Lyft introduced the glowstache, a small glowing dashboard mustache, in January 2015. It was a plastic illuminated replacement for the large fuzzy mustaches that had become one of Lyft’s most recognizable early marketing symbols.
The original pink mustaches were attached to the front of drivers’ cars so passengers could identify their rides. Lyft later found that some passengers and drivers disliked arriving at business meetings or other destinations in a car displaying an oversized mustache.
The glowstache preserved the playful visual identity while making the branding more discreet. Mounted inside the vehicle on the dashboard, it could help riders recognize a Lyft car without the conspicuous exterior decoration.
The name is easy to confuse with invented alternatives such as “lightstache” or “dashstache,” but glowstache was Lyft’s official term. It belongs to the company’s early branding history, before Lyft’s service and vehicle-identification practices evolved.