Today’s Taillight: The Mystery Of 1930s Alfa Romeo Taillights

I know I like to think of myself as someone with a rich, deep knowledge of taillights and all of their grand and complex permutations. I say I’d like to think of myself that way because I also acknowledge this is just a desire, a dream, and the truth is that there are vast areas of taillightdom of which I am still sadly ignorant. But! The first step in solving a problem is admitting it exists, and so I’m doing just that, right now, here in public, pantslessly. That part you maybe weren’t aware of, but I’m trying to embrace full candor, so there you go.

The area of taillight ignorance I want to focus on today has to do with Alfa Romeo taillights of the 1930s into the 1940s. Now, this particular category of taillight may not really be unique to Alfa Romeo, but so far they’re the marque I’ve noticed them most commonly on. These taillights are from a particularly confusing and lawless time, taillight-wise. We’re still well before a lot of taillight regulations were officially codified, and even before it was generally accepted that taillights should come in pairs.

We’re talking about an era where just one lone taillight was considered fine, flashing turn signals were by no means a common thing (mechanical trafficators were more common, and the first light-based turn indicator didn’t happen until 1932) and generally this was a time where each manufacturer just did what felt right, or, as was more likely the motivation, what felt cheapest.

Alfa Romeo, though, didn’t seem to be one of the companies that cheaped out; they had their own sort of plan for rear lighting, and it was both interesting and, to me at least, a little baffling. Let me explain.

For example, here’s the taillight setup as seen on a 1946 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500, one that I saw at Pebble Beach a couple years ago:

Okay, first, I need to note that the pair of round half-red-half-amber lamps mounted above the bumpers are aftermarket add-ons to make the car more comprehensible in modern traffic. Those would not have been there originally! You see these added on quite commonly to these old cars with confusing lights, but it’s important to note they were not original.

Though, to be fair, even talking about what lighting was “original” is quite confusing, because Alfa 6Cs seemed to come with a baffling array and variety of rear lighting, some with the red and amber lights on the trunk lid like this one, some with two red lamps on the trunk lid, and some with more conventional-seeming taillights.

Sometimes you’ll also see the central-two-lamp setup in one housing, like on this Alfa:

It also has the same add-on modern lights, so ignore those. These Alfas with the two-lamp setup seem to use the red lamp as a running lamp, and the amber lamp is used as a stop light/brake lamp. If you look carefully at that one above, you can barely make out the letters ALT which is the Italian word for “stop.”

So, this is pretty easy to understand: one taillight, one brake light. But then we start to see a lot of Alfas with this three lamp setup:

Okay, here we have a very clearly labeled amber stop lamp, a central running lamp/taillight, but what is that other red lamp on the left there? It could be just a reflector, not a lamp, since that bumpy lens design I have seen before on old retroreflectors, so perhaps it’s just that? That would be a decent explanation I could live with, except for the fact that these other Alfa three-unit central-mounted taillights exist:

What do we have here? On the right, we have our amber stop lamp, but what’s going on in the middle? That dark, deep, red-wine-almost-black lamp, and then a slightly lighter red one to the left? Neither of those are any sort of reflector, they’re both lamps. But what do they do?

One must be the normal taillight/running light. They’re not turn indicators, because that would be profoundly confusing and these cars would have been far more likely to use mechanical trafficators if they even bothered indicating turns at all.

What are the functions of these red lamps? I seriously doubt one is a rear foglamp – that came much later, and was a far more British affectation. It’s not a reverse lamp, as those also were much later and no one does those in red, dark or light.

I’m baffled here, and I can’t seem to find a clear explanation online. I can’t find owner’s manuals or service guides or anything that would, um, shed some light (sorry) on this mystery.

So I’m putting it out to you, Autopians, and the world: what the hell did these lights do? When were they used, and why? 1930s and 1940s Alfa Romeo owners, now’s your chance to make the world better by granting my curious mind some peace! Someone, please, explain the 1930s-1940s Alfa Romeo three-lamp taillight system to me!

It’s affecting my sleep!

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