Normally when I do an installment of Today’s Taillight, I’m celebrating a particular taillight. It’s a positive thing, or at least something where I’m, if not actually praising, marveling at some aspect of the rich, vibrant tapestry that is the vast world of taillights. Today is a bit different, though. I will be focusing on a significant taillight, but one that’s more infamous than famous. This is a taillight that proved to be so woefully inadequate that the company was forced to develop a corrective, auxiliary taillamp unit. But, even better, instead of just making it a standard part of the cars that they knew to have sup-par taillights, they decided to just sell it as an option. You know, for those people who decided that maybe they didn’t want to get rear-ended. My friends, please behold the ignominy of the 1961 Dodge Dart taillights!
The 1960s were a pretty exciting time for car design, and that definitely includes Mopar. This was the bold, experimental era of Virgil Exner’s Forward Look, which I just wrote about last week, also about a strange lighting decision. Exner was not afraid of trying things, and boy, did he try, with radically different looks for the Dart lineup for 1960, 1961, and 1962. The 1962 Dart look seemed to suggest that Exner was enamored with negative space, scooping and scalloping out sections of the body, leaving interesting concavities, which, at the rear, housed the Dart’s small, horizontal taillights.
Here’s what they looked like:
As you can see, they’re small and low and are inset under those large fin-like growths up above. If you were close behind a ’61 Dart, in your equally large and ornate mid-century car, chances are excellent that you’d not have been able to see these lights at all, meaning that when the Dart in front of you braked hard, perhaps to allow a mother duck and her trail of ducklings to pass, you’d likely have not just spilled your post-work martini, but very likely rear-ended the Dart, your woefully inadequate drum brakes locking up and shrieking as your massive chrome bumper and grille smacks into the massive chrome bumper of the Dart, your head impacting on your hard metal unpadded dash, sending your teeth skittering and bouncing off the windshield like some sort of clattery, ivory fireworks.
Who wants that?
Now, Dodge did have a better setup for the wagon version of the Dart, which had large, easy-to-see taillights:
Those jet-engine-like lights on the wagon are at least at a decent height and not overshadowed by bodywork. The Sedan actually seems to have more taillight lens area on the sides than rear, which is actually a bit prescient, as actual side marker lamps would become a requirement seven years hence. But that doesn’t help keep you from getting smacked in the ass because no one can see you.
Previous year Darts had very prominent round taillights; it’s not clear why Exner decided this was no longer for him, but that’s how it went. Well, it’s how it sort of went, because Dodge had seemingly heard enough complaints about their inadequate lighting that they offered up a hedge. That hedge was the option, introduced mid-year, of buying better taillights from your Dodge dealer, and having those installed on your Dart.
You can still buy NOS ones of these today!
Once installed on the car, the auxiliary, don’t-smack-into-me taillights looked like this:
A bit awkward, sure, but beats getting your trunk rammed by other drivers. As far as I know, this is the only example of a carmaker introducing retro-fittable taillights for an existing car to address inadequacies with those lights, and not having to, say, recall the cars and really fix them. This was mid-century America! If you really wanted to be safe, okay, have it your way, candy-ass, but nobody is going to make you be safe!
This was the pre-padded dash era, when after a wreck a quick hose-down would get that interior ready to sell to the next chump. So, it all kind of fits the zeitgeist of the era, really. But it’s all still kind of ridiculous. Which is why it’s so fascinating, you see.
This Is Why Lotus Excel Taillights Get Filthy And Moldy (And Another Weird Fact About The Lotus Excel)
Let’s Appreciate And Define A Particular Class Of Taillight, The Layer Cake: Today’s Taillight
The Amazing And Mysterious Citroën DS Taillights Were As Daring As The Whole Car: Today’s Taillight
Did anyone else hear the article in Tom Magliozzi’s voice after the first mention of “Dodge Dart”?
Dart’s add-on taillights were still inadequate. They don’t come on for brakes or turn signals! I have a ’61 Dart and am working on improving the visibility of my brake and turn signals. Just rewiring the add-on taillights to do this then leaves you with only the tiny slits above the bumper at night. Trying to convert the add-on to a 3-way tail-brake-turn is complicated by finding bulbs or LEDs to fit through the unusually small reflector hole. Also to replace the add-on light bulb I might have to loosen the 63 year old housing mountings from the body, and that’s an invitation to bigger problems.
My plan of attack is to first evaluate how strong the single filament add-on bulb looks in sunlight. If too weak in the daytime, then I’m going to hook up a “Winking Cat” on the parcel ledge for brakes and turns. It worked well on my ’58 Chevy Bel Air that had only a single small three-way taillight. BTW, I replaced the original equipment taillight bulbs with red LEDs. They have made a big improvement down there.
At car shows my ’61 Dart Phoenix 2dr HT draws a lot of attention and favorable comments. Back when introduced, as a teenager I thought the ’61 Darts were one of the ugliest cars. Sixty years later the design looks sleek and stands out in the sea of contemporary bland sedans and SUVs.
Frank R.
Sure wish Chevy would offer this for the current Bolt. Brake lights in the bumper = dumb.
Some of the Korean cars too
Please query “Chevy Bolt brake light upgrade” on Bing, Yahoo, AltaVista, or AskJeeves. You’ll see how to add the upper tail lights to the brake light function.
“ rich, vibrant tapestry that is the vast world of taillights”
You mean the 405?
