Out in Island Lake, Illinois, a town with a confusing name (island lake? Aren’t those kind of like the opposites of each other? One is a blob of land surrounded by water, the other a blob of water surrounded by land?) there is a place called Chicago Muscle Cars Parts, and they seem to be going out of business, at least based on this Facebook post that suggests that everything must go.
The “everything” in question is a huge accumulation of car parts for, according to the ad,
“Camaros, Firebirds, Impalas, Mustangs, Chevelles, GTOs, Novas, Cutlass 442s Skylarks, Monte Carlos a body g body third gen 2nd gen big cars 1960s-1980s”
… so the muscle car part of the name checks out. American muscle car parts, in big piles! And some of those piles are taillights, spread out on the ground, looking like a field of healthy taillight crops, just about ready for harvest:
(photo: Facebook)
My god, that’s achingly beautiful! Look at all those beautiful American taillights, most from the Baroque school of taillight design, primarily in the Heraldic sub-category:
There’s a pretty good number of different kinds of lights in there, and they all desperately need identification, so that’s where we come in. It’s time for a taillight quiz!
Let’s start with this batch:
(photo: Facebook)
Mmmm lots of good ones there. So many ornate lights! Think you can ID them all? Try your best, and, when you’re ready, the answers are here!
Ready for another batch? Of course you are, you’re a healthy human:
(photo: Facebook)
This one has a bit of a theme, doesn’t it? I think so. Did you figure it out? Here’s the answers, so you can really know.
Okay, one more! The rich, fertile, loamy Illinois soil grows the best taillights, and here’s another healthy batch:
(photo: Facebook)
Look at that dazzling variety! The variety of those reds, from crimson to ruby to deep wine to deep scarlet. Americans of this era didn’t really abide amber rear indicators, so red with splashes of clear reverse lamps are all you get. Know where these are all from? Here’s the key.
The limited range of makes here makes this a bit of a deep dive, taillight identification-wise, so don’t feel bad if you missed a few. In fact, there’s one that has completely stumped both me and The Bishop who, I’ll be honest, found and ID’d all these pictures for me. It’s nice to have helpful friends, I’ll tell you.
Anyway, what the hell is this one from?:
(photo: Facebook)
It looks so familiar, but all the cars I thought this was from just weren’t quite right. I really thought Pontiac Bonneville, like a 1975 Bonneville, but its not that – those only had eight cells, two rows of four, and that one up there has twelve, two rows of six.
One of you must know what the hell this taillight is from. I hope so, it’s driving me bonkers.
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Looks like you have found your heaven/nirvana, Torch! We may never see you again, I’m afraid…
It’s only an island if you look at it from the water.
One part of my undergraduate geology field camp was in the area around Canyon Mountain in Oregon (not to be confused with the unrelated Oregon Canyon Mountains). We all had a bit of difficulty with the name because it seemed like the two parts should cancel out to form a plain. After hiking the area for a few days, however, it became abundantly clear that this was not, in fact, the case.
May I please pre-order your new reference manual, “Torch Looks at Taillights.” Will you autograph it for me?
That would be a ’74 Pontiac Grand Ville, sir.
It’s amazing how much the taillights of the full sized Pontiacs changed year by year and trim level by trim level all within the same generation of (B-body) full size platform!
Wow! I’m so impressed! Thank you!
Definitely absolutely a ’74 Grand Ville.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnpxY2cYZqE
https://classiccars.com/listings/view/1138818/1974-pontiac-grand-ville-for-sale-in-lakeland-florida-33801
Looking pretty close to this 1974 Pontiac Grand Ville.
https://www.gaaclassiccars.com/vehicles/23918/1974-pontiac-grand-ville
I concur with your findings and salute you with a smiley.
Just before I found it!
My process: They were obviously GM taillights, both from what they were placed with and because GM was doing a lot of rectangular, segmented designed in the ’70s. Two GM divisions were doing wide taillights at that time – Pontiac and Buick – and so those two divisions had to be the focus. Starting there, looking for a less well known model – it was going to be something you didn’t immediately recognize. After some detours – Parisiennes, Buick Centurion – I finally worked my way to the Grand Ville.
And yep, ’74 Grand Ville.
I took the much easier route and just did a google reverse image search. Even then, googie brought up later model years which had 2 rows of six red plus 1 white. It took running through several years of Pontiacs to find the right match (2 x 5 red+1 white).
Could the mystery taillights be from a ’65 Riviera? The Riviera has 12 red segments instead of 10 but the outer 2 are reflectors.
Completely unrelated, but Torch, have you done a dive into how the Lincoln Nautilus gets away with turn signals on a moveable lift gate? Is it a second set of lights a la Buick Cicada or whatever it was called, or do the lower markers become signals when the gate is open? Tens of us want to know!
Lenses in the bumper light up to replace brake/turn if the hatch is open… BMW i3 behaves the same way.
What a prompt response, and yup….name checks out.
Where is the turn signal located on the Nautilus? Looking at photos it sure appears that brake/turn/tail signals are in the quarter panels next to the rear lift gate.
Correction: Corsair……confused it and the crustacean.
Gotcha. In that case the i3 Driver’s comment is correct. Redundant lights in the bumper which illuminate when the lift gate is open, just like Audi Q7 and others.
https://autoimage.capitalone.com/cms/Auto/assets/images/3370-inset04-2024-audi-sq7-rear-hatch-open.jpg
This reminded me of the tail light swarm in San Diego airport.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTcLCInmh3_HioVp6amxAxhtZ5yNIWjapGWBw&s
Island Lake, Illinois, often confused with Island Pond, Vermont.
I pride myself in being able to instantly recognize lots of headlights and tail lights (my GF thinks it’s super weird), but this just exposed my total ignorance when it comes to older American cars.
Should you consider enjoyment of taillights to be a drug, this Chicago area field might just be the dragon Torch has been chasing for years