I was driving home from work today, and I was thinking about tail lights for some reason. I sort of like the look of the Euro/JDM rear fog light situation, and that got me to thinking about ways to do it. I had some big chrome truck behind me, and I noticed I didn't see a third brake light light up. "Whatever", I said. When I got home I took a look to see if it was out, and to my surprise, there wasn't even one present. I did some digging, and most G35's have the third brake light on the rear shelf in the center, but where it should be on my car there is only the tan piece with a Bose plate on it.

So, I am kind of stumped. It's a 2005 G35 Sedan, 6MT, with the Rev-Up motor and navigation. Did my car come with a spoiler that had the brake light mounted on it? I looked for mounting holes for the spoiler, and did not find any. Tomorrow I will pull the trunk lid liner and see if there is some wiring there for the third brake light. What do you guys think?

 

The coupes and sedans had a 3rd brake light on the rear shelf whether the car was equipped with a factory spoiler or not. Can you post a picture of your rear shelf, this is the first time in over 10 years here I've heard from someone who has this issue. I can almost guarantee you have a harness for one but I'm baffled how yours is missing and showing no signs it was there. The light you're missing is in a plastic assembly that sits on top of the shelf.

 

I inspected further this morning. Here is what the rear shelf looks like:



It doesn't seem like anything was there previously; in person there isn't any discoloration of the material like you would expect for an object that was on there, any wear marks of removal, ect...

I also removed the trunk liner to see if there was anything else. Aside from the fact that I do not have one of those interior trunk handles, I did find this an extra pigtail. Might this be for the spoiler brake light?

 

As a side note, does anyone have a link for where I can pick these up:

 

There were many variances of these cars that all affect this area for example:

Reclining seats or not
Bose option or not will change that speaker area

FACTORY from THE FACTORY equipped spoiler cars DID NOT bring this light as the spoiler gets in the middle and can look weird and this appears to be the case.
It looks like your rear trunk was replaced with a non spoiler edition or the previous owner deleted it.
For those that have a third brake light along with a Spoiler it means your car did not come with this and was a dealer installed option.
The correct way would be to order the non 3rd brake speaker area cover however this would add an extra 5 hours of labor and hundreds in parts, when all you wanted was a spoiler, your average consumer would never notice this and the dealer would "use the you can never have too many brake lights" excuse.

To add it you would have to buy the speaker area cover with brake light and the issue is most of these lights burn the resistors since they're LED. You could buy an OEM spoiler and plug it to the existing harness since it has that option.

 

Thanks Bull, that's what I hypothesized last night. A few things indicate to me that this car may have had some damage in it's life:

Pop rivets missing from trunk
Spare tire/jack/tools are gone
Rear license plate light bracket is gone (Like, the whole thing. There is a light way back in the bumper but it isn't very illuminating)
Trunk lid replaced with non-spoiler, but the wiring harness is still there. On the off-chance they kept the original trunk and just removed the spoiler, you'd think you'd see something there to indicate the holes were filled.

 

Sound like the car could have been in a small accident and the lid was replaced.

 

I agree. That's what it looks like. Now I need to consider my options. Eventually I am going to get pulled over for not having a third brake light, so I need to get something on there. Option one would be an aftermarket light stuck to the rear shelf, but that'll look like ****. Option two would be an OEM-style wing, which looks like about $100 on Ebay. What I like the best is a third option, which would be to find a duckbill style spoiler with a light. I'm not particularly crazy about the OEM wing. Does anyone know of a company that makes such a thing, or would it best to just make a light fit in a non-light duckbill?