56 and 57 Chevies had very small taillights. And those on a 57 were right above the bumper. Leaving a car show recently, I was surprised at how hard the taillights on a 57 Chevy are to see at twilight.
I’ll be an asshole and point out that if your drum brakes lock up, it’s the tires that are inadequate. 😉
Yeah, drum brakes are fine for stopping, and they don’t need power assist thanks to the wonder of leading shoes. Where they can suck is for repeatedly stopping, or slowing if they aren’t properly sized.
The main way drum breaks suck is having to replace the shoes, which also means replacing the springs which have pinged off to the far corners of your garage.
Honestly, not having to change brake shoes is my favourite thing about owning a car with 4-wheel discs.
Three words
Tiny locking pliers
First of all, those are not small taillights. That is a very large car. I bet those guys are much bigger than your beloved VW Bug taillights. Second, if you were too close to see them you would also be too close to see the “If You’re Close Enough To Read This You’re Too Damn Close” sticker on the bumper.
Dodge wasn’t only one…
Ford Australia contracted Tickford Vehicle Engineering to convert the fourth-generation Mustang (SN95) and to the right-hand-drive and to comply with Australian Design Rules.
One thing Tickford did was to install the auxillary high beam headlamps in the front bumpers as the original Mustang headlamps were so bad to start with.
At least these are mounted above the bumper! Mid 70’s Chevy Malibu wagons had the taillights in the bumper itself! Even lower. And i don’t think GM offered any retrofits either.
And they did it across two generations! It came in on the Colonnade generation in 1973 and carried over to the otherwise all-new A/G-bodies for 1978. It wasn’t until the 1984 launch of the FWD A-bodies in wagon form that sanity returned. Over a decade of kid-haulers with the lowest taillights physically possible.
For that matter, El Caminos had them until the very last 1987 models.
And this was before any “must be able to still see the lights with the tail gate down” laws, so if your tailgate was down in your wagon or elcamino it was “eh guess what I am up to” in the daylight.
Actually, those tail lights, and the ones on the El Camino, were required by law at the time. Because whoever was writing , the regulations hadn’t quite thought through all of the edge cases.
Early ’70s GM-H did something very similar in Australia with the HQ series cars (Belmont, Kingswood, Premier, Monaro) with both the taillights and the front indicator/marker lights mounted in the bumper bars. These would both later be moved up into the sheetmetal for subsequent models in the generation, with the final HZ revision getting a massively redesigned and much improved Radial Tuned Suspension system.
But the HQ’s crisper and swept forward styling looked *so much cooler* than any of the later sheet metal that you could almost forgive the passive safety benefits it made you forgo.
These remind me of the stupidly-low turn signals that are on some modern cars, like the Kia Forte. I don’t understand that design thinking, because not only are they less functional, they look bad when you *can* see them.
I keep having unwitting spats with Kia drivers, on the freeway, who seem to think I’m intentionally not letting them merge, but every single time, their ridiculous, low-set turn signals have been below my windshield.
This was also the era when stop signs were mounted so low that when you hit them, they’d flop down onto the hood, slide through the windshield and decapitate the occupant, if you hit it with enough speed.
This is why modern signs are mounted higher and have a fair amount of pole length above the sign. If they break off (less likely with metal poles) the extension will (hopefully) hit the vehicle’s roof, so the sign slides over the vehicle instead into the passenger compartment.
Mid century America. Fun times.
Cue old guy: “I survived just fine!”
I had relatives that didn’t, or so I’ve been told.
Modern road signs have a 2 part pole, the upper section you see that holds the sign and a lower section that is the buried part which usually only extends about 6″ above grade. The bolts that connect the upper and lower sections are designed with a shear away head so they break when the signs is hit, letting the upper part tear away and not slap down like the old ones used to.
In the UK we have similar regulations on “road furniture”, signs and stuff, to make them crash friendly.
However there is a category of roadside things that is exempt from the safety regs: speed cameras. Exclusively positioned at “high risk” sites the camera posts are design to resist vandalism, so don’t break away.
Profit before safety.
So many modern CUV’s need auxiliary taillamps mounted higher than the lower not-really-a-bumper…
Man, that’s an ugly Dodge.
Agree, I always thought those early Darts were stinkers. That’s why I immediately knew that Polara was no Dart.
Dodge’s attempts to fix the tail lights problem was kinda like throwing Darts in the dark.
“…sending your teeth skittering and bouncing off the windshield like some sort of clattery, ivory fireworks”. This. This is why I keep coming back.
Well, this was before seatbelts were a viable option.
Yeah but,.. but That sexy one is a 1960 Polara, and do those fin edges light up with the brakes, or just turn signal?
Was this a test?
That Polara and the Seneca Suburban both have truly exceptional taillights. Although I must admit I thought the Polara was a Lincoln based on that badge.
That’s the North Star!
Proof that the CHMSL was a good idea; there were complaints that it would lead to visual overload when it was implemented.
CHMSL is easily in my top 3 automotive lighting regulations. (Don’t ask me to name the others or order them.)
When I’m behind a pickup with a camper shell, I realize how much I miss the CHMSL. They’re really quite good.
This always makes me ponder on my own pickup with a camper shell, and whether I should actually wire in the third brake light on the shell.
This is actually something I add to old cars. I try to integrate it and make it look as natural as I can, but in the end, they just work.
BMW will read this and get ideas. They already tried to rent us heated seats!
Subscription CHMSL!