I’m giving you fair warning right now: The turn signal community is about to be in an absolute uproar. Everything we took as true, on good faith, now appears to be a lie. Well, maybe not everything, but the origins of the modern turn indicator as we understand it – the one based on lights and not a pop-out semaphore-style arm – are not what you may think. I say this because a car I happened to see at Pebble Beach had electrical, light-based turn indicators at least seven years before the normally-accepted First Car With Turn Signals was ever built or sold. Get ready to have the foundation of everything you know shaken, at least turn-signal-wise.
To get started, let’s take a look at what the current accepted origin story for turn indicators as we know them is. A Google search seems like the first place where most people would start, so let’s look at those results:
There we go: The 1939 Buick is accepted as the car where “the turn signal as we know it today” was born. And I myself believed this, too! I’ve written about Buick’s innovation in the past, and so have many, many others.
The Buick turn indication system, which was called the Flash-Way direction signal, was only on the rear of the car when it was first offered in 1939. The directional indicators were a pair of roughly arrowhead-shaped lamps incorporated into the Buick badge on the trunk lid. Later years found the Flash-Way expanding to white lamps mounted on the front fenders as well, and eventually the turn indicators became integrated into the car’s taillamps, as we’re familiar with today.
I believed that these 1939 Buick lights were the start of modern turn indicators, as so many of us did. But then, merely days ago, I was walking amongst the cars of the Pebble Beach Concours D’Elegance, paying special attention, as I always do, to the wildly varied and diverse lighting solutions contained therein. It was a dazzling menagerie of taillights and headlights and markers and trafficators and parking and and fog and carriage lamps and so so much more.
Among all of this fluted glass and ribbed, ruby-colored plastic, a particular lighting solution caught my eye: a strangely utilitarian lighting setup at the rear of a car, almost clunky compared to the elegant lines of the vehicle it was bolted to:
I was so enamored by this novel light unit, especially because it included that pair of amber arrows, which are clearly turn indicators. The little red lamp is a brake light, the clear one is a reverse lamp, and that odd blue lamp is the taillight/running lamp. It’s weird, but blue does show up in this context, occasionally, back in the wild, lawless days of the early motor age.
I even was able to talk to the owner of the beautiful Talbot 105 to get a bit more information about this fascinating taillight:
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Now, in this exchange, some very interesting information came to light: first, this car, a 1932 Talbot, had modern-style turn indicators, at least about as modern-style as that 1939 Buick. And, these were factory-installed units, not aftermarket add-ons, of which there were a number of options since the 1920s onwards; the milestone is for factory-installed, OEM turn signals, and here they are, on this Talbot, a solid seven years before Buick offered similar ones on their cars.
And, if that’s not enough, look at this:
See those? Let’s get in a bit closer:
Those arrows, mounted at the base of the radiator grille. Those are turn indicators, on the front of this 1932 Talbot 105. So, not only did this Talbot have light-based turn signals before the 1939 Buick, unlike that Buick it had all four indicators, just like a modern car. This is huge!
Sure, those front signals would be pretty hard to see around the car’s bulbous fenders, but still – they’re there!
In fact, they’re specifically mentioned in Talbot’s brochures of the era, like in this 1933 brochure where it’s noted that they’re fitted to Talbot 75, 95, and 105 cars, and that telltale lights on the instrument panel let you know your indicators are on, just like we’re used to today:
I was shown by this car’s owner pictures of at least three cars, all Talbot 105s with Vanden Plas Four-Seater Touring Bodies, all entered in the 1932 Alpine Trial, and they all had these turn indicators installed. A search around the internet shows a good number of other Talbot 105s from 1932 to 1935 with various body types, and they all have turn indicators, some with different rear units, but all with those novel front radiator-mounted ones.
I should mention that despite that picture above, I have not personally confirmed that the Talbot 105 turn indicators blink. It’s possible they just turn on and stay on, though I suppose a determined driver could manually blink them on and off if they chose to. But, even if they don’t blink, they’re still light bulb-based turn indicators, and they’re even amber, the color they wouldn’t be required to be until 1964!
