'49 Mercury Woodie Tail Lights ... now I know why

[Foxer]

I've been working on a '49 Merc Woodie and the tail lights made me wonder why would anyone put such weird lights on it .. they are round pods near the top of the tail gate .. and have a slender rod going down to the bumper ... why this rod, for the wires? .. but why?

The tail lights are pretty clear in this photo ..

So, while searching for custom tail light ideas I came on this photo with the tailgate down .. WoW .. in 1949 someone was concerned about keeping the tail light visible from the rear with the lid down! I never would have guessed this. You can see the rod is just a hinged connector to the body and makes the tail light pivot.

[jbwelda]

guess they expected the wagon to be used a lot with the tailgate down. that's probably illegal most places today, wouldn't want the toddlers poisoned with carbon monoxide or the dog sliding out the back! it is a pretty kool arrangement though.

jb

[JohnU]

More likely for longer loads than the cargo area like short bed PU's today!

[Jon Haigwood]

If they would have moved them outward about 8" and put them on the fenders it would work without all the extra engineering . But maybe "back in the day" the engineers needed to justify their jobs just like today ?

[Art Anderson]

If they would have moved them outward about 8" and put them on the fenders it would work without all the extra engineering . But maybe "back in the day" the engineers needed to justify their jobs just like today ?

The location of the taillights may well have been due to lighting regulations in one or more state. Bear in mind, back in 1949, automakers wishing to sell their cars nationwide had to deal with 48 different sets of regulations, as such rules were considered the province of the individual states.

Art

[Jon Haigwood]

Just noticed the panel below the spare. It opens so the spare can go into the opening

[Watertown]

Great topic and posts: Somebody showing great attention to detail, and others providing excellent commentary and insight. Thanks everybody, very refreshing, I enjoyed this!

[pharoah]

Yep,a gunuine early safety device. I imagine back then if you bought a wagon,you probably used it.

Look at some old movies. Raches,hotels and such used wagons for picking up guests from the train station.

[Harry P.]

If they would have moved them outward about 8" and put them on the fenders it would work without all the extra engineering.

Exactly.

What... too logical?

[Sixx]

Well that's something I never knew!? That's pretty cool

[vintagercr]

Well that's something I never knew!? That's pretty cool

That's what I thought.

[Art Anderson]

Exactly.

What... too logical?

Of course, put the taillights way out at the rear corners of the body--where they stand to get knocked off frequently?

Art

[Art Anderson]

Yep,a gunuine early safety device. I imagine back then if you bought a wagon,you probably used it.

Look at some old movies. Raches,hotels and such used wagons for picking up guests from the train station.

The term "Station Wagon" (or for that matter, "Depot Hack") refers to the original use of this body style, which stems all the way back to horse-drawn vehicles: A wagon purpose-built for hotels and resorts to meet, and transport guests from the local railroad passenger station to their lodging, and back again--EXACTLY what hotel "shuttles" do nowadays!

Very quickly though, this style of horse-drawn wagon became very popular with the wealthy, particularly for their summer estates (even winter homes in the "sun belt"), hence the moniker that Buick put on them: "Estate Wagon". Britain's landed gentry adopted this style of vehicle (from horse-drawn to motor cars) for all manner of country estate uses, from a passenger vehicle, to those purpose-equipped for servicing their sports of hunting, fishing, and chasing foxes on horseback with foxhounds.

While station wagons were made on many different automobile chassis from perhaps 1910 or so, it was Edsel Ford who kicked off the idea of building station wagons right there on the assembly line, when he commissioned his stylist, Robert Gregorie (who styled virtually every Ford car from Model A through 1948), to design and get built, a station wagon on the then new 1928 Model A Ford chassis--for use on Edsel's newly purchased New Hampshire summer estate (which today is Martha Stewart's home!). Edsel liked that car so much, that he decided it would be a viable product for Ford Motor Company, and put it into production for 1929. The car was a success, in that from that point forward, Ford produced and sold hundreds of them yearly, with the real popularity coming with the "Baby Boom" years which followed WW-II, with families of multiple children. In all this, not until Willys in 1948, did any other automaker produce station wagons on their own assembly lines--GM and Chrysler continued to send partially completed chassis out to independent body companies for station wagons until 1949-50, when they shifted to all steel passenger car based station wagons (Chevrolet's claim to having produced the first steel station wagon in 1935--the Suburban--is a bit spurious, given that it was truck based, and ignoring the simple fact that all 1935 GM bodies still had a whole bunch of structural wood in them!).

