Tail lights and brake lights on 1940 Chevrolet truck bed

[Lionelgee]

Hello Fellow MLU members,

I keep coming across tail lights for 1940 Chevrolet trucks advertised on the US eBay. I think most of them are for small utes not trucks.

Did the Australian Armed Forces fit tail lights and brake lights on the backs of their 1940 Chevrolet Holden built trucks 1.5 - 3 ton trucks?

If they did would anyone have a photo of what they looked like?

I just looked at my 1935 REO Speed Wagon truck and it has a very similar brake light but no signs of tail lights either

Kind Regards
Lionel

[cliff]

The tail lights you mention on US eBay are for US models. I believe our motor vehicle assembly plants at the period of time would have used either locally produced tail light units or more likely ones of English manufacture as we were still "Part of the Empire you know". Complete vehicles imported would have had the US one's fitted (if from the US) but not many vehicles were imported complete and amost all imports were flat cowl or cowl & windscreen frame and rolling chassis units which then had local bodies built onto them using locally sourced components including tail lights, door latches etc. Up until the late 30's this also included cars with many of the major US makes having wooden framed bodies here due to a lack of heavy metal presses but their US counterparts were all steel construction. For an example of this, the 1934 Ford Roadster in the US had an all steel body but the Australian one had a locally made steel clad wooden frame body from the cowl back making them in effect different vehicles even though they were both 1934 Ford Roadsters. Other makes such as Chrysler, Dodge, Plymouth, Chevrolet etc and some English makes were the same. This also applied to trucks and panel vans and the original Aussie Ute came into existance because of local sellers listening to what local buyers wanted.