Don't get me wrong Eric, I'm not dismissing your concepts on making fully custom taillights as opposed to adapting lights from another car.
It's just a far greater degree of difficulty. Now you not only need to be a designer/artist in metal (or fiberglass, or both). Now you need to be able to do all that plus form plastic, understand light refraction, get DOT approval....
It's all fine and dandy to brainstorm about working without boundaries, Horatio. But for those of us that are actually going to attempt this we have to be realistic. What can a fully employed husband with two kids and no time on a limited budget do with the parts that are available? Personally, I think one can do a quite nice job with some of the off-the-shelf lights that are out there in the yards.
After all this is "Hybrid"Z not "Made From Scratch"Z. Our cars are full parts from other cars. That's the spirit here, "Will it fit, is it better, is it cool?"
There are very few here like Terry O that can design and build a beautiful fender from nothing but glass and resin. The rest of us are hackers trying our best to make good choices and hoping to get lucky.
Well, my "items" arrived today. If I think I got lucky I'll post some pics in the near future.
Dan