I can’t recall who it was that said that “taillights are the red reflection of society and culture,” but they were absolutely correct. Maybe it was Winston Churchill? I can’t recall. But the point stands: We, as a culture, subconsciously steer taillight design to such a degree that driving behind a car of a given era can tell you more about that time than countless books on the subject. Hyperbole? Maybe. But, then again, maybe just normal-bole, as you may realize when I talk to you today about an interesting bit of 1970s (and into the 1980s) American taillight design.
What makes this period of American taillight design so interesting is how much it both was a response to the more dominant global taillight trends spearheaded by European taillight design and how it also mirrored one of the key divisions of 1970s design in general. To get a sense of what I’m talking about, take a look at two 1978 sedans, one from Europe and one from America:
On the left we have an Audi 80, from Germany, sporting some very archetypal Euro-style taillights of that era: tri-colored, large, clean, simple, unadorned, rectilinear. They’re like Mondrian compositions rendered in plastic and light bulbs. On the right, we have a Ford LTD II, which takes a vastly different approach to its taillight design. They’re just red and clear, with no amber indicators, the shapes conform to details of the body design, forming a pair of Gothic-arch corners at each end and a large panel in the middle. There’s chrome piping and intricate detailing with faux-grillework, and on the reverse lamps themselves, there’s embossed filigree and iconography of three lions.
These two approaches really couldn’t be any more different! One seems to embrace a near Bauhaus-level of rational modernity, the other revels in detail and ornament. It’s like comparing a glass skyscraper to a cathedral. And yet, these cars are from the same year! How is this possible?
Well, I think it’s possible due to the inherent split nature of 1970s design, which crossed industries and disciplines, and could be seen in industrial design, architecture, graphic design, fashion, everywhere. As an example, let’s look at this divide in interior design:
Design in the ’70s was both boldly modern, with clean, geometric lines and shapes, large, flat planes, basic colors, and confident simplicity, and yet at the same time ’70s design also embraced wild colors, ornate designs, intense and detailed surface ornamentation, lots of references and inspiration from past styles and decoration, and an unashamed sense of busy textures and surfaces. These two design schools couldn’t be more different, really, and yet they co-existed and even at times merged.
It was a strange period, and taillight design, always near the beating heart of all design, was no exception.
In the case of many American cars, taillight design seemed to be a rejection of the clean linearity of European taillights and an embracing of novel, irregular, complex shapes, and lots of surface detailing. In fact, there was so much of this that I’d actually put the surface detailing into two distinct categories: Heraldic and Filigree.
Heraldic taillight design incorporated, for reasons I’ve always found a bit baffling, as America is one of the few countries on Earth to never have had any sort of actual royalty, elements of heraldic crests and coats of arms and all that crap. If there could be a shield or a medallion or a monogram or a way to treat the company’s logo so it resembled some near-religious talisman or something along those lines, American car companies found a way to shove that on a taillight.
Here’s some examples:
In hindsight, it’s kind of strange, right? What were we trying to say, exactly? Equating our luxurious ’70s barges to royal carriages? Maybe? Ever sat in the voluminous velour cushionry of the backseat of a “personal luxury coupé” of the 1970s? I doubt many kings were as coddled and pampered as that.
Alongside the majesty of the Heraldic taillights, you’d also find the Filigree, where it was all about surface ornamental elements like curlicues and flourishes and a stained glass or perhaps Tudor-style approach to taillight sections, where the lens was divided into distinct areas, each bounded and bordered by chrome piping and detailing:
Sometimes the detailing was on the lenses themselves, sometimes on the surrounding taillight bezel, as in the extreme case of that Dodge Aspen rear light assembly you see in the lower right up there.
Like any design trend, these were employed to varying degrees based on the car’s design, target audience, and so on. At times, it almost felt like some of this design was becoming almost compulsive, as even as the trend was starting to wane, you could see vestiges of it popping up on American car designs, even when it just didn’t make much sense. Take, for example, the Dodge Omni/Plymouth Horizon.
This was a car with a design heritage from Europe, France, even, as a derivative of a Sunbeam/Talbot design that became the Chrysler Horizon on the European market. This was a transverse-engined, FWD hatchback that very, very strongly resembled Giugiaro’s design for the Volkswagen Golf (Rabbit at that time in the U.S. market), like so many cars of the era did.
