Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Driving behind a Jeep up Portland Avenue today provided opportunity to study a curious stylistic touch–the taillights were confined in tiny cages. Was this to protect people from a taillight attack? Or is the idea to protect the lights themselves?

A quick Google search uncovered no reports of rogue lighting going into a crowd all claws and teeth. Thus, the tiny cages must be intended to protect the taillights from harm.

But from what?

The only obvious risk to a road car’s taillights is another vehicle plowing into them. No wallet-sized cages will fend off that–they’ll join the lights on the list of things crushed (and cause a different-shaped dent in the Jeep).

About all a small cage with horizontal bars will stop is thin vertical things like brush or a cornfield, and only then while backing up. As a precautionary measure, it’s extraordinary, like wearing a football helmet or shoulder pads around the office.

More likely it’s just style, which doesn’t need to make sense. After all, when is a necktie functional? Only when that drop of pizza sauce or Italian dressing would otherwise have hit your shirt.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Car parts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.