of those Camry Wagons very much. It’s so ugly yet so beautifully functional. That’s why it has two wipers. They didn’t really care how it looked beyond what made functional sense and two wipers cleared that wide glass better than one. The entire car was ‘styled’ but not even remotely intended to be considered attractive.
The single wiper on our Mercedes Ski Klasse project is called a Thrustmaster? haha! No way. But it’s the weirdest thing and every time I turn it on, I laugh. WHY?
I have no idea what it’s named and as I’m far too lazy to bother finding out, I just imagined what the proud German engineers would have called it. However, it’s Mercedes, so they probably call it the Magic Dildo Action Moisture Eliminator (M’DAME) or some similar euphemism.
Are you the Bill Caswell who lives in or near Fort Sheridan?
4 bar link wiper arm should allow larger wiper sweep
It’s not about the size of the wiper, it’s how you use it.
The real solution is bigger windows you can fucking see out of
Word
Given the tiny little wiper wipes the only bit of the tiny little rear glass that the driver can actually see out of…what actual problem is having two of them going to fix? You stiff can’t see much out the back through the tiny little rear window!
Yeah, this is ridiculous…and it’s probably a ripoff for that tiny wiper. I don’t even care about rear wipers (or even need a rear view mirror)
Sorry, but that was a bit anti-climatic. It wasn’t the slightly hair-brained contraption I was expecting.
https://patents.google.com/patent/DE202009014698U1/en
The last Cressida wagon originated the dual rear wipers, so the Camry wagon having the “dual rear wiper system” I guess was a nod to that since it sort of replaced it, but I don’t know if they ever explained why they did it in the first place on the Cressida. The only thing I can think is that Toyota couldn’t get enough of an arc/sweep of the rear window with one wiper because they always mounted the wipers on the tailgate, not the glass (like say, the original Taurus). Even the first Sienna wasn’t glass mount despite most other minivans of the day doing so.
…oh yeah, back to wipers now. It does seem like everyone is moving back to 180-degree sweeps, no matter how small of coverage. For several of these, I would think wiper coverage would be better with a tailgate- or roof spoiler-mount/hidden wiper. GM has deployed both in recent years, such as the Acadia with the former, or the large SUVs having the latter. Toyota has begun moving away from the top-mount such as on the Sienna and has a smallish wiper instead now.
Real men have wipers on their car’s headlights.
You don’t even need a second motor! Just use a motor that was designed for a larger rear windshield and use a simple rod linkage to actuate the second wiper!