Why The 1960s Hit ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ Says The Corvette Has Six Taillights Instead Of Four

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The other day I was looking for taillight references in popular music, as one does, when I came across this line from the 1964 song Deadman’s Curve by Jan and Dean: “And all the Jag could see were my six tail lights.” Okay, that’s a solid, direct, unashamed taillight reference right there. But then I started to think: the song is sung from the perspective of someone who states, right in the first line, “I was cruisin’ in my Stingray late one night.” Now, I’m no mathematician, but in 1964 Chevrolet Corvette Stingrays only had four taillights, which is (scribbles on chalkboard) not the same as six, which, according to my calculations, is an entirely different number. So what the hell is going on here? Let’s get to the bottom of this.

First, if you’re not familiar with the song, you should give it a listen. It was written by Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, along with Jan Berry, Roger Christian, and Artie Kornfeld, all of whom I’m going to assume know the difference between six and four. Oh, right, the song. Here you go:

Want all the lyrics, with the important bits emphasized? For, you, because I’m sweet on you, fine, here you go:

I was cruisin’ in my Stingray late one nightWhen an XKE pulled up on the rightAnd rolled down the window of his shiny new JagAnd challenged me then and there to a dragI said, “You’re on, buddy, my mill’s runnin’ fineLet’s come off the line now, at Sunset and VineBut I’ll throw you one better if you’ve got the nerveLet’s race all the wayTo Dead Man’s Curve”
Dead Man’s Curve, it’s no place to playDead Man’s Curve, you best keep awayDead Man’s Curve, I can hear ’em sayWon’t come back from Dead Man’s Curve
The street was deserted late Friday nightWe were buggin’ each other while we sat out the lightWe both popped the clutch when the light turned greenYou should of heard the whine from my screamin’ machineI flew past LaBrea, Schwab’s, and Crescent HeightsAnd all the Jag could see were my six tail lightsHe passed me at Doheny then I started to swerveBut I pulled her out and there I wasAt Dead Man’s Curve
Dead Man’s Curve, it’s no place to playDead Man’s Curve
Well, the last thing I remember, Doc, I started to swerveAnd then I saw the Jag slide into the curveI know I’ll never forget that horrible sightI guess I found out for myself that everyone was rightWon’t come back from Dead Man’s Curve
Dead Man’s Curve, it’s no place to playDead Man’s Curve, you best keep awayDead Man’s Curve, I can hear ’em sayWon’t come back from Dead Man’s Curve

So, a race between a Corvette and a Jaguar XKE, along a strip of Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles that does indeed get pretty curvy as you head west, into Beverly Hills, just past Doheny. It doesn’t end well for the singer, who, at the end of the song, is relaying all of this to a doctor, who is presumably trying to figure out how to extract the steering column from the driver, whom I imagine resembles a chicken satay.

Yes, yes, street racing is bad, kids, don’t do it, but we’re here to talk taillights. So, let’s dig in. Because he calls the car a “Stingray” and not just a Corvette, we know this has to be a C2 Corvette, which started the Stingray name and design elements in 1963. Let’s just take a look at the rear of a ’63 Corvette and see what we’ve got here:

1963stingray4lights

Look at that. I can’t think of a better time to use this particular meme than right now:

Yes, you’re correct Captain Picard, there are definitely four lights! Four little bullet-shaped taillights, frenched into their little chromed sleeves. And yet that famous song very clearly says six. While the singer could be referring to some very specific home-brewed modification, I don’t think that’s the case, because, incredibly, it was once very much A Thing to have a six-taillighted Stingray, and your Chevrolet Dealer would even do it for you!

This 2015 article from Mac’s Motor City Garage gives a great history, and notes the song lyric as well, so clearly I’m hardly the first to wonder about what’s going on there, taillight-wise. I told you the taillight subculture is strong and vibrant!

That site speculates that the motivation for the additional taillights may have been inspired by other Chevys of the era, like the Impala, which came stock with a lavish six taillights:

Impala

If kid-hauling station wagons and sedans for The Squares could enjoy the bounty of a sextet of taillights, surely the halo car Corvette deserves that too, right? Of course it does! More taillights=more class, clearly. Plus, GM’s own concept cars for the Corvette and Stingray, like Bill Mitchell’s legendary Mako Shark, sported six lights:

Mako

It even looks like in 1966, Chevrolet had been considering making a six-light Stingray right from the factory, as you can see in this styling mockup that features two different taillight designs to evaluate and compare, one side with a higher set of two, and the other side with three, making this one a vanishingly rare five taillight Stingray:

Stylingtest

So, some dealers started installing extra taillights on their cars, perhaps feeling like they were just finishing the job that GM started. This 1967 picture of Corvettes at a Covina, California dealership show many cars with the six-lamp conversion:

Dealer

If you didn’t want to go to your dealer to buy a fresh new ‘Vette with six lights and instead wanted to upgrade your old Stingray, there were pretty simple guides for how to do so:

Diy3light

Not a bad process: make a cardboard template, drill around your template lines (I bet the right sized hole saw would be easier?) then shove in a stock Stingray taillight service part. I’ve seen references to making this a reverse lamp, which must mean somebody was making clear bullet lenses for these.

