The Fixlight 1180 was in many ways a fairly conventional approach to electrical turn indication in that it involved blinking amber lights, but that’s about where the similarities end, because the location and design of the 1180 was just so damn weird, even for the era.
Here’s how Volvo’s museum describes the — frankly pathetic — Fixlight 1180: There’s a lot of remarkable things to learn in those two short paragraphs, and they’re mostly breaking down why having your turn indicators in a roof-mounted little wing is such bad idea. You can’t use a roof rack, bad visibility, causes leaks — really, and I’m sure it had some amount of aerodynamic penalty as well. It seems to have proven to be so crappy that Sweden actually made roof-mounted indicators illegal the year they went off the market. The Fixlight 1180 was a direction indicator mounted on the roof of PV444 for a few years in the early 1950s. Popular humor swiftly gave it the name “Cuckoo on the Roof.” It was manufacture Fixtabriken in Majorna, Gothenburg. The owner of the factory was a good friend with one of the founders of Volvo, Assar Gabrielsson. The device was never a success. It had low visibility in daylight, caused water leakage and made impossible to have a roof rack, but it created a lot of cheerfulness with its appearance! “Cuckoo on the Roof” was only available for two years, between September 1950 and August 1952. Ceiling-mounted indicators were prohibited by Swedish law from new year 1952/53. The replacement indicators was mounted on the B-pillar but were also manufactured by Fixfabriken. The company was a major supplier to Volvo Trucks both before and after “Cuckoo on the Roof” and still produces locks for garages.
Think about that: you design something so bad that a whole country doesn’t just say no thanks, they make it a flapjacking crime to do it that way again. That’s got to sting a bit. One advantage I can see about this thing was that only two bulbs were needed for visibility at front and rear of the car, so if your goal is to save 50% of your bulbs, that’s something. The unit also featured a blue lens in the center, but so far I haven’t been able to find exactly what the purpose of this was; it seems to be just a sort of running/marker lamp, perhaps to help guide the eye to the admittedly unexpected part of the car to get information about turns. It’s also worth noting that in 1965 Ford was playing with a similar setup they called the Video Pod, which I’m pretty sure I’ve written about years ago. You can see the similar concept at work, though Ford seemed to be going for a more jet-age type design:
Unsurprisingly, this never caught on, either. There was also a periscope sort of rear-view setup going on here, which is what that large hood is over the rear window. Here’s some more details about this odd experiment:
That center lamp was interesting, too: I suppose the takeaway from all this is that sticking turn signals on a roof-mounted doohickey has been tried, and doesn’t seem to work. I hope this is helpful to you, somehow. I know it is to me. I don’t think signaling is purely altruistic, though. It eases traffic congestion by helping drivers work together for smooth flow. It reduces the chance that someone will crash into you because they weren’t expecting you to turn. It even, so I’m told, gives other drivers a chance to make a little room for you when you want to change lanes—although that may be apocryphal. Signaling helps everyone, the driver included. If only someone out there already knew, or was known to be nutz about both electric cars AND taillights. If only… The first gen of Volt and leaf didnt have this and does not light up the brake light. I have almost been rear ended driving manual transmission cars that slow down considerably just with engine braking and thus no brakes or brake lights. Which brings to mind: What happens with electric cars in one pedal driving mode ? My Bolt has a pretty good deceleration detention system when I’m in one-pedal driving. I had this same concern when I bought it and tested it out. On the other hand, I really only use it in drive-throughs and have twice been told by the customer behind me that my brake lights don’t work. If you just creep along the lights don’t come on so in a highway traffic jam maybe don’t use one-pedal. I am pretty sure that the blue lamp was so that you knew whether the turn signal was to the left of the center or to the right of the center as indicated by the blue lamp, otherwise it’s just a blinking orange light on the roof. If this was not terribly effective with the blue lamp I can only imagine how useless it would be without it. I see a lot of P-Car and Bimmers at the track with the function enabled and it sure seems like it would startle a glassy-eyed commuter to life in the event of a sudden emergency braking situation. Don’t even get me started on the red over red turn signals in the US…………………….. Someone should tell Japan’s taxi drivers: https://s3-ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com/psh-ex-ftnikkei-3937bb4/images/2/1/4/4/14914412-1-eng-GB/20180724N%20Taxi.jpg They work well enough to make you think all sedans should have them. This is a huge benefit. In the old days when most cars were sedans of similar size, you could see the brake lights / turn signals of cars 2 or 3 ahead and anticipate a slowdown. With giant SUVs and trucks, as well as mail-slot windows, this is no longer the case. I contend that this results in more panic stop traffic slowdowns.
