Start Your Morning By Stopping

This weekend I drove down to Charlotte in a Cybertruck (more on that soon) to check out the third annual Heritage Invitational out on by the Ten Tenths Motor Club in Charlotte, NC, and I’ll have a roundup of some of the great cars I saw there in a bit, too. Right this moment, though, I’d like to help you start your day by talking about stopping. Or, really, stop lights.

I guess we refer to these more commonly as brake lights now? Is that true? I’m not entirely sure. But for this particular collection of lights, I think stop lights are a more apt name because the reason I chose these was because they all explicitly show, in big, bold letters, the word STOP.

At this show of about 50 to 60 cars, there were only a handful that had these sorts of stop lamps, and all were pre-war cars, because this trend pretty much entirely died out, except perhaps on school buses and other large public transport buses, by, oh, the late ’30s or so. But let’s look at some of them now!

This one that I also used for the top shot I think is especially interesting, mostly because of the car its on: a 1911 Cadillac 30. The reason it’s interesting is that car’s other lights are all non-electric! The headlights are acetylene and the other lamps are kerosene. Here, look at the sidelamp:

That’s a wick in there. But this stop lamp appears to be the lone electric light on the car. I think it’s a period-correct aftermarket part, too. There were some cable-operated kerosene brake lamps that operated by rotating a little metal reflector inside the lamp, but this one appears to be electric. Does it have its own dedicated battery? Does it run off the car’s magneto? I need to find out more.

I do like the elegant cut-and-frosted glass and widow’s peak design, which also looks like Mickey Mouse’s head a bit.

This one is perhaps the most common of the STOP-reading stop/tail lamps. The type is what is usually called a Duolamp design, though there were imitators, so I’m not sure if this is “genuine” or not. It’s on an Auburn, so it’s not garbage.

The Duolamp design was a very common taillight for all sorts of vehicles from the ’20s well into the ’30s, and the colors and designs inside those two lenses varied a lot. This version with the STOP text was not uncommon, but most had some combination of plain red and amber lenses.

I do appreciate how the letters are conformed to the kidney shape of the lens and feel a little whimsical, almost Art Nouveau.

Here’s another taillamp from an Auburn, this one from a 1931 Auburn 8-98A. It’s an interesting one, and seems to be a simplification of the Duolamp design, as it retains two separate lens sections of roughly the same shapes and proportions of a Duolamp (upper larger curved STOP section, lower eye-shaped running light) but dispenses with the chrome bezel over the lens, for a cleaner look.

The STOP text is still conforming to the round shape of the lamp, and is amber over red, with the lower lens area having a fresnel-type ribbing. It’s a very clean, attractive light, and I think the letterforms are charming.

The final one is on a 1929 Model J Dusenberg, though I have seen these taillights on Packards and a few other makes as well. I have very mixed feelings about these, because while I think they’re cool, they’re also very potentially confusing, as they look like headlights.

They have a red STOP light with stencil-like block letters cut into the main reflector, and illuminated with a bulb behind. There is also a red lens below shaped like a section of a mandarin orange and about the same size, but there also appears to be a large central clear/white bulb behind the lens ribbing.

So, does this light shine white light to the rear normally? I don’t think that’s a massive reverse lamp. I’ve somehow never seen one of these lamps actually in operation, so I’m still confused.

One day, I hope to understand!