It’s also interesting that they call this a “3rd taillight” instead of saying six, but I guess it’s more natural to think of the light clusters per side.

Anyway, I think this clears up the riddle of the lyrics: six-taillight Stingrays were a common enough thing back in 1964. It’s especially interesting, because over the years, despite the likely constant pressure to add more lights, more everything, the basic Corvette design stuck to its four light roots, and now the paired lights per side is a key part of the Corvette visual identity.

2023 6light

I mean, as far as I know, there is zero interest in an aftermarket kit that does something like the car on the right there. The six-light affectation seems to have effectively died out by the end of the 1960s, with the occasional bonkers exception. Still, it’s exciting to see a short-lived niche taillight fad be immortalized in pop culture.

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Mercedes Streeter

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56 thoughts on “Why The 1960s Hit ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ Says The Corvette Has Six Taillights Instead Of Four”

  1. I haven’t heard the song in years, but I always assumed he said “frenched tail lights”! Obviously, I’m wrong, but it made perfect sense to me!

  2. Saw a 6-light C2 years back at a show and was baffled. Seemed like an odd customization on an otherwise stock C2. Now I know. Also, been listening to Jan and Dean literally as long as I can remember and never picked up on that line. Keep on Torch’n, Torch!

  3. “ I’ve seen references to making this a reverse lamp, which must mean somebody was making clear bullet lenses for these.” They certainly were. GM themselves —(if you had but briefly consulted your Local Backlighters Chapter, Torch, they could have quickly reminded you of Comfort and Convenience Option RPO ZO1, a clear reverse lamp replacing each inboard rear light on the C2. All for the princely sim of sixteen dollars and sixteen cents. Money well spent!). Moving on though, isn’t that C2 just one of the finest automotive shapes of all?

  4. Looks like pop culture in 60s was pretty straightforward. Tried to find popular song about drag racing shenanigans in the last decade and got no luck. Key words like drag, race, racing etc. lead to completely wrong direction. Ok, words do have multiple meanings.
    Then tried to find at least something about cars. Alfa Romeo… Hmm, these two words should go one after another, otherwise it is not about cars again.
    Then tried to remember popular song about racing and cars and ”Happy Idiot“ first came to mind. Which looks more like post irony or parody to the good old days when things were real. And they didn’t even mentioned that Corvette engined single taillighted sky blue Lucra LC470. That is the problem.)
    P.S.: both songs are good tho

  7. I know you’re a taillight guy, but how could you not mention the four exhaust tips in the DIY mod photo? Were you (as Springsteen sang) blinded by the light(s)?

  9. Mel Blanc was nearly killed in 1961 on Dead Man’s curve. He was driving an 1958 Aston Martin DB MKIII. He had to be cut from the car with torches. He was identified by a photo of him wearing a Bugs Bunny suit.

  11. Look at that Clippinger Chevrolet Stingray….one bad ride. American Torque Thrusts on Goodyear racing tires, side exhaust and a Grand Sport center stripe. Yessir, that is one bad ride! As others have noted, the 6 tail lights noted in Dead Man’s Curve were a real thing in California Car Culture. In fact, Brian Wilson, one of the co-writers of this hit, knew his hot cars. In the Beach Boy’s “409” he nails it: “My four speed, dual quad, positraction 409.” Contrast that with a very confused Bruce Sprinsteen in his song “Racing In The Streets”: “I’ve got a 69 Chevy with a 396……..”Fuelly heads (?!) and a Hurst on the floor”……….

    The ultimate, sad irony for Jan Berry is that he crashed his own Stingray not far from Deadman’s Curve; just a couple years past the release of this hit record. He was in a coma for two months and once he came out of it, was never really the same, again.

    1. Torch sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. He knows if your opinion on VW taillights is bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.

  13. Yeah it was a common mod that reduces the value of the car now, I’m sure there are a lot of patch jobs hiding under paint.
    6 lights were a status symbol in full size Chevrolet land the Impala was the top of the line pre Caprice (’66?), the Bel Air had 2 as did the lowly Biscayne.

  14. The six-light Corvettes were very popular in the 1960s in Southern California. As a kid, I always assumed they were just a factory trim level akin to the Chevy Bel Air (4 taillights) vs. the Impala (6 taillights).

