Here’s the next and last batch of eye-catching lighting we examined on the cars at Automobility LA 2023, the Los Angeles auto show. At DVN, we have an equal-opportunity lighting passion; we point our cameras at even the most minor of lights, if they’re interesting in some way, and whether they’re on a sexy car or a utility van. That said, let’s start with something sexy: our first in-person look at the lights on the Cadillac Lyriq. It’s got an artful stack of ice cubes for the headlights, with a vertical light line (DRL/position light, maybe turn signal) outboard and a tastefully hidden horizontal light line (turn signal, we guess) as an eyebrow above. The side marker is around the corner. Dig those classy pinstripes on the grilleboard!
Round the back, the vertical-and-horizontal-lines theme continues. There are cool flying-buttress lights at the top of the quarter panels, a red assembly at the bottom-aft of the quarter panels, reflectors and reversing lamps at the bottom of the bumper fascia, and a nifty CHMSL tucked just after the spoiler at the top of the hatch glass.
Sliding along the Sloan Ladder from Cadillac to Chevrolet, here’s the Trax, and we’ll start with the taillights: a big, bold, bisected unit with a reversing lamp tucked in the negative space of the red stop-turn-tail clamshell.
The headlamp hews to the popular trend of DRL eyebrows just below the hoodline, with a high/low-beam projector and turn signal down aflank of the grille.
This Ford Explorer has the horizontal-oblong LED headlight optics long a Ford brandmark, but they’re icecube-clear now. There’s a slimline DRL lightguide at the top of the lamp, and the turn signal is above the inboard high beam headlamp.
Here’s the big, blocky taillight on that same Explorer: a smooth, evenly-lit red ear surrounding the reversing lamp and the turn signal (bulb type, but at least it’s amber).
Look at the taillight on this electric Ford F-150 Lightning. We took a lot of pictures of it, because it’s a fascinating lamp; its red lens looks almost opaque when it’s unlit. It lights up in a foggy red effect with ghostly bright-red concentrations of bright light seeming to come from deep within—neat!
Smooth, smooth, smooth. There’s no need for a discrete side marker light; the whole lamp is a great big one as viewed from the side. The side retro-reflector is tidily integrated into the outer lens, as shown here.
The rear retro-reflector is likewise integral to the outer lens. Photos really don’t do justice to this lamp; it must be seen in person. The clear-lens vertical array here just at the inboard edge of the photo appears to be a rear cornering lamp…
…which we see lit in conjunction with big, bright, rear-facing reversing lamps on the tailgate, in the middle of the full-width red light band. Pickup trucks are often used in situations where bright, broad illumination can really be a help while reversing.
It looks to us as though these taillights have a bigger lit area from the side than from the rear!
Fascinating stuff to see in the electric F-150’s front lights, too. There’s a great big outer figure-7 at this end, too, and it looks homogeneously white whether unlit or lit. That turn signal separating the upper and lower LED projectors…
…also serves as the DRL, making the whole thing a figure-F (for Ford?).
Here we see the side marker light, looking outward from the inboard wall of the lamp; the side retro-reflector is neatly tucked just aft of the crook in the outer 7-shaped chunk of light. Here we’ve caught that figure-7 in the middle of its scanning or scrolling on/off cycle, used to control the perceived brightness—a strategy that might bring along its own set of issues, as described in the keynote at the US DVN Workshop ’23.
The F-150 is a seemingly perpetual cash machine for Ford in the North American market; it’s been the best-selling model in the United States for a bunch of years. So, there are many different submodels. Here’s the Raptor, which has another set of Ford’s unusually well-blacked-out-when-off reflector LED headlamps.
The Raptor has identification lamps, the trio of amber (front) and red (rear) marker lights centred about the vehicle’s longitudinal middle, required along with outboard clearance lights in North America on vehicles over 2,032 mm wide. Often the identification and clearance lights are drab, utilitarian items, but Ford have come up with elegant new ones that look like light encased in ice. Here’s a close look at the Raptor’s left front clearance light.
The Raptor’s rear lighting is big, blocky, and bold, with a stylised figure-F theme to the all-red rear lighting system. We see a blind spot radar cover made of opaque red plastic outboard of the reversing lamp. The flag-shaped brake/turn light compartment, shown here lit up, has a colourless appearance when unlit. We also see the red version of that light-encased-in-ice clearance light.
And here’s the F-150 Tremor, with yet another different lightstyle. It has amber horizontal turn-park-daytime running lights continuing the gold bar on the grille, and dividing the upper and lower headlamps. The headlamps are another spiffy extra-super-blackout job; whatever magic Ford do to make that work…it works!
Here’s the newest in Ford Mustang taillights: continuing the model-iconic triple-bar design, now with a heavily convex horizontal crease. This design shift recalls the taillight refresh for 1967, when horizontally-concave lamps replaced the 1966 horizontally-convex ones. In this latest design, the light seems to come from deep within the lamp.
Another triple-treatment up front, for the headlamps and the DRL/position/(turn signal?) lamps alike.
