I really have no idea how this is possible, or the circumstances that perhaps lead up to this glorious phenomenon, or why or anything. I’m not even sure I want to know, because I may prefer this whole thing to be shrouded in beautiful mystery. And, by “this whole thing” I mean a massive mound of 30,000 “box” taillights that is currently holding court in Clayton, NC, and are currently being sold for $7/pair. The mind reels at the possibilities of 30,000 box taillights! You could outfit 15,000 Jeeps with proper lighting! You could build a massive wall of these in a grid and make pixellated, red (and some white) light animations! You could make a really uncomfortable wardrobe! The mind reels!
If you’re unfamiliar with the term “box” taillight, I can almost guarantee that if you live somewhere in North America, you’re at least familiar with the lights themselves. These are those basic, box-shaped taillights that have been used on innumerable working and utility vehicles from forklifts to box trucks to dump trucks, pickup trucks, and, perhaps most famously, Jeeps, from the CJ-5 in the late ’60s/early ’70s to the TJs of the late 1990s.
These taillights are an under-appreciated design icon; I’ve been trying to find out who designed these marvels of efficiency – two bulbs perform six separate functions – for years with no luck. I got pretty obsessed, and even made a tribute video all about them:
That one I’m holding in the video there set me back about $20 – and this King of Taillights is selling two for seven bucks! A steal!
I look at this colossal mound of box taillights and feel nothing but awe, perhaps that strange and rare feeling we call “numinous.”
You feel it too, don’t you? Of course you do – you’re human! How could you not be faced with 30,000 box taillights and not feel something stirring deep inside you?
Even at the wildly low price of $7/pair, buying the whole mound would set you back about $105,000 – a hefty investment. But think of what you could do!
The world’s largest and most painful and pinchy ball pit! But instead of balls, it’s taillights, you see. Forgive the crudeness of that mockup, but you get the idea.
Artist Amy Landesberg has set a precedent with her sculpture Tail Light Swarm, installed on a wall in the San Diego airport, and made up of 801 Hyundai Elantra left-side taillights:
Amy Landesberg's "Autoplast I: Tail Light Swarm" is on display in the Rental Car Center. Have you seen it? https://t.co/ombwOVIv01 #SANArts pic.twitter.com/OuFGp3ySGM
— San Diego Airport (@SanDiegoAirport) September 19, 2016
Maybe there need to be more massive taillight sculptures? 30,000 taillights are enough to make a 160×144 grid, which is the size, in pixels, of an original Game Boy screen! With that and some electronics and an emulator on a Raspberry Pi, you could have a massive playable Game Boy installation! You could even emulate the 4 shades of greenish by having just the taillight on, the brighter brake light, the reverse light, or both bulbs! That’s four separate levels right there! This could work!
You could build a whole, functional taillight bar from these, complete with box taillight chandeliers!
The possibilities are dizzying! And it’s not too far from where I am? Maybe I need to pay a visit to Mount Taillight, if only to pay my respects.
Let’s Appreciate And Define A Particular Class Of Taillight, The Layer Cake: Today’s Taillight
We Need To Talk About These Alfa Romeo Taillights That Look Like Jeeps
Take The Hardest Taillight-As-Sushi Identification Quiz Ever
(Thanks to Ted for showing me this link!)
Jason,
Im glad that showed up in your Facebook Marketplace like mine out in eastern NC as well. Was not expecting you to post about this, but for only $7 a pair, how can you not go and buy like 10 of these? You could put these on the out side of the house to have as decoration, you can put together a small board to have them operate as a dark room light.
Roxanne, is that you?
Hmmm, string a whole bunch of them together and hang them on the house as Christmas decorations. Put them on blink for the twinkly effect.
I think these are needed for the Autopian HQ. The ones not snatched up by David should given to Torch with the directive “Go nuts.”
Telling Torch to “go nuts” could have interesting outcomes…….
That is kind of the point 🙂
To go nuts, he’d have to return from there first.
There has never been a more clear sign from the universe that Lantern Rouge Bar needs to be built. Someone start a Go-fund-me and let’s do this.
But it has to be built in the red-light district of whichever city is decided on.
I’m donating to your Kickstarter, chief.
*Please* tell me that at least ine or two of those Hyundai taillights in “Taillight Swarm” is burnt out, haha.
Ornaments for a massive Christmas tree or a Hanukkah display? Put them in groups of nine with an arduino to make cumbersome Tic-tac-toe games?
We need some serious investigative reporting here:how in hell does this even happen??
You just know Jason wants to go lie down on that pile and wave his arms and legs making taillight angels. Or possibly some less wholesome activity.
This appears to be real and not an April Fool’s thing. Wtf.
Jason, you may want to get cleared by your cardiologist before clicking through those kinds of Facebook listings.
So these are all unboxed? Pass.
This title seems familiar, Dashiell Hammet novel? Frank Zappa movie?
“I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies.”
“I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to hide our jeeps We left the camp after we had hidden the jeeps, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every tail light There they were in a pile. A pile of little red boxes. And I remember… I… I… I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget.”
“The horror … the horror…”
I can understand why David has not flown out to see this wondrous agglomeration – I don’t think he even gets used parts anymore unless new ones aren’t available, and then he just sends his lackey to the Salvage Centre of Century City – but this is not far from you at all, Torch. Why are you not right now swimming in that mating pile of taillights (30,000 means some of them have brought forth new generations. and let’s hope they don’t decide to eat the babies) like Daffy Duck in the gold coins and treasure of Ali Baba’s cave?
