Zephyr (pronounced zef-uhr (U) or zef-er (non-U))
(1) A
gentle, mild breeze, considered the most pleasant of winds.
(2) As
a literary device, the west wind personified which should be used with an
initial capital letter and not capitalized if referring to some gentle waft.
(3) Any
of various things of fine, light quality (fabric, yarn etc), most often applied
to wool.
(4) The
usual (Westernised) spelling of Ζεφυρος (Zéphuros or Zéphyros), the Greek and
Roman god of the west wind. The Roman name
was Zephyrus, Favonius.
(5) A
model name used on various cars produced by the Ford Motor Company, including
some under the Lincoln and (the now defunct) Mercury brands.
Circa
1350: From the Middle English zeferus
& zephirus, from the Old English zefferus, from the Latin zephyrus, from the
Ancient Greek Ζέφυρος (Zéphuros or Zéphyros) (the west wind), probably from
the Greek root zophos (the west, the
dark region, darkness, gloom). The Latin
Zephyrus was the source also of zéphire
(French), zefiro (Spanish) and zeffiro (Italian). The plural is zephyrs and the derived term is
zephyrette (capitalised and not); the
alternative spellings were zephir
& zefir. The casual use in meteorology dates from
circa 1600. While, as Zephyr,
classically something warm, mild and occidental