we had one on our 64 imperial convertible when i was a kid. mostly used them when we were up to no good back then. i have dual spots on my 72 cheyenne super. they were a dealer add on. i think i have a pair of those dummy spots in a box somewhere. wonder how they would look on my square scion xb?
it's simple, they looked cool... in a lot of the old photos, you'll notice that their Appletons weren't even hooked up, they just had the wires coiled around the handles.
As can be seen in this photo of the Nick Matrange '40 Mercury. Which is very strange since the rest of this interior is so well detailed. But a lot of times they where functional and the wires where neatly out of sight. Custom cars in the 40's used to have only one spotlight like this early 40's photo of this '36 Ford 5-window coupe shows. Also the angle on which its put on is quite different than what we are used of today... I think Barris had a lot today with the popularity of the spotlights and how they where put on the car to look perfect. A good sample is George Barris his own '41 Buick build in the mid/late 40's.
A completely smoothed custom, starts to resemble an egg. It's so smooth that it becomes visually boring. The eye travels from one end to the other in an instant. Adding a spotlight nestled in the notch of the windshield does two things visually: it breaks up the only hard angle on the car (where the windshield post meets the hood) and it causes the eye to pause for a moment before scanning down the rest of the car.
I always thought they were for checking out the girls on the sidewalk. I mean, you don't want to pick up something that looks good in dusk but godawful in the bright light.
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