Looking At Taillights For the Year

I'm so very ready for this year to be over. It's been a pisser of a year - we've lost so many people, famous or personal friends. It's a year I will be happy to put behind me as we accelerate into 2017. My time for posting today is quite limited, so I'm reaching into my magic hat of irrelevance and choosing: taillights as my subject because they are interesting and rather fun.

This Corvette has dual eyes above a frown. With the small nose
between the eyes (the Corvette logo), it has a true face-like look. 

When you drive, you are looking at the traffic ahead of you and oncoming traffic all the time. Keeping alert to changing conditions and your own position within the flow allows safe passage for all. I've always loved looking at the headlights and taillights of the cars around me. It's these little pieces of colored or clear glass and their shapes that bring a semblance of life to each car.

I love the triple tree lights of the 1950's vintage Ford Fairlane cars. This
light design wasn't made for many years. It's stunning at night. 

Look at the Ford Fairlane above. With its triple-bank of lights moving up the sides of those fins, this is a car who makes a statement on the road. Add the horizontal chrome base below and it's rather like a rocket ship waiting to take off. Really cool!

Here is a 1959 Ford Fairlane. Look at how different the lights were
treated in this later model. Things are more streamlined and the
lights are set so and much larger so that they show more drama. 

Here's a 1959 Ford Fairlane. By this time they were texturing the exterior ring of the light's setting, allowing a greater reflection of the colored light, they also were beginning to play with the actual light cover and here it was domed into a rounded point instead of flat. The designers replaced the chrome platform with angles and small side-curled fins to bring interest to the car. Interest equaled attention and attention cut down on accidents.

Look at these curves. Instead of the car's framework providing
the visual interest, the attention point is switching over to the
variety of LED and specialty bulbs used for the taillights. I'm
loving this new look. 

Today's modern LED lights have freed designers from incandescent light bulbs and allowed swoops and curves within the light array itself. Both headlights and taillights are becoming more interesting now. Take a look at the Toyota Camray above. This type of taillight design would have been impossible even ten years ago.

So as I begin to wrap up 2016, I'm happily waving goodbye to a year that was really crummy in so many, many ways. I'm looking for the headlights of 2017 to appear in my line of sight. Here's hoping your Thursday is excellent and that we won't have any more newsworthy deaths for the remainder of the year. At the rate we're going, however, I'm not holding my breath.