We haven’t done a good taillight post in a while here, so I think its high time we solve that. What I’m afraid may not get solved is this mystery I want to tell you about, a mystery about Jeep taillights. It’s not that the taillights themselves are that mysterious, but a decision made in the design of Jeep Wrangler taillights since the JK-era, starting in 2007. It’s a decision I don’t understand, but I wish I did.
This is going to require a bit of backstory about Jeep CJ/Wrangler taillights, which is fascinating because of one fundamental truth about how Jeep designers seemed to think about taillights:
They did not give a shit.
At least, that’s how it always seemed; for most of the Jeep CJ’s existence, the taillights used seemed to be the cheapest, most easily-available out-of-a-catalog units Willys, then AMC, then Chrysler, could buy. For example, here’s what the taillights looked like for a 1973 Jeep:
They’ve just stuck on the most basic – and let’s be honest, probably cheapest – taillights they could. A pair of round red ones for brake/tail/turn, and a pair of little round reverse lamps above. Good enough!
Then, in 1976, AMC realized they could probably save even more money and time by just using those all-in-one “box” taillights that were showing up on some Ford stepside trucks and 18-wheelers and box trucks and other vehicles. These eliminated the need for four separate light units, cutting it down to just two:
As an aside, that picture above is interesting because I think it’s based on a pre-production design, where the off-the shelf box taillights might have been encased in some body-colored shell? At least that’s what it looks like, and is not what eventually made it to production, perhaps because that shell would have covered the legally-required retroreflector on the taillight unit.
These box taillights are some of my favorite bits of taillight design, due to their incredible cleverness and simplicity.
I once made a whole video about them, and in this video I actually mention what this article is about:
The box taillight — which use the left lamp to illuminate the license plate below — stayed with the Jeep CJ into its re-branding as the Wrangler with the introduction of the YJ in 1986, as you can see on our own David’s YJ in this festive picture here:
When Jeep did a major update of the Wrangler, going from the TJ series that ended in 2006 to the new JK series, one of the things that Jeep’s designers did was to update the lighting, including the taillights.
Jeep assumed that in the advanced Year of Our Lard 2007 no consumer looking to drop about $20 grand on a new car would be satisfied with the same kind of taillight they could pick up for $15 at their local Pep Boys. When you think about it in terms of repairability, though, the Pep Boys light is really a plus. But still, you know how people are.
So Jeep re-designed the taillights to be custom units, but designers used the old, parts-catalog box taillight as an inspiration for the design. There was just one significant change:
They re-designed it upside-down.
Now, I get that this is a minor thing. Hell, it’s all minor! It’s focusing on minutia to such a degree that I question my own sanity, my own role in the world, my very existence. But I can’t get it out of my head. Because, fundamentally, it makes no sense, and if I had my way, the world – at least the world of taillights – would make some kind of sense.
It’s very clear that the JK taillights are not some clean-sheet complete re-thinking of what this taillight could be. It’s absolutely derived from the old box lights, right down to the way it’s not really integrated into the body of the Wrangler. They’re still sort of stuck on, because that look has become a signature of what it means to be a Jeep.
In all of the time Jeep has used these taillights on CJs and then Wranglers, they have had the reverse lamp oriented at the top. This is because they had to, because the window for the license plate lamp is at the bottom, under the red taillight section, since that’s what stays on when the lights are on. You can’t have the license plate only be illuminated when the car goes into reverse, after all; it’s already weird enough that the license plate illumination increases when the brakes are applied.
So, it’s not like there’s any precedent here for a lower reverse lamp, because there isn’t. Hell, when Jeep designers could be bothered enough to actually design a taillight from scratch, they were more than willing to stick the reverse lamp up top, like a weird clear gelatinous cherry, as you can see on this ’60s-era Jeep Jeepster Commando:
I just want to know why. Why did they feel they needed to flip the look of this pretty iconic taillight 180°? What did they feel was being gained? Was there some conceptual reason? Did designers at Jeep secretly wish they could flip those lights around for decades?
I don’t get it. I have reached out to a Jeep designer, but so far I’ve yet to get a response. I’ll keep trying, and if I get any answers, I’ll do a follow-up. As it is, I just want to make you aware of the fundamental situation and perhaps we can all ponder this mystery together.
