A new taillight bar recently opened up in my community, which is a bit surprising; I just wouldn’t have guessed this little cluster of college towns and ex-tobacco plant cities would be able to support over a dozen taillight bars, but here we are. This new one, The Reddest Slice, is unique because it’s not just a taillight bar. In an attempt to maximize resources, it’s a bar that serves both the taillight enthusiast community and the cold cut hobbyist community, which is much bigger than you’d think.
I like it because I can get a gin and tonic and talk taillights while also having easy access to salami and prosciutto and corned beef from the cold cut crew, who are quite evangelical about their hobby and are happy to press a fistful of clammy pastrami into the hands of anyone who shows even the slightest interest. The night I was there, the bar was having two simultaneous events to cater to both their clientele groups: their monthly ham fight and a seminar from some taillight researchers from the University of Iowa at Baltimore. Both were fascinating events, but I want to tell you about the taillight researcher’s findings today.
That’s not to say the ham fights weren’t incredible; the Cold Cut Community (CCC) has always had a strong emphasis on physicality and exercise, and their deals with local cold cut providers sometimes mean they have large amounts of about-to-expire cold cuts to dispose of. So, back in the 1950s, they started doing ham fights: picture a something like a boxing ring, but with low walls on the side that allow the ring to be filled with ham slices up to about knee-level.
Two contestants are in the ring, and it’s much like boxing, but instead of boxing gloves the fighters hands are encased in canned hams (removed from their cans, of course) and strapped to their hands with the same sort of elasticated ham straps you probably have in your kitchen junk drawer. The fights are vigorous but because of the slowing effect of the ham slices and the cushioning of the canned hams, are much less brutal than conventional boxing, and everyone seems to have a great, if greasy, time.
I watched the ham fights for a few rounds but after losing $40 on a fighter who I’m pretty sure deliberately took a dive just to get to a nice patch of honey-smoked ham on the ring in front of her, I decided to check out what the taillight seminar was about.
The researchers were doing some truly fascinating work; they were Jungian Taillight Cultural Anthropologists, and as such they subscribed to the idea that there is a greater Taillight Collective Unconscious that informs our thoughts when it comes to taillights. They were attempting to prove this by establishing that there is an innate ratio of the sizes of the areas of a taillight’s various colors that feels “right” to humans, and deviations from this ratio cause people to be unsettled or disturbed in some way, even if they aren’t even aware why.
I immediately felt a surge of recognition as I listened; though I’d never really vocalized it before, I know I have feelings about what sizes the various colored lenses of a taillight should be in relation to one another, and this works for both two-color (red and clear/white or red and amber) or tri-color (red, amber, clear/white) taillights.
Essentially, the study is concerned with how the various taillight colors – red (brake, tail, sometimes turn indicator), amber (turn indicator), or clear/white (reverse) relate to one another in terms of proportion and size. And while some of this is dictated by law (for example, in the US 49 CFR § 571.108 – Standard No. 108 states that brake lights must have 7.8 square inches of illuminated area, and turn signals must have 3.4 square inches) there is also plenty of room for manufacturers to play once the minimum sizes are reached.
To gauge peoples’ reactions, they showed images of a number of taillights to test subjects connected to a wide variety of monitoring equipment and logged their various reactions, both voluntary and otherwise. Here’s a sample of some of the taillights shown:
This one, from a Fiat 128 Sport, is interesting; while I like this taillight design a lot, it nevertheless feels somewhat… wrong, somehow. We have three lenses, with reverse and red getting an entire lens, while the amber indicator lens is divided in half, sharing its area with the legally-mandated red reflector. My gut tells me that this taillight design would be better if the red reflector was on the clear reverse lamp, instead of the indicator.
Why is this the case? I’m not certain but I absolutely feel it. To get closer to understanding, let’s find another car that has its taillights set up in three same-size-and-shape lenses, one per color. My own car, a Nissan Pao, does this!