In translating the design of the Horizon to the American market, a lot changed. Sure, some of that was larger, U.S.-spec bumpers headlamps, but some of it were just things that made the car more, well, American, and did so in some hard-to-define ways.
Compared to cars like the VW Rabbit, the Omni/Horizon seemed to be reacting against the clean, crisp, unadorned modern look, and yet the Omni/Horizon shared, let’s be honest here, just about the exact same look as the Golf/Rabbit. And so we get things like this:
Look how similar those two cars look, and even the size and shape of their taillights are close. The original European taillights of the Horizon fit the general design vocabulary of the Rabbit, even. But in America, Chrysler made changes. Originally featuring amber rear indicators, later designs switched to the more traditional red/clear look, and then went further and added those silver-painted borders over the sections of the taillights in one variant, or had horizontal chrome bands in another.
I’d say both of these fit into a very distilled-down Filigree category, as they add needless surface ornamentation that seems to serve the aesthetic goal of adding visual complexity to an otherwise clean surface.
Does it look better? Personally, I don’t really think so, but there must have been plenty of people who disagreed. I think it’s interesting that even on this very European-looking car, they couldn’t just leave the lights be; they had to go in and add some kind of piping, some extra bit of jewelry on there. Was this from insecurity about the strength of the base design? A way to make the car seem more “premium” and luxurious? Or just simply tradition that was hard to shake?
By the mid 1980s, this whole business of adding ornamentation or coats of arms to taillights had pretty much died out, and the more European design ideals of cleanliness and simplicity won, and would remain dominant for decades to come.
I’ll admit, I used to roll my eyes at taillights like these, all covered in calligraphy and silly fake knights’ crests and wreaths or whatever. But now I find examples of these weirdly charming, as they’re so removed from what seem to be modern concerns. They’re fussy and strange and more than a little silly, but there’s a place for that, even in the demanding world of taillights.
I am unable to adequately express how much I loathed that era of US car design.
i’ve always believed that clean-cut geometric look was a hold-over from ’60’s taste, updated with a different color palette for the 70’s. And the faux baroque look was a rebellion against that failed rationality, similar to the hippy-dippy mandala tie-dye crap, but without the pretense of transcendence (and sans grubby fingernails).
Of course filigree and faux Tudor was popular in this country pre-war and immediately post-war wasn’t it? At least looking at movies from the time, everything seems to be in bold colors and knotty pine. I wonder how much of that was movie art directors and wardrobe designers finding reasons to celebrate and utilize “amazing technicolor”.
And then we cottoned on to “mid-century modern”. Desk Set (and a few other movies of the period) does it both ways, and that was what, 1954ish?
(total personal aside: I really, really love the designing and colors in the UN headquarters. blew my mind when i toured it at 15)
Damn, I didn’t realize how long Americans have loved the tramp stamp.
A lot of this ties into broader contradictions about America. Technologically advanced yet backwards looking at the same time. Silicon Valley but above ground local power lines, top loading washing machines and you still use checks (which nobody in Europe has done for at least ten years). Sometimes this is beneficial, particularly in the way you treasure your history and celebrate it, especially with regard to architecture. Here in the UK we can and will pull down anything if the land can be sold off to developers for yet more luxury flats.
You’ve never had a monarchy, so create these dynasties and artificial class strata based on where you went to college, where you shop. what you wear and these are analyzed right down to the minutest detail. It always fascinates me because although the UK is class obsessed America has seemingly organized it’s class structure around capitalism.
A lot of the American neo-classicism of the seventies was a direct repudiation of the upheaval of the sixties, and the American consumer aesthetic has until recently always favored the slightly more decorated.
Checks are used super rarely by most people. I write maybe one check a year, and it’s usually to pay someone like a contractor a decent sum of money, without having to go to a bank and get out cash, or squabble back and forth about setting up electronic transfer, or risking it with a system like Venmo or Zelle where customer service tells you that you are shit-out-of-luck if something goes wrong. Write a check and boom, done. As dated as the technology is, it still is the most convenient way to get some things done every once in a while.
Most contractors will accept a credit/debit card nowadays, but they pass their cost of doing business on to you, and charge you an extra 5% compared to paying by cash or check. I only keep checks around for cases like this, I ordered checks when I got my bank account and will probably never need to order again.