An interesting thought is how Ford came to clam the nickname "Wagonmasters"--consider that from that first 1929 Model A station wagon, through the end of true "Woodie" wagon bodies from iron Mountain MI at the end of 1948 model year production, there were more than 57,000 wood-bodied station wagons built just here in the US--and Ford produced over 50,000 of them! Even in 1949, when Chevrolet introduced their first all-steel wagon body (produced simultaneously with their wooden station wagon), they managed to eke out slightly more than 9,000 wagons total, while Ford Motor Company (both Ford and Mercury) wagons totaled more than 50,000. Even when, by 1957, the Chevy Nomad by the end of it's 3rd year of production was far surpassed numbers-wise, by the 1957 Ford Del Rio alone!.

Art

[Harry P.]

Of course, put the taillights way out at the rear corners of the body--where they stand to get knocked off frequently?

Art

You're kidding, right?

There are only about a bazillion cars that had (and many still have) the taillights out on the fender corners.

Yeah, those goofy folding "taillights on a stick" make a lot of sense. Something like this, though... taillights mounted into the rear fenders so they're visible whether the tailgate is open or closed... yeah, now that's insanity...

[Art Anderson]

You're kidding, right?

There are only about a bazillion cars that had (and many still have) the taillights out on the fender corners.

Yeah, those goofy folding "taillights on a stick" make a lot of sense. Something like this, though... taillights mounted into the rear fenders so they're visible whether the tailgate is open or closed... yeah, now that's insanity...

Yeah, Harry, but that is a later car than the '49-'51 Ford/Mercury station wagon. Incidently, Chevy and Pontiac wagons had taillights mounted very much like Ford's, in the same model year.

Art

[Harry P.]

Incidently, Chevy and Pontiac wagons had taillights mounted very much like Ford's, in the same model year.

Art

All that tells us is that the engineers/designers at GM were just as goofy as the ones at Ford!

[Art Anderson]

FWIW, Ford moved their wagon taillights out to the rear fenders starting in 1952.

Art

[Harry P.]

Apparently the boys at Buick had a little more common sense...

[Joe Handley]

Or were able to place them in a harder to hit spot that wouldn't be obscured by the lowered tail gate

[Art Anderson]

Apparently the boys at Buick had a little more common sense...

True to a point--however, this is not a Buick-produced station wagon--farmed out on the occasional order for a station wagon.

Art

[Art Anderson]

All that tells us is that the engineers/designers at GM were just as goofy as the ones at Ford!

Consider that until Fisher Body Division started producing passenger car station wagon bodies in steel mid-year 1949, all GM station wagon bodies were not only wood, but were always farmed out to companies specializing in woodie station wagon bodies. The same was true of Chrysler, and virtually every other automaker who even cataloged a station wagon.

Art

[sjordan2]

True to a point--however, this is not a Buick-produced station wagon--farmed out on the occasional order for a station wagon.

Art

That has nothing to do with the pont. The taillights are exactly as designed and positioned on a 1949 Buick sedan.

[Art Anderson]

That has nothing to do with the pont. The taillights are exactly as designed and positioned on a 1949 Buick sedan.

Skip, which makes my point! GM Styling didn't do station wagon styling (that ever reached the production line) for any B-bodied cars until several years after the '49 Buick. And, only a few of those '49 Buick Estate Wagons were built--all the bodies from one or more aftermarket body companies--so in a way, it was certainly more cost effective to simply use sedan rear fenders such as seen on the '49 Buick. Another thing to consider is, a Buick was a longer and wider car than a Chevrolet or any other low-priced car of the era, and a lot of that added width was in the body sides, outboard of the interior width--which made those wider fenders a lot more practical, thus allowing for the standard Buick fender-mounted taillights.

Art

[Shardik]

It occurs to me that this may well have been a safety consideration. With the tailgate lowered, the tail lights are now at the extremis of the vehicle giving following motorists a clear visual indication of where the tailgate actually is. This would be particularly helpful at night.

Just a thought.

[Harry P.]

The way I see it, it was a clever solution to a self-imposed "problem."

Put the lights into the fenders and the "problem" would have been solved. Heck, the "problem" would never even have come up! That's all Jon and I are saying... put the lights in the fenders and there would have been no "problem" to solve, no need for the clever engineering in the first place.