Why, Jeep? Why? What am I missing? I feel like there’s something here eluding me, and it’s driving me clamshit.
Reminds me of the bumper-sticker I’ve seen on a few Jeeps where the print is upside down and says, “If you can read this, roll me over.”
You are overthinking this. At the heart, a car is just 4 wheels, a motor of some kind, and all the usual basics. Yet there are tens of thousands of variants and they keep changing. There are no concerns about that. Therefore there should be no concerns about the Jeep tail lights changing.
David knows but he’s been sworn to secrecy. You’re gonna have to tie him to a chair and hold him under a harsh light until he breaks.
Now we know how to break David, threaten his I3 seats with a pocket knife. Give us the information or the Giga World seats are gonna get it!
EEEK!
Every automotive designer has a special filter in their email for Torch Taillight Questions
This has to be true.
Reverse lights SHOULD be at the bottom, so really, they just fixed the glitch. Full disclosure: I have owned multiple YJs and TJs.
Yes
You know what drives me crazy?
When the Sushi chef puts the wasabi on top of the fish (are we showing off now?) rather than between the fish and the rice where it belongs.
Even worse: Smearing the wasabi on the plate and expecting me to somehow swipe my sushi in it…
WTF-u, Ken-san?
Oh – Sorry – Those taillights just reminded me of Bento Boxes and Tuna and Rice and….
….Sigh
Whatever the reason, you know there were a number of meetings about it at various levels, with change, no-change, and something-completely-different factions making their arguments.
At one point they probably tabled the discussion but made sure to circle back later. They may have also taken the discussion off-line after some people started having a sidebar discussion. One day after I retire, I’ll probably wake up in a cold sweat dreaming of corporate jargon.
We need to put a pin in this.
Think outside the Box lights?
I noticed today that current Wranglers and Gladiators have the reverse light in the middle. So maybe there were more meetings, more debate, and a compromise was reached.
the least they could do is add some separate amber turn signals
https://www.rallylights.com/hella-6040-series-rear-comb-lamp-stop-turn-tail-reverse-reflector-ece.html
But that requires 2 more bulbs and an extra wire!
I am but an egg… For the life of me I recall the reverse lamp always being on the bottom of these box tail lamps. They were common in my childhood. Is my memory betraying me? Am I in an alternate reality?
It’s called the Mandela Effect. Happens to me all the time, too.
Reading the description of how they work (tail lamp bulb as plate bulb) it makes complete sense. Yet somehow feels wrong.
That’s my memory, too.
Me too
The Caravan/Town & Country comes to mind – They flipped the taillights upside down when it went from the 3rd Gen to the 4th Gen. I think it’s a think designers like to do to be cool. You know, hey look – I flipped the taillights upside down! I turned the tailfins on their side!
There’s probably a fair change if you go to their house you’ll find salt in the pepper shaker.
I just commented the same thing on another Chrysler vans mention below, lol. It was kinda like some brands, particularly Honda, just flipping the position of the brake and signal lights in a model facelifts.
I think the reverse light on the bottom looks better, especially from a practicality standpoint of illuminating the ground behind the vehicle. But having the running light serve double duty of also illuminating the license plate is a clever feature indeed.
Probably the best resolution is for Jeep to have a 3-element taillight. Reverse somewhere (bottom of the light ideally), a red running and brake light in the center with a lens (or LED since they’re small) that illuminates the license plate, and an amber turn signal element at the top. The amber and red could even be switched, depending on how clever they are with the lens or lighting setup for the license plate.
Jeeps have had amber rear turn signals in overseas markets for a while.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Jeep_Wrangler_Unlimited_2.8_CRD_%28JK%29_rear_20100801.jpg/1200px-Jeep_Wrangler_Unlimited_2.8_CRD_%28JK%29_rear_20100801.jpg?20100801190858
Neat! They should offer that globally.
I grew up in a house of XJ-series Cherokees/Wagoneers, which had lovely big amber turn signals in the rear. The first time I realized CJ/Wrangler didn’t have ambers in the rear was when I saw Jurassic Park (1993) and the gas YJ Wranglers had an extra yellow fog light on top of the taillamps that’s noticeable in the scenes when they’re driving away from the escaped T-Rex. It confused and annoyed me even then (probably my first awareness of being concerned about amber rear turn signals) that they’d have ambers on the Cherokee and Grand Cherokee, but not the Wrangler and Comanche.