I once had a mortgage company that charged $10 to use electronic payments. You better believe I sent checks.
Oh, and I find your criticisms somewhat true, but funny. Especially coming from a country that hasn’t figured out combined hot/cold taps for the bathroom yet.
They’re not really criticisms, more observations. Like how you have electrical outlets in the bathroom, which is totally illegal here (I realise part of this is because our household electricity is 240v).
That explains the teeth!
Electrical outlets not being allowed in the bathroom because it’s 240v instead of 120v still doesn’t make sense! If anything, that should be safer since the amperage of typical devices would be halved. Plus, you know, high voltage outlets exist outdoors, and even higher voltages have been made safe around water.
Plus all our light switches in the bathroom have to be pull cords, or it’s a normal light switch, mounted outside the bathroom.
In 2023!?!?!?! Madness!
Unlike the UK, the American faux class structure based on Ivy League snobbery, internet clicks, car brands, coastal dwelling, or McMansions is entirely optional. It was invented by corporations peddling junk and the self-serving insular cultural elite who want to perpetuate their dominance.
You can choose to live in a nice place away from NY, LA or SF, attend a quality state university, get a good job (or create your own), make money, buy what you need, and never interact with influencers or those outside “flyover country”.
I wasn’t having a dig, I love America dearly and realise it contains multitudes. I was attempting to give a designers reasoning to the the piece, because as a designer it’s important to recognise and understand why things happened the way they did.
I enjoyed your astute observations. Well said.
Interesting observation. As an American who has visited Europe several times I would have said the opposite. European cities seem to have more classic buildings, whereas in the US we tend to tear down and build modern, with the exception of a few very special places where people have fought to have them protected. I suppose anywhere you go it depends on the specific areas you visit – when I travel I spend most of my time in touristy areas which naturally are kept somewhat original in the interest of giving people what they expect when they visit. When you actually live somewhere you probably get a bit broader view than someone just passing through.
Mainland Europe is a whole different kettle of fish compared to the UK.
If you look at the GM vehicles exported to Europe from the late 1970s to 2000s, you’d see many of them have taillamps with amber turn signal indicators…
“Ever sat in the voluminous velour cushionry of the backseat of a “personal luxury coupé” of the 1970s? I doubt many kings were as coddled and pampered as that.”
On the contrary, velvet backseats were all the rage in the Royal household a few hundred years ago – I sometimes wonder if the 1970s velour fad was somehow inspired by an article about the groom of the stool:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/king-toilet-attendant-england
This is Extremely Brougham and I’m extremely here for it. Long live the brougham!
We need some sort of Brougham vs Radwood battle.
We need more broughams IN Radwood. It’s not like they’re prohibited. Most of the cars at the slab shows would be more than welcome (and honestly, get my pick for favorite of the show).
While the filigree and lions and fake coats of arms are silly… I do like the overall shape of the LTD tails. It reminds me of classic American cars and maybe a little bit of classic architecture as well.
Clean and utilitarian has its place for sure (I usually love it), but so does a bit of artistic license… I’m always thinking that overpasses and freeway supports and whatnot could look a little better with just a little bit of extra effort and money. Instead they’re generally drab ugly things that only get uglier with age.
This really is excellent writing, Jason! A super nerdy deep dive into tail lamp design camps. Great read. As a recovering Detroit industry guy, there’s something innate in our desire to embellish to improve the value proposition. Coming of age at this time, I rebelled against the “Vinyl top, whitewall tire, wire wheelcover” crowd. Some 45 years later, they drive sooo nice! It’s decoupled transportation, albeit embellished in its own shrine to the American car. We came close to Rolls-Royce quietness and ride quality for a fraction of the cost. For the buy-it-by-the-pound crowd, this was perfection.
Thanks for the memory trigger! Wonderful stuff!
I think the Heraldry and Filigree styles can be placed into a larger category: barococo.
It’s a portmanteau of baroque and rococo and it covers all manner of decorative gimcrackery.
Serious, were those words just made up?
Nope! Well, I made up barococo but the others are legit words.
Rococo is considered late baroque, so that’s a little redundant redundant. But I just love seeing the word “portmanteau” used at all.