These were factory-supplied turn signals on a car that, while likely not produced in nearly the numbers of Buicks in 1939, were still mass-produced vehicles, and they did all of this at least seven full years prior to Buick’s Flash-Way rear-only indicators.
So, along with having the claim of being the “fastest four-seater to ever race at Brooklands,” as a 1967 issue of Autocar stated, the remarkable Talbot 105 should also have the distinction, instead of the 1939 Buick, of being the first production car with turn signals as we know them.
I have yet to find any reference online of the Talbot’s achievement in this arena, and I hope to correct this today. Drive away, Buick; you’ve been wearing the First Turn Signals crown for far too long. It’s time to place it squarely on the hood of the Talbot 105.
I implore everyone who will be celebrating or mourning this revelation at your local taillight/turn indicator bar to remain considerate and calm; the greater auto lighting subculture is supposed to be a welcoming place, after all.
But, but, but… who was first to use blinking, amber turn signals in a RUBBER HOUSING?
Inquiring minds….
Are we just forgetting the midnight ride of Paul Revere?! Wasn’t the use of lanterns in the window the first turn indicators? I’m almost positive it was “One if by left, two if by right.” Yeah, that sounds right. I don’t need to Google that before posting this comment. Just hit the Post Comment button…done!
Now we just need to work out which manufacturer first gained a reputation for it’s owners never using their indicators.
1. Thirty years ago I was in the Eastern Mountain Sports store in Boston and heard someone say, about a sleeping bag made by Marmot, “I like the Mar-MOH.”
2. The elegance of that square panel with the status lights and indicators is just fantastic. Like a little mood ring for your car. And the arrows! OMG they are beautiful! I don’t understand my response to them but their elegance is overpowering! Especially the ones cut into the chrome! I would like them on my car NOW! So much more cool than any of the current my-car-is-cooler-than-yours LED lights.
*edit* I pretty much posted the same thing Torch put in the title. Yawn… I’m tired and going to bed. Coolsignalsbrah.
Upon learning this, Jason found an unoccupied chair, sat, and wept. All of the emotions flowed through him. He finally stopped, leaned back like the guy in the Gain commercial, and looked at the sky. A new day of Torch hath arrived.
WOAH!
the spin is rooming!
Colour me shocked! Jason, you really dropped the ball on this one. I can’t believe that you actually spoke to the owner and failed to ask them whether or not the signals flashed.
Be still my beating heart.
This is all well and good, but a more important issue was settled for me: the correct pronunciation of Talbot. Yes, since it’s a French car it’s pronounced the French way. Tal-BOW, not TAL-bot. Thank you Peter.
Talbot (the car company) was a joint British-French endeavor, originally based in London, and the cofounder Mr. Talbot was decidedly British – his full title was Major Charles Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot, 20th Earl of Shrewsbury, 20th Earl of Waterford.
I think either pronunciation would be acceptable today, but the Talbot dealer that sold my dad a Samba back in the 80s most definitely used the hard T at the end.
The history of Talbot is… messy, in that the name was applied to several more or less interrelated British and French marques which were produced under various ownership over the years, sometimes in hyphenated form such as Clément-Talbot and Sunbeam-Talbot (both British) and Talbot-Lago and Talbot-Darracq (both French). My understanding is that the British pronunciation is appropriate for the British cars whereas the French pronunciation is favored (but perhaps not universally?) for the French cars, but even that doesn’t always adequately address the questions of ownership of the different companies, factory location(s), and intended market(s), all as a function of time.
Anglo-French collaborations are inevitably somewhat messy, and we are so very good at massacring (and/or butchering) words borrowed from each other’s languages.
Anglo-Dutch, too. As the area secretary for the US and Canada for the Vanden Plas Owners Club one of my goals is to remind people that it is unambiguously correct to pronounce the “s” in Plas.
Vanden Plahh always sounded bad to me.
As it should. It has all the charm of being both pretentious and wrong.
That didn’t rile anyone? Well, so much for my attempt at a last-minute comeback in today’s surprisingly fraught competition for the most disputatious set of comments.