This is very similar conceptually to the Fiat 128; but the Pao mounts its red reflector under the bumper:
So, by doing this, the three colors are equal; it still doesn’t feel entirely right, but for whatever reason, it’s better than the 128 in this regard. Let’s keep looking; in order to eliminate variables of design preferences, it’d be good if we could find one car that had multiple versions of its taillights with different proportions. Happily, I can think of at least one such car: the Plymouth Volare.
The Volare had versions with tri-colored lights:
… and two versions of red/white lights:
I’ll be honest: I can’t quite tell from the upper picture if part of that lens is actually amber, but for our purposes here, let’s just say it’s red. Between these two, the upper one feels more “right” because the size of the reverse lamp in the lower one just feels too… big. There’s something off about that, even if we factor in the red lenses on either side of the main 50/50 split lens.
For whatever reason, a 50/50 split between amber and red feels acceptable, but a 50/50 split between red and clear does not.
I don’t fully understand this, but I do feel it; perhaps it’s because reverse is used less frequently than the other lights, and that’s why it should have the smallest area? If you’re still not convinced there are some innate proportions we as humans prefer, let me show you this:
This just feels wrong, doesn’t it? Even if each section meets the minimum requirements for area, having a much bigger reverse lamp area strikes us as deeply wrong. If the big area was red and the reverse was in the small area, no one would bat an eye. And yet, if those proportions are flipped, all of a sudden it feels like everything is on the verge of collapse and nothing means anything anymore, ever.
And yet, when I think about it, I know that some of my all-time favorite taillights do violate these innate rules. Take the Lancia Fulvia’s beautiful taillights, for example:
These lights definitely violate the rules, and yet, somehow, I love them. The reverse area appears bigger than the amber section, and maybe the red round lens, too! It should be as wrong as my crude sketch up there! And yet, somehow, because of the powerful and intoxicating effect of taillights, these work. They do more than work; they shine, literally and figuritively.
Same goes for the incredible BMW 2002 round lights:
Here there is more red area, but the reverse area is larger than the indicator area, which also feels wrong, as we saw on the Fiat 128 Sport lights. And despite that, these taillights are an icon.
The researcher’s studies eventually came to the conclusion that the ideal proportions of a taillight’s lens colors should be about 50% red (including reflector area), 35% amber, and 15% white/clear. A number of taillights do roughly hit these proportions, such as the Mark I Volkswagen Golf/Rabbit taillights:
This is a pretty simple example, but I think you get the idea; if the colors’ proportions are roughly in this range, something is satisfied deep inside the human psyche. Ecactly what or why that is, the researchers didn’t claim to know yet, but they intend to keep studying this phenomenon, thanks to a very generous grant from the M&M/Mars corporation.
I spoke with the researchers about volunteering for one of these studies; they’re eager to have me, though they did say for the next round of testing, a small chunk of my brain (they assured me it would be no larger than a regulation racquetball) would need to be removed. Seems like an acceptable trade-off to me! This is for science!
Taillight science.
There should be more red than amber, and there should be more amber than white/clear.
Maybe:
20% white
30% amber
50% red
or
20% white
35% amber
45% red
I don’t mean to just be negative today, really…
What about anything modern from the last 30 years? There are some really extreme proportions and examples that would be interesting for this. LEDs have made any shape possible, and some companies have gone too far.
Personally, I dislike Cadillac taillights. And there is some CUV, with turn signals in the back that are like teardrops, but have a thin line that goes up the side. I hate those.
I love a good Torch fever dream, but this time, having real taillight content start in the 6th paragraph, and after the video break, was a bit too much. In my opinion.
Couldn’t edit, so replying to myself.
Reading other’s comments, most loved it, so perhaps I’m just not in the right frame of mind this morning. I’m also boarding the last leg of a red-eye flight, so maybe that’s it.
I’m probably going to get banned from Lumiere Rouge, but I don’t read the taillight articles for the taillight content. 😉
Face full of Honey Ham sounds NSFW. A hot take on cold cuts for sure.