Thanks!
That’s fair about the redundancy, but it’s pretty rare for two words to line up that well so I decided to risk it. 😉
Baroque by definition is overly ornate, overly fancy. Or really just over worked to make the cost over priced. So make parts more expensive, rare so less available, more expensive as such.
Can i get a hold of beau have him hire a economics expert to train the writers here because they have no idea that they write for counter productive car support.
Why are you still here? You seem very unhappy about the content.
I never thought of those 70’s tail lights as coachwork. They made me think of Grandma’s formal living room, the one you weren’t allowed in because it was for special occasions that never occurred. I love the TV in the 70’s photo. 25″ was as large as any normal person needed. If you got a 27″ Sony you were just showing off. Trinitron whore.
Perfect for the person who lines their driveway with stone lion statues.
Definition of Baroque: when you are out of Monet and unable to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh
I sort of understand the addition of tinsel to the Horizon I rode in a 1983 Talbot Horizon and it was pretty basic compared to the shrunken K car ambiance of a Plymouth Horizon. You can see similar thinking in the Americanization of the VW Rabbit from the simple round headlights, plain side markers and unadorned instrument panel of the German built cars to the more ornate square headlight grille and bulky dash with fake stitching on the US built cars. IIRC even the headlight switch changed from a Teutonic rocker switch to a shiny metal pull switch
Psst, in your 1978 example that’s a fullsize LTD, not a midsize LTD II.
I’m all for tacky baroque details.
The 1970s. We had Nixon, disco music, shag carpeting, high-waisted pants, and the AMC Pacer. Something was in the water, and it wasn’t just Love Canal.
That’s exactly why you see that sort of thing in America. A country with a rich history of crests and coats of arms wouldn’t do it, but a place where that is a mysterious novelty will mess with it as an aesthetic. Besides that, there are quite a few Americans who are very into figuring out that they are related to European royalty (whether they truly are or not).
And apropos the other day, the Chevy Monte Carlo crest is amazing. Second only to the Pontiac Fiero’s
The Fiero looks like the screaming chicken got run over and is road kill.
The Cadillac badge is very heraldic, but I’m gonna take the one with the duck, Ziggy Cars Rust. The caddy that zigs.
That’s what I love about the Fiero badge – it’s a distinctly ’80s take on this sort of thing, as ephemeral as the car it adorned.
Also, we do have legit American royalty – the House of Kawananakoa, the Hawaiian royal family overthrown in a US-supported coup in 1893, which paved the way for annexation of the country 5 years later.
and all of the other First Nations…
Yes, in a country without a history of coat of arms, anybody can claim their own… I’m french, and creating and wearing my own crest would seem very pretentious and stupid.
My aunt has spent years researching our ancestry.. and tbf some of the stories she’s dug up are legit interesting… but we’ve only ever been peasants. For basically forever.
“They’re fussy and strange and more than a little silly…”
Sounds like Jodie Foster; she was popular back then, too.
Yeah, but nobody shot Reagan over these taillights, so I think Jodie Foster has the advantage here.
I think the tail lights have aged better, though.
I rather strongly dislike the really fussy American lights and everything else on these 70s cars. The clean European 70s look is an excellent one that became the clean Japanese 80s and 90s look.
What’s interesting is how we’re moving away from the European/Japanese clean, smooth multicolored lenses and towards red-only, busier lenses. I feel like Ford is an especially good example of this, like Bronco lights. I don’t like this trend.
Just remember that 20 years ago, Chevy pickups, all Hondas, and most Jeeps had amber rear indicators. How far we’ve regressed.
If I remember right part of the reason why they’re all red now is because of really weird NHTSA regulations.
I thought it was just because car designers don’t like the visual complication of another color.
Dodge is bucking the trend though. 5th gen rams have red and clear taillights that illuminate red.
Not quite. It’s because the regulations regarding indicator light area often force different taillight designs to be used for the US market – the designers take this opportunity to create red/white lenses since they have to be redesigned anyhow.
I mean…. it’s all just Bauhaus influence. You nailed it. This is why german cars, until the mid 2000s anyway, are still so attractive. Subtle, refined, elegant, and restrainted styling. Newer ones are overstyled and busy and look awful in most cases (yeah BMW I’m looking at you most of all).