    That Covina, CA dealer photo reminded me that when I was in elementary school in the ’60s, a neighbor was a sales rep at that dealership. He’d get a new company car every year and, while he never had a Corvette, he did have a very nice ’64 Impala convertible. Somehow, back in the ’60s, you could be a career Chevy sales rep and afford to own a middle-class home – as a single breadwinner with *seven* kids.

    1. “As a kid, I always assumed they were just a factory trim level akin to the Chevy Bel Air (4 taillights) vs. the Impala (6 taillights).

      That was the reason for the mod in most cases – low trim Chevys had four bullet tail lights (Bel Airs and high trim (Impala’s) had six. Most Bel Airs were packing a six cylinder engine, a “three-on-the-tree”, and no radio. Them cars was for the Poors, ya see.

      This was the easy at-a-glance class identifier and everybody knew it. You can bet you ass pink slip that a lot of guys with hot Impalas liked to tease Corvette owners by asking why they didn’t spring for the high trim version -which would have obviously by GM styling convention had six bullets. So: Problem Solved!

    2. Somehow, back in the ’60s, you could be a career Chevy sales rep and afford to own a middle-class home – as a single breadwinner with *seven* kids.

      Back in the ’60s, you could be a lot of things and still afford a middle class home. Seems that ability died out by the end of the ’80s. A Bachelors degree is the new high school diploma.

  15. My uncle flogged a yellow ‘63 Stingray ragtop that sported six taillights. It was a replacement for a yellow ‘62 Corvair Monza Spyder droptop that he took airborne off a local “Deadman’s Curve.” He walked away, the Corvair, not so much. He used to take me to a drive-in restaurant that featured waitresses on roller skates wearing tight little satin short shorts (cue the Royal Teens). As the girl would skate away with our order, he’d turn to me, wink and say, “Now there goes some cute little taillights.” Clearly, an aficionado.

  16. This is some great stuff! Now I’m wondering if any of these triple-vette-light setups were further retrofitted with that delightful pile of electromechanical wonder which made the sequential turn signals function on ’65 T-birds (and others).

    1. The dad of one of my high school friends had a ’66 in a seemingly permanent state of disassembly up on jack stands in his garage. (It was affectionately known as the world’s most expensive shelf.) It featured the custom six tail light mod that was indeed wired to fire sequentially. The coolest part, however, was the mod itself. It utilized OEM exterior bezels, but the inner housings were fashioned from tomato paste cans that still sported their vintage labels.

  18. I remember that time very clearly, and LOTS of Stingrays had those done. It was very common.
    What was worse, by far, are those ‘63s where the owner had the bar between the two glass rear windows cut out, and a single piece of glass installed. This was to make a ‘63 look more like a ‘64,’65,’66,’67.
    I personally like the 6 taillight look, myself.

    1. From what I always heard, they would have the “split” of the split window removed because the visibility was atrocious, not for any real aesthetic reason. If memory serves, many dealerships actually offered to do the removal

      1. As hard as it is to believe today, the split window was very polarizing when it came out – professional reviewers in car magazines pretty much universally hated it, as did Zora Arkus-Duntov. It was done because Bill Mitchell wanted it, but customer response was poor, so a single piece window was quickly rushed out. A lot of Chevy dealers offered the conversion on brand new cars from the start

        1. One of my favorite VW factoids is that the cutouts from the split-windows were used to make shovels; I imagine all Autopians already know this, though.

    3. That was also commonly done to split-window VW Beetles. Later on you could even get a big-back-window conversion for your split or oval Bug, straight from the folks at the Uncanny Valley Garage.

  19. So, are we saying that Torch, THE Encyclopedia Taillightica, all seeing and all knowing rear lens connoisseur himself, was unfamiliar with the 6 tail light mod for the C2? This can not be

  21. might be interesting to see if the guys had any car collections, I suspect they did the conversion or just saw the prototypes and always figured they all were that way.

  22. Dont forget the C2 Grand Sport Racecars had the Speed Holes between the tail lights. I imagine adding 2 extra tail lights had some inspiration from those extra holes as well.

  23. How do Light Arrays figure into this? You might have a grid of 5×5 little bulbs, all the same color and function. What makes the difference between that and the 3 distinct bulbs in those modified Corvettes?

    Is it how replaceable bulbs are, how replaceable the surrounds are, unique separate bulb covers…?

    I think the combined lighting styling of today is why people don’t try to modify to to add extra lights, since it’s not just hole saw, Ctrl+c, Ctrl+v, it’s why you get light bars and A pillar lights that stick off the body, it’s the last vestige of modification you can easily do.

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