When my car finally arrived it looked like the fender ornaments should illuminate, having an orange rocket lens pointing towards the rear of the car. Being amber lenses and my being familiar with other cars that had turn signal "repeater lights" on the fenders I assumed the ornaments should flash with the indicators. Once I finally fixed the indicators I expected to see the repeater lamps flash but there was nothing. I shone a torch into the fender and saw that sure enough the repeater lamps looked like they should have had a globe in them since underneath they had a special fitting with a hole into which a globe holder should clip. Only there was no globe holder and no wiring. Same on the other side.
The photo below to the left shows one of the fender ornaments and the orange lens and the photo to the right shows under the fender where it looks like a globe holder was designed to snap into the underside of the ornament bracket.
I checked the literature and the advance maintenance manual lists the globe required for the "Front Fender Indicator" as being 2 candle power. Interestingly this line is omitted from the final maintenance manual.
The chassis parts manual shows an exploded view of the ornament assembly it it shows clearly that it is designed to illuminate.
Very excited I rigged up a lamp and clipped it into the base of the fender ornament but when I applied power there was only the faintest glow through the lens. I disassembled the ornament and found that the passage that the light was shining through was actually pointing away from the lens. Because light doesn't generally travel around corners next to none was getting to the lens. What was the deal ? How were they ever supposed to work even if they had been fitted with the globe ? Studying the parts manual diagram more closely revealed that part 13.10.6 was a "prism". I suspect that by "prism" it meant an acrylic light tube to transport light from the globe up into the ornament housing. In any case mine didn't have any such piece.
I'm still really none the wiser on this one. It's quite obvious my car never had the globes or wiring installed but was this the same for all Park Lanes ? The winged fender ornaments are standard on the Park Lane and I have found no reference to their lighting up being an optional accessory. My only guess is that Mercury planned for them to light up but when 1958 was looking to be a bad year for sales they abandoned that idea to save costs and so the ornaments were installed minus globes, prism and wiring.