I’ve heard the same thing for years, including from fairly prominent collectors. It’s “Tal-butt” and “Sunbeam-Tal-Butt” but “Tal-boe La-Goe.”
And herein lies the rub: as we understand it modernly, turn signals are designed to flash.
IMO if the Talbot indicators do not flash, they are not turn signals “as we understand [them]” today. I’m assuming, based on the name and the long-standing title, that the 1939 Buick signals do flash.
The piece I quoted above appears to draw a distinction between lighted turn signals and semaphore-based turn signals. What are your thoughts on lighted semaphore signals, like those found on Lanchesters and early VW Beetles? Or are they considered ‘trafficators’ and thus not involved in the turn-signal-specific discussion?
To me, lighted semaphore-style arms are trafficators and still wouldn’t be considered a “modern” turn signal.
I’ve seen lots of Talbots of this period, both racing and on the road, but I can’t specifically recall if the indicators flashed. Even if they did, there’s no guarantee that they did originally. We have added flashing idicators to one of our vintage cars just to make it safe even though it doesn’t legally need them (not orange though as it would look too out of place).
Looking at a couple of adverts for Talbot 105s that have been sold at auction these specifically call out that flashing indicators have been added which would imply that they didn’t flash originally.
https://www.handh.co.uk/auction/lot/42-1932-talbot-105-fox–nicholl-team-car/?lot=27791&sd=1
https://www.classicdriver.com/en/car/talbot/75105/1933/912154
OMG! This is like the transition from Newtonian to quantum physics. Everything is changed, now!
Also, Chrysler did not invent the minivan. Pass it on.
Can a party of one really be considered a “community”?
There are dozens of us!
If ever there were an article that could only be appropriately responded to with .gifs, this is it.
*Insert shocked Futurama gif*
That said, this is sort of attention to obscure details that keeps me coming to this site. Everyone else sees incredible automobiles, Torch sees illuminated arrows and blue dots.
Jason’s whole aura during that video is that of a man refraining from screaming “YOUR CAR DEFIES LIGHTING HISTORY AS WE KNOW IT, IT CHANGES EVERYTHING, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TELLING ME RIGHT NOW?!?!”
I can see the cogs turning in his head, probably already having a mental half draft of this article but instead trying to ask a bunch of normal sounding questions and not shaking the man by the shoulders telling him that his car rewrites history as we know it.
Is it possible that some reader found reason to build a time machine with the exclusive purpose of messing with your immense knowledge of all things car light related?
I mean, you couldn’t ever tell.
Someone beat me to it? I’ve been working on taillight-focused time travel for ages.
I just want to prevent unnecessarily low placement of any indicators and require amber turn indicators, but this whole blue running lamp thing has me thinking bigger now.
I’m not saying we need blue, but a different color for the taillight than the brake light makes some sense. One could easily imagine a world in which we have red for brakes, amber for turn signals, blue for driving visibility, and clear for reverse lamps.
Except that blue is generally reserved for emergency services vehicles, but I’m with you. Maybe brake lights should flash brighter red, to distinguish them from turn indicators and stationary vehicle hazard warning lights.
Okay maybe we need to immediately scrap every vehicle that doesn’t have amber turn indicators or which allows the stationary vehicle hazard warning lights to be illuminated while in motion first, then we’ll have a clean sheet to work with.
Sure, the blue wouldn’t work at this point, but one could imagine that world (maybe cops use purple or rely on context, like we do with red or yellow flashing light bars?). And you are right that the clean sheet approach would be the way to get a good design standard set up.
I don’t think purple would work either as that is what seems to be commonly used for funeral vehicle lighting. No idea what the various state rules are about it, though. Here in Pennsylvania they seem to use purple strobes (and, still, purple flags for each car in the procession), at least in my area.
Some more discussion of funeral vehicle lighting:
https://forums.aaca.org/topic/361465-purple-funeral-lights/
Just in case my username didn’t already make clear, I wholeheartedly agree with this idea.
Ala Benjamins for Blinkers.