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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Who is scanning these for future restorers to get 3d printed replacement parts?
I feel like the unidentified tail lights are GM Pontiac. Maybe the Pontiac Parisienne. *****edit teach me to not read the comments first***** Grand Ville indeed.
I’m pretty certain it’s the Parisienne. My grandma had one and I immediately thought of this
Not a Parisienne….they have rounded edges to go around the corner of the rear quarter panel/fender. This one does not have that rounded edge.
For Parisienne example scroll up a couple pics on the right side of the image you can see Parisienne pics. Probably an Pontiac tho.
https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/fieldlightquiz_1.jpg
This would keep Taillight Ruiners in business for weeks!
There is one guy in the United States who specialised in selling the export headlamps and taillamps fitted to many North American-sourced vehicles from Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors. He has an extensive ebay listing.
What a chad, making older American iron accessible to amber signal snobs like me.
The export Mercury Mystique taillight was fascinating! I never would have thought it was sold anywhere outside of North America.
If you think Island Lake is confusing, consider this:
South of Chicago is the village of Park Forest, IL
East of Chicago is the village of Forest Park, IL
Near where I grew up in the UK there’s the neighbouring villages of Upper Swell, and Lower Swell. Just down the road are Upper and Lower Slaughter.
Because I grew up with this it seems entirely normal to me.
There’s a town in Ohio near me called Peninsula, but there are no peninsulas in it nor by it. It’s completely land locked.
Oh, and don’t forget:
River Forest, River Woods, Glen Woods, Maywood (which is next to Bellwood), Elmwood Park (not to be confused with Franklin Park, which is between Schiller Park and Melrose Park), and when you’re in Oak Park maybe head West to Oak Brook! So easy to keep it striaght.
Was about to make a similar comment; lived in Chicago suburbs for 6 yrs, probably moved 7 times… when they were choosing names, they seemed to always ask: “What name is boring sounding yet similar to adjacent burgs?”
OR
“What name makes the least sense for the geography of the town’s location?”
Looking at you Arlington Heights (which is within +/- 5 ft elevation from all other suburbs.. )
The general naming schema for postwar American suburbs is to name it after something that was destroyed to create it 🙂
List of street names as you drive through the Atlanta metro area: Peachtree St…Peachtree Ave…Peachtree Ln…Peachtree Blvd…you get the idea.
I went to Dublin for my LLM internship. I knew my dorm was in Shanoween… road, street, place, square, ave, lane, park? All these applied within a half mile radius from my dorm. I found it fascinating, my cab driver, not so much.
East of Chicago is…Lake Michigan. Just west of that is Michigan & Lake.
Damn it! Well, far too late to correct that now.
So I’ll bring my up one of my other favorite pairs instead.
Southwest of the city is Crest Hill.
Further west is Hillcrest.
Are these images mildly pornographic to Torch? The excitement he exudes is not normal. Oh wait. None of us are normal here. I’m the closest to normal, and I’m extraterrestrial.
Cannot unsee the ~88 TA’s.
Taillight of the Gods
“(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?)”
Ha, yeah, there are recursive islands and recursive lakes. There’s a place in Canada that’s a real nesting doll of lakes n’ islands called Yathkyed Lake in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut. Per Wikipedia, “Lake Yathkyed contains the only lake on an island in a lake on an island in a lake in the world, and the only islands within such a lake.”
Here’s a pretty good article about it:
https://curiocity.com/canada-most-recursive-island-yathkyed-lake/
As a kid a few decades ago, I prided myself on being able to identify any vehicle by it’s taillights. Unfortunately, that part of my memory bank is gone. Sigh.
I’m thinking this might be a year or 2 off but, definitely a Granville!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQMkRzWT8mo
John “cougar” Mellancamp
Island Lake is Chain-adjacent, back in the day residents were eligible for membership in the River Rats.
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!
Thanks Jason! I think it was actually MaximillianMeen or Crank Shaft, below, that found the answer first, but funnily enough we all commented within ~30 seconds or so of one another, as I recall the timestamps.
I thought some dyed in the wool Pontiac enthusiast would know it on sight and beat me to it, I was very surprised to be among the first to figure it out given the amount of google image search prompts I had to go through to narrow it down. 🙂
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).
I was sure it was some version 71 Ford Grand Torino. How can one year of one car model have so many slightly different taillights?
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
To wit….why don’t more companies do this. Bumper turn signals and brake lights drive me, and Torch, crazy when they have freaking full light enclosures or heckblendes unused on the lift gate!
Also, anytime I think of the Buick Sicario (wrong name, don’t care) convertible, the hidden taillights in the trunk make me laugh.
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