I approve of this message.
The more taillight articles by Torch that I read, the more I become convinced that SNL’s “Papyrus” sketch was not a comedy, but simply a re-enactment.
They turned because they needed to make something different. They would have also turned the 07 Version around
Aesthetically I’ve always disliked tail lights where the reverse light is above the brake/tail light. Dunno why. I hate the 01-07 Caravan for this reason. So I prefer the way the JK lights look over the old box lights they used, even though I understand why older Jeeps used box tail lights so a separate license plate light wasn’t required.
The vans were like the reverse (ha!) of the Jeep situation – the 3rd gen vans had the reverse light at the bottom. It was almost like the light unit itself was just flipped from one side of the vehicle to the other in the redesign, if they weren’t different sizing and lenses and all.
When I think about modern vehicles with different vertical stack light arrangements, the reverse lights are typically at the bottom. Not always, but often enough.
I could see it being for angling the lights and visibility. Probably not a huge difference in getting washed out by the brake light, but lower for more illumination for reversing especially with backup cameras.
I think it’s more likely related to global markets that have more lights aka amber signals, and standardizing to make it easier to plug in Euro spec units. But from there it’s still a little confusing…I found a 2005 TJ German brochure and it looks like the rear lights are two different arrangements in pics 4 (beach) and 8 (mountains) – reverse/turn/brake in 4, brake/turn/reverse in 8. Did they do both, or just not edit one of the photos?…
It’s not even modern vehicles that have done that. Jeep put the reverse lights at the bottom of the stack on Comanches.
Though I agree that many manufacturers put the reverse lights on the bottom there are some notable exceptions. BMW for a very long time put their reverse lights on the top, just inboard of the turn signals.
I guess in my mind I was thinking ‘modern’ with a rather broad timeframe, say the last 30-40 years/popular in the 90s, with reverse lights on the bottom. Taurus/Sable wagons, Chrysler vans, Explorers.
I tried to use vertical stack to sum the brake/reverse/signal lights being only on top of each other, none of them side-by-side like an inboard case. Though that brings up models that would just flip the placement of the signal-and-inboard reverse combo with the brake lights in a facelift, as in several Accord gens or the 2nd gen Camry.
I assume it was probably a function over form/tradition thing. Lower reverse lights illuminate a little better than higher ones in my experience because of slightly less glare. When you’re reversing you need to pay more attention to nearer objects and the lower lighting can help with that. Kind of how fog lights are always mounted low.
That’s my best guess, but I think it’s a sensible one. As always, I could be completely full of shit.
They probably gave the license plate its own LED. Rear-pointing LEDs, especially red ones, probably don’t work very well for illuminating the license plate.
The JK turned everything about the Wrangler upside down, thats why. Wait till you see the extra pair of doors!
The number of changes was practically unlimited.
Is David’s left tail lamp out, or was the photo snapped at just the moment the right turn signal was on?
excellent demo of the terrible usability of red turn signals
Patents?
All is well and good if they are using those generic lights directly, but when they made them part of their proprietary design, they had to somehow change the design noticeably, but without altering it too much. And the easiest way was to turn it upside down. Either because there is already a patent on the design of the generic lights, or because they want to differentiate enough their design to be able to own the patent.
Just a thought…
If only The Autopian knew an engineer who worked on/with/at Jeep. 🙂
I have dissembled and reassembled my JK taillights too many times, and I miss the generic box lights of my CJ, but I do not miss my Commando lights. I also added additional lighting for when I go in reverse because the rearward view in a jeep sucks and sucks worse in the dark.
They probably just hired an Australian taillight designer.
Seriously? No likes on this? It’s a classic Australia joke!!
Quite simply, this was a documentation error. They were planning on exporting this generation to Australian. When the preliminary approval came back from Canberra, the body and lights department at Jeep forgot to rotate the taillight assembly drawing back so it stayed 180 degrees off. It was cheaper to stay that way than change design since it had already gone to production templates.
I think it looks more proper, reverse lights are generally grounded to the ground so you can see what you’re backing over.
But to the point of the tail light bulb can also be license plate bulb, not that they’ve done that in a while, it doesn’t make sense.