The 50/50 red/amber is for optimists: Glass full of blinker fluid. The 50/50 red/reverse is clearly empty of blinker fluid.
I never understood why the American vehicles in the 1970s and 1980s with amber-colour turn signal indicators so far away from the edge and closer to the numberplates in the rear and the grille in the front. Like the tri-colour Volare taillamps.
Perhaps, this is a very good topic for Jason…
I used to do my tailights in hot pink on my renders in the studio.
You come across as all snooty and goth, but then you slip in some whimsy and confuse us all.
Someone did the entire rear light clusters of every 2006-on Europa in a washed-out pink. Hot pink would have been much better.
I also find it maddening that the lenses are there for four round tail lights (the perfect number and shape for all tail lights), but the inner pair are reverse lights (and worse: grey lensed reverse lights).
Hot pink actually makes the elements pop off the screen/paper better.
I use hot pink for recent changes in CAD for the same reason.
I always thot that snooty and goth were at opposite ends of a scale.
Well except for those Laura Ashley / goth hybrid types.
You’ve clearly not been rejected by the goths I’ve been rejected by.
I was going to say it’s because you are a wonderful monster, but then I read below that there was a pragmatic reason for that color rendering. Smaaart.
Hot pink is my guilty pleasure.
This is an exceptional article! May I be a little pedantic about the badge in the Fiat 128 Sport tail light photo?
I once owned a 1974 Fiat 128 Sport coupe in British Racing Green. It had a badge similar to the photo here “Fiat 128 Sport L”. This original coupe had different, but no less delicious, tail lights than in the photo in this article.
Then Fiat released the three door or hatchback version, which was called the Fiat 128 3P where “3P” stands for Tre Porte, or “Three Doors” in Italian. This car has the amazing elongated hexagonal tail lights shown in the photo and discussed in this article. But the badge on this car normally says “Fiat 128 3P”.
So the badge on the Fiat in this photo has either been changed or some markets got different badges to Europe and Australia?
The lenses on the first Fiat have multiple roles, with just the white being reverse (only). The red has both a taillight and a brake light, with two separate bulbs, while the amber, as you noted, is both a turn indicator and a reflector. 5 functions in 3 holes mean, inevitably, that one hole will come up short.
Here for the ham fight.
Honey, I’m gonna smoke ya!
Oh man, the Reichian Taillight theory blows those Jungian Taillight Cultural Anthropologists out of the water. Blinker fluid is real, and it’s made of orgons.
When I attended Bard, word was that G. Gordon Liddy‘s raid on the Bard campus immortalized in Steely Dan‘s song My Old School was actually an attempt to capture the absolutely ginormous tank of orgones accumulated in the People’s Film Department orgone accumulator.
In the 70s Bard had cornered the black market in orgones and the CIA wanted in on it.
The occasional orgone leaks were epic.
See also: Subterranean Homesick Blues which makes passing reference to the orgone trade at Bard.
I always imagine that in some obscure corner of Torch’s home, amongst spiderwebs and under a dusty tattered cloth there’s a Ouija board made out of taillights.
I imagine an altar to the tailight spirits. Like a voodoo thing, candles, shards of broken lenses, pieces of trim, incense, beads, deer antlers, hooves, battery remains.
Interestingly, this article hits the Torch golden ratio. 1/3 unrelated nonsense, 1/3 taillights, 2/3 clever fiction (there’s some significant overlap–this isn’t some gag where I’m creating a 4/3 situation).
This is peak Torch.
The Volvo 745 wagon has taillight proportions similar to the Rabbit, but stacked vertically (red, white, amber, red from top down). While a novice aficionado would think they were divided into equal 25% proportions, the red actually is about 55% split between top and bottom, amber 25%, and white 20%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_700_Series#/media/File:Volvo_740_GL_break_1989_grise.jpg
Volvos included a dash warning light that let you know a taillight was burned out, which seems to be a feature lost to the ages.
