What McLaren’s Design Director Frank Stephenson was inspecting at the Geneva Motor Show is the Bugatti Chiron’s LED taillight, a continuous strip of redness all across the rear. Four years ago, the Volkswagen XL1 couldn’t have that. Here’s why.
Coming up with something new in the lights department is hard in the car industry. Audi’s sequentially activated indicator blocks are still illegal in the United States, and so are laser headlamps. That’s stupid, but so is Donald Trump running for president, yet both are still happening.
The Volkswagen XL1's tail lamp design was doomed from the beginning due to the hatchback’s layout, but they also had to leave a bit of space unlit in the middle to make this qualify as “multiple lamps.”
It all comes down to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and their ECE R 48 Abs.2.16.2 document, which states the following:
The Volkswagen XL1 simply doesn’t comply with the 60 percent rule, while the Bugatti Chiron does. That’s why it can have this at the back:
The more you know!