Same thing with furniture design really; when things started to be ‘mass produced’ you had two schools of thought, the minimalistic/bauhaus/as efficient as possible, vs the “lets mold in fake carvings and use the lathe here to add a bunch of details so it looks more like hand crafted luxury furniture from the 1800s”. Architecture too, I guess.
Clean, minimal designs tend to age well.
Busy, complex designs tend to age poorly.
I’m of the opinion that nothing can “age poorly.” If it’s ugly 20 years later, then it didn’t really look good when it was new. Striking, novel maybe, but not actually good.
I guess what I’m saying is it doesn’t take age for an overstyled BMW to look terrible. Or an overstyled 77 Country Squire.
This is a great way of phrasing it. While I do agree with ADDvanced (he and I do share a love of modernistic German gauge clusters), I think your point about the “striking” aspect is right on.
’70s design seems in a lot a ways a reaction to ’60s design, rather than something for its own sake. Stuff that’s done for its own sake ends up lasting, while reaction-inspired stuff fades in desirability once the context is removed (by say, 40 years).
The 40 year rule is kind of a thing in architecture.
https://youtu.be/DpmWiVHYmeQ
Reactionary is a good way of putting it. This explains why some of the best aged cars of all time were a little out there: they weren’t reacting to market influences as much as they were doing their own thing. Examples like Citroen DS and SM, Jeeps, Honda s2000(the only car more than ten years old that I think actually looks like it could be sold today), Audi TT.
The S2000 is a great example, esp. now that they’re rare – you see one and don’t think twice, but then it dawns on you what it is.
The TT was weird and ugly then, and it still is.
Torch: I’ve got a bunch of press cars I’ve driven that I need to review, I swear I’m going to get around to writing those!
Also Torch: There were three different styles of taillights 50 years ago that really made no sense! I better to write and publish this right away!!!
Never change, please.
Then they risk not getting invited to press events, as the OEMs know they just concentrate only on the tail lights LOL
The three lions on the LTD brought back into my brain a long forgotten video game, 1982’s Riddle of the Sphinx for Atari 2600. They look like something from that game, even looking slightly pixelated. On second thought, they might remind me of the alligators from Pitfall.
Right on the eyes. Only way to travel.
Did anyone else pretend they were Indiana Jones while playing Pitfall?
Until the Raiders of the Lost Ark game came out. Damn it was hard to win.
Well, you know what they say: if it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it.
Ouch
As overhire for our local theater’s production of Beauty and the Beast I had to hear that line delivered 6 times a week by an actor trying for campy and failing miserably
This is kind of the same reason we get inexplicable molded-in stitching on plastic interior parts. Because it is the theory of luxury without the actual luxury. Fancy things have detailing so we must include that, even though there is no reason to and also it’s a Dodge Aspen. Because it will make things fancy if we replicate what we think is fancy.
It was the trend set by the Plymouth VIP and the original Ford LTD – give a thin veneer of cheap gew gaws that simulate what the general public thinks of as signifying luxury, and charge a crazy profit margin for it. Extra chrome, vinyl roofs, ornate badges, because if it looks more complicated, it must be more expensive.
I’d add that Ram’s Laramie Longhorn models are an exact modern equivalent to the filigree school of Malaise Era auto design.
Also want to point out that Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion cost the inflation adjusted equivalent of $1200/sq ft to rebuild in the 1980s, and you can get a newbuild McMansion here in the Mid Atlantic for $236/sq ft today, complete with multiple different rooflines, turrets, bays, 3-4 front facade materials, and all sorts of different window sizes and shapes.
It’s a good point that applies even to today’s “better” stuff – like how there’s a ton of fairly unnecessary contrast stitching on interiors these days b/c luxury. And don’t get me started on the weird quilted design surfaces.
And if anyone’s ever seen the quite funny Netflix sketch comedy show I Think You Should Leave, this is absolutely the Dan Flashes shirts skit. “They’re priced based on how complicated the pattern is!!!”
Well put.
I will further add that the Laramie Longhorn (and King Ranch, et cetera) remind me of those signs people buy at Costco and put in their houses, reminding them to “Live, Eat, Love” or “Eat, Love, Drink” or whatever.
Skeuomorphism at work.