More importantly, I have not yet read Jason’s take on cars that also use their taillights for a second purpose. The BMW neue klasse (1500/1600/1800/2000 4-door sedans) and the 1600/2002 2-doors have clear lenses on the interior of their taillight housings, so that when the taillights are on, they also illuminate the trunk. Now I’m sure BMW wasn’t the only manufacturer with this design: was it a German thing, common elsewhere in Europe, or ? And do any manufacturers still do this?
“A number of taillights do roughly hit these proportions, such as the Mark I Volkswagen Golf/Rabbit taillights”
The Mk2 Golfs and Jettas have some pretty good proportions:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Dieppe%2C_Seine-Maritime_-_France_%288541935930%29.jpg/1280px-Dieppe%2C_Seine-Maritime_-_France_%288541935930%29.jpg
and
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/1987_Volkswagen_Jetta_GL_%289034376544%29.jpg/1280px-1987_Volkswagen_Jetta_GL_%289034376544%29.jpg
Seems a bit wasteful to be using perfectly good emergency replacement bumpers as boxing gloves.
Damn. That’s a pretty deep dive.
A deep cut of meat.
+1 for Torch incunabula
Awaiting a treatise on the GM Devil Vans! The ones with the taillights all the way up the sides. Look like devil horns when lit up.
Never change, Torch.
I’ve always been bothered by tail lights which have the reverse lights at the top, like a 2005-ish Dodge Caravan or a 2000-ish Ford Explorer Sport Trac. It always looked like they intended for the clear reverse light portion to be an amber turn signal and then changed their mind at the last minute.
Jaaaaaaaay Tee Cee Ay
Today I heard about the
Jaaaaaaaay Tee Cee Ay, yeah
*waves arms around in the air a) in a vain attempt to form letters and b) as if he just does not care*
Dear Mr. Tracy,
I am writing to you regarding one of the authors of your fine establishment. I have reason to believe that Mr. Torchinsky is completely insane, and that for the safety of the community it should be considered to have the young man committed.
Regards,
A Concerned Citizen
Uh, sir?
This is a feature, not a bug
The bug is in the driveway.
no need for concern – it’s all part of the subscription drive.
So that’s where the term “ham fisted” comes from.
Okay, on this subject… does anyone know why for the 90-96 Pontiac Grand Prix, some of them had the larger top part as the running/brake light, but some others had that same part as an excessively large amber turn signal? I’ve seen them both ways in the US, and have never understood it. Picture for reference: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/07/bf/5d/07bf5d0b347cc04e79dd1867bf46c917.jpg
There’s also the aftermarket approach favored by some rallyists of mounting an exceptionally large, bright reverse light (essentially a driving light) for use when it’s a good idea to be able to see to the rear at night, such as when reversing quickly in suboptimal circumstances:
https://www.historicmotorsport.net/shop/new-parts/reverse-lamp-lucas-wft-576/
My MGB had one on the driver’s side. It occasionally came in handy:
https://live.staticflickr.com/4103/5072064860_872de135d8_o.jpg
It didn’t do much for the relative lamp proportions, though.
I appreciate a bright reverse light. My Vauxhall Insignia (UK equivalent of a Buick Regal) wagon has such piddly little reverse lights I have to feather the brakes when reversing into my drive in the dark
I always appreciated the singular low-mounted reverse lamp in the Scion xB. Stylish, functional, and funky all in one package.
The Lucas light in question is outsized because there’s a 30:70 chance the wiring will fail in some way, and the extra surface area makes up for that.
I’ve yet to meet a woman who would take a dive for floor ham, but then again I’ve not spent any time in the Carolinas.
Missing out my friend. They’re keepers.
Beware of the floor ham. Oft times it’s just a trap and you get blindsided. A hambush as it were.
“Ham Dive in the Honey Patch” sounds like a Blink 182 record.