>There's another factor - if you've ever been driving at night and started to
>come up on a station wagon or van with the tail lights going up the whole
>rear upper corner............from a long way off it's hard to get a good
>bead on what it is, we get so used to see 'tail lights down there, with
>license plate between' ..........on 'most' vehicles.

Toyota started the trend of fitting taillights in the rear pillars
with the 80s AE8x Corolla Sprinter Carib 4WD wagon (stupidly sold as
a "Tercel" in North America); they moved higher in the
next-generation AE94/94 carib ("Corolla 4WD Wagon" in NA) and right
up in the AE111/112. The current front-engined Liteace van also has
the lights up in the pillars. Mitsubishi and some Euro brands have
also begun to do this, and US GM had a hideaous (Pontiac/Cvev)
peoplemover in the early 90s which also copied the idea.
--
Andrew Grebneff
Dunedin
New Zealand
Fossil preparator
Seashell, Macintosh, VW/Toyota van nut
� Opinions stated are mine, not those of Otago University
"There is water at the bottom of the ocean"  - Talking Heads