First off, I would like to mention that I have some kind of weird infection in the top digit of my right index finger and it’s swollen and filled with pus and hurts constantly. It’s driving me bizzonkers, like having a constant annoying sound playing in the background, only instead of sound, it’s pain, and I want to chew my finger off but I suspect I’d regret that. Anyway, I’m on antibiotics, and I have an urgent care appointment happening soon to hopefully drain all the revolting material from in the finger.
Do you want to see the finger? I’m warning you, it’s gross aigh eff, but I know some of you kind of like seeing gross body horror stuff, and my job is to inform and entertain, so far be it from me to keep you from that. Anyway, if you want to see a gross finger, click here, and if not, stay the hell away from that hyperlink, for the love of all that’s holy.
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s dig into something more interesting: the taillights on this Volkswagen Beetle that was photographed during a huge traffic jam around Atlanta in 1967:
A friend of mine sent me this image which was used in a Hagerty article but actually comes from the collection of the Georgia State University Library. It’s an image of a huge traffic jam on the I-75/I-85 connector, and my friend sent me the image because he knew exactly what would catch my attention: that VW Beetle in the lower right corner.
Let’s get a closer look at that Beetle. Computer! Zoom in section I7 and enhance!
There’s two Beetles here, of course, which is actually useful for our discussion. The one I’m interested is the one on the bottom, which I think is a 1956 Beetle, the last year of the oval window. It’s also the first year Beetles had those bumper “towel rail” overriders, and also seems to feature the “heart” style taillights that incorporated an extra brake light window atop the taillight housing.
What makes this Beetle interesting is that the owner seems to have added some auxiliary taillights high on the rear fenders:
I’m not sure what that is on the left there; I thought it was another add-on taillight, but I think it may be something else? I showed this picture to some friends at a new local taillight bar, Randy’s Red Rear Rec Room, and was met with a lot of impressed looks and low whistles of approval, but not much else, because it was half-off shots Thursday and everybody was pretty liquored up. One woman puked on my shoes, but she said it wasn’t because of the added taillights. At least not directly.
Anyway, I find this all fascinating because it highlights a real problem with late ’50s and (very) early ’60s Beetle taillights: they were too damn small, and positioned in a really absurd way, when you think about it.
Just look at that picture; the ’56 taillights are almost completely obscured by the bumper overriders from the vantage point of a car behind the Beetle. The other Beetle in front of the one we’re focused on seems to be a ’62 to ’65 or so (I can’t quite see enough to tell) and has larger, higher taillights introduced in 1962.
Here, let’s look at the basic issue: the old, small, low-mounted Beetle taillights were okay when combined with the pre-’56 or Euro-style bumpers that lacked overriders. But once the extra bumper hardware appeared, the lights were effectively blocked:
I don’t really understand why it took VW so long to enlarge and raise the height of these lights, but they did, finally, in 1962, as you can see here in this press photo:
Finally, the lights are above the bumpers and fully visible to the cars behind you! Let’s look back at those add-on taillights:
I suspect that these lights act as – at least – added brake lamps, and maybe even duplicate the turn indicator and basic taillight functionality, too. I salute this Beetle owner, because from a safety perspective, this is a great idea: the high location of those added lights should make them visible to almost anything driving behind you.
I wish I could tell exactly what those lights are from, but I can’t quite tell. They may be off-the-shelf trailer lights from some auto parts store, but they seem well-mounted on those fenders. I wonder if these were added out of caution, or as a result of a previous rear-end collision of some kind? Or maybe the driver having trouble seeing the taillights on other Beetles? We may never truly know.
So, whoever you are or were, Atlanta-area Beetle owner who actually gave a crap about not getting rear-ended and taillight visibility, I salute you and your effective taillight modification work! I hope those things helped!
AI slop from before AI was even a concept.
Realistically, how many other cars ever spent any significant time behind a Beetle?
Time to fire up the chainsaw and pretend your finger is the lead-acid battery of a Changli.
I’ve been meaning to do something similar with my Super Beetle. It has the “tombstone” lights, and they’re just too low for people in big vehicles to see, especially if they’re following too close. I’m thinking maybe a third brake light in the rear window. I’ve also got a vintage “STOP” brake light that I can mount somewhere, which has the benefit of looking period correct.
I had a 1996 AMC Rambler that was frame-draggingly low. I added one of those “Stop” lights to the top of the roof, so I didn’t get rearended everywhere I went.
The more you talk about the Beetles the more I start to believe that the engineers were just reactively developing the thing over the years.
There just seem to be so many versions and variations of the same car. They had a great source for all the core parts, but the small things just changed and evolved as they reacted to the changing landscape around them. Fascinating.
Puts the Corvette folks to shame with the red car built on Monday, manual, cross stitched seats, 8 track player, I know what I got cars.
Well, my Beetle was built in June of 59, when there was a shifter shortage and they used hammer handles for a brief 2 month period before they switched to spatulas for the next 4 months.
Not looking at the finger but I hope it gets to stay with you for many more yarns.
Surprisingly, there are a lot of bugs in the picture. Especially for that place and time period to see so many “foreign jobs” perplexs.
Also of note is that the bug in question is probably the oldest car on the road. There might be a 50’s bubble car in the distance, but everything is pretty much no more than 7 years old.
Cars simply were junk in the past and had amazingly short lives.
Except those bugs. VeeDub of that era was top of their game, their Golden Age, the Gloury Days.
Todays Volksdewagons are long past their sell-by date and the companies about to fall off the cliff it has so richly deserved to go over. Good riddance to VW I say, and that’s from a fellow who was once dyed in the wool Wolfsburger.
As for those extra taillights, that was a smart cookie owner.
I was half-expecting Jason to tell us that he was possibly, maybe, potentially thinking about going to urgent care to get it checked out but if, and only if, gangrene started setting in.
The fact that he is already taking care of it is either a credit to his maturity or his wife and son that are tired of dealing with this shit.
God, that must be incredibly painful and satisfying to squeeze all the goop out of.
That finger is nasty. Might be time to just cut it off. Seriously though, I hope it gets better quickly.
Sorry to hear about the finger! No way in hell I’m going to view that image, but I’m guessing it’s a grandfatherocloccus infection.
I think the high-mounted taillights were actually an imprecise DIY job: maybe it’s a trick of the light/shadows but they appear to be uneven. The one on the right fender seems to be mounted 2-3 inches higher than the one on the left. Note how they seem to be at different angles, too, with the left pointing more or less straight backward while the right appears to be angled upward due to its location on the fender.
The disparity is easier to see if you take a piece of paper and hold it against the screen so the edge is horizontal/level.
“One woman puked on my shoes, but she said it wasn’t because of the added taillights.”
She obviously puked from getting a look at your finger!
Hope that gets better soon!
He really should have used the other hand to point out the taillights.