They’re veritable Triblelights.
Does Jason know he can get a big discount per unit if he buys in volume?
Hopefully this is not some sicko’s idea of an April Fools joke on Jason…he will be so disappointed
I’m picturing David and Jason simultaneously squealing with delight upon discovering this!
I mean, they are great and all, but only red and white lights? Wake me when someone is selling 30,000 taillights that include AMBER.
Couldn’t agree more
How much you want to bet Torch fogged his monitor while writing this article. At least Sally can rest assured it wasn’t OnlyFans.
I’m really, really, REALLY surprised you haven’t bought them all already Torch! This also includes David but you would get there 1st. I thought you would have started your own Taillight Bar! Ha ha…I want a taillight chandelier
I… I mean…
Thirty THOUSAND?!? How? And why?
I just… what?
My first thought is…….. Inherited uncle’s bizarre surplus auction purchase? I wouldn’t be surprised if these taillights are very old.
@Jason The matrix was my first thought. Its a fascinating idea. It would be a wiring nightmare. I have some experience with Matrices on Pi and most are pre packaged so the wiring is already done. With 30,000 lights, I may be wrong, you would want red dim, red bright and white. that’s effectively 90,000 pixels, 120,000 total leads ( the positive leads on 3 pixels on each light and a common ground). Running the leads wouldn’t be the problem but you have to somehow wire all 120,000 wires to a Raspberry Pi with no more than 40 io ports. Obviously there has to be some kind of interface, they make Hats for the Pi to drive these things but when you go from something you can buy on amazon or from some guy on line and code it to building something of this complexity becomes something outside the scope of most mere mortals. If anyone wants to take it on and wants a partner with a laser cutter, and a some skills I would invest my time and money!
I don’t think the Game boy is the best use. I think it needs to be something industrial and minimalist like the lights themselves. Maybe a rolling billboard built into a restored 70’s box truck. Or a Giant trailer
Actually, thinking more, you would have to buy a series of small boards and daisy chain them together and bind them in PYTHON. It would work, be more time consuming and expensive than anything. But it would work. Seriously, anyone has an idea and wants to partner I might be interested. I have some experience, It might be fun.
https://www.westword.com/arts/denver-artist-charles-russell-honored-as-part-of-100-colorado-creatives-10669730
Would whatever is driving the lights have to be wired to 90,000 relays? Not that I have any experience with this sort of thing but my guess is that the interfaces that would drive, say, and LED dot matrix display wouldn’t be up to driving thousands of incandescent globes. Imagine the sound of all those relays as you played a game!
You could do it with 153 pins and charlieplexing, I think. It’s not square, so the count is likely higher. But, it’s getting easier. I want to do this.
A quick search for bulbs for a Jeep tail light puts them at a maximum draw of 21W. Assuming two bulbs per light assembly, that’s a combined draw of 1.2MW. That’s more than the maximum power load for several hundred houses.
On the other hand, it’s ‘only’ about 1600HP, so assuming we can get some alternators (which magically convert all mechanical power to electrical with no losses), Jason would only need the output of 32 Paos.
Switch to LED bulbs! 🙂
Good idea, I should have thought of that! LED replacements are more like 5W, so that’s only 300kW. We’d only need eight Paos!
Or two of this one: https://inkymole.medium.com/the-worlds-fastest-and-most-powerful-nissan-pao-for-now-855c9aba180c
That draw seems awfully high to me.
Numbers get big fast when you start multiplying them by thirty thousand. Then by two, because there’s two bulbs in each tail-light.(It seemed high to me too, so I checked a few times)
20Wx30,000×2=1.2MW by my maths.
You would be smart to replace the double element incandescent bulbs with small low draw smd pre soldered LED’s drop them in epoxy and mount them. would save a ton of time and money. you can get a thousand of them from China for 40 bucks.
Superman has his Fortress of Solitude.
Jason has his Mountain of Tail Lights.
Sometimes you just gotta get away from the mundane grievances of life (real or imagined) to a place of safety and solace (real or imagined).
Happy March 32nd Autopian.
Congratulations on getting through year two.
Mad with power, if Jason had 30,000 taillights at his disposal, he would build a secret lair to house the greatest accumulation of taillights mankind has (n)ever seen.
Surely Lumiere Rouge needs to buy this to make a new wall in the bar?
I think that would be appropriate, though it may be prudent to get an A-okay from your cardiologist before embarking on such an emotional trek.
Side note, apropos of the current membership drive: perhaps you could work a deal to sell autographed taillights as fundraising swag. FWIW I’d buy one.
If Jason and David ever morphed into a single entity, it definitely would have a hoard of Jeep taillights.
Surprisingly, this does happen from time to time, and no, the resulting creature (which we have nicknamed “Javid”) has no lighting whatsoever. But it is a sight to see. They line up on opposite sides of a parking lot, run full-steam at each other, and meld into a pile of goo, from which emerges Javid. Like Station in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. It’s terrifying, and yet strangely beautiful.
Or you could just buy em all. And use them as a decoy target for the damned Jewish Space Laser.
Make America Great Again, and be sure to vote “stupid” come November.
Your friend and fellow imbecile here, DJT
Torch’s going to build his own JSL, with
blackjack and hookersmountains of Jeep taillights.But can he get Elon to launch it into space for him?
That’s thinking outside the box.
I’m calling shenanigans. You’ve used upper and lower case as appropriate and included punctuation. There is also no covfefe or hamberders here.