Five People In America Got 2023 Land Rover Range Rover Sports With The Better Taillights. Now Land Rover Wants Those Back

Over the weekend, I stopped by one of my local taillight bars, The Crimson Glare, to grab a Yoo-Hoo-and-gin and catch up with my fellow taillamp fetishists. This time, though, something seemed odd; maybe it was the thick column of acrid smoke billowing from the bar’s rear patio, maybe it was the din of hundreds of ragged, screaming voices, or maybe it was the Range Rover on fire. Who knows? Could have been the new carpet, too, I’m not sure, but something seemed off. I grabbed the arm of a woman I sort of knew from the scene, who was rushing to the burning Range Rover with an armload of gasoline-soaked taillight lenses. I asked her what the hell was going on, and she just said “Range Rover taillight recall! They want to take away amber rear indicators from five of our people!” She ran off, screaming, and I realized I needed to know more.

The Range Rover being burned in effigy – well, maybe not in effigy, since they managed to find a real Range Rover to burn, though it was an old heap from the ’90s that had been parked in the lot behind Crimson Glare for decades– was ablaze because the Ambears, a radical group of pro-amber rear indicator lamp activists, were appalled to find out that Land Rover had issued Recall 23V251000 for 2023 Land Rover Range Rover Sport cars, specifically five cars for the American Market that had European-spec taillights.

Here’s the official recall consequence and summary [Editor’s Note: Though this may seem to be entirely fiction, the absurd recall is actually real news! -DT]:

Mainstream, non-taillight subculture media reporting has tended to peg the fact that the turn indicators will flash amber instead of red as the reason for the recall, but this is not the true cause, if one digs just a little bit, and stating this as the cause is incredibly offensive to the pro-amber-rear-indicator community, which is why the Ambears were rioting and burning Range Rovers at the bar, and possibly similar things were happening at taillight bars near you.

The truth is that amber rear indicators are not just perfectly legal here in America, but tests and research from our very own NHTSA have determined that amber rear indicators, instead of just red flashing ones, are safer and less prone to confusion, as they cannot be mistaken for brake or tail lamps, among other things.

… and here’s a GIF of the lights in action:

No, the amber color is just a scapegoat here; the real problem is one of size. That’s because FMVSS S5.1.1.26 states:

On a motor vehicle whose overall width is less than 80 inches:(a) The effective projected luminous lens area of a single compartment stop lamp, and a single compartment rear turn signal lamp, shall be not less than 50 square centimeters (7 3/4 square inches).

I think this is the problem here. For all markets other than our taillight-backwards-asses in America, 2023 Range Rover Sport has amber rear indicators that don’t just blink, but animate sequentially and amberly, in this very appealing and I think eye-catching manner:

That’s cool, right? That’s the sort of turn indication experience I’d expect – no, demand  – if I just dropped over 100 grand on a big fancy-ass SUV, like these tend to be.

For the U.S .market, though, the indicators have been dumbed-down to an extraordinary degree. Look at this shit:

So, the whole damn thing just flashes, in the exact same way that, say, a Dodge Neon would have done it in 1995 or how those $20 auto parts store box taillights have been doing it since 1968 or so. I’d argue these all-red rear indicators are more confusing than the sequential amber ones, which cannot be mistaken for any other taillight function.

They also don’t look as cool, and if you think that’s unimportant, you’re wrong, very wrong, as even Land Rover themselves are so excited about their new taillight design overall that they’ve made it a talking point in dealer videos:

Taillight design is a big deal now more than ever, since EVs tend to drive more similarly to one another than gas cars; design is an important distinguisher! And, I know many designers have actually preferred the American idiosyncratic red rear indicators because it allows for a cleaner, less complex rear light graphic, because many designers are hard-ass minimalistic snobs who can’t deal with an extra color being introduced into their exquisitely distilled-down design.

Well, that argument is bullshit today, because as you saw in the video clip of the Euro indicator, you can’t even see the amber until it illuminates!

This is all just absurd. Why didn’t Range Rover’s designers just make the amber rear indicator area just a tiny bit bigger to meet the 50 centimeter/ 7.75 inch US area requirement, and just have one global taillight? Wouldn’t that be cheaper? Easier? Better for everyone? The US lights feel like a half-ass afterthought, just brute-forcing it by blinking the whole damn thing.

I can’t legally suggest this, but if the five 2023 Range Rover Sport owners were to refuse to deliberately downgrade their taillights because of what Big Red Rear Indicator tells them they have to do, then I would say many Ambears in the taillight community would see them as heroes, undertaking an act of civil disobedience on par with heroes of other movements, but, you know, about taillights.

When I’m Emperor of America, one of my first acts will be that any carmaker to pull this sort of anti-amber-rear-indicator bullshit will be forced to install these school bus turn indicators on all their vehicles:

Either that, or the carmaker’s CEO can spend six months working on one of the mining colonies I’ll be establishing in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Their choice! It’s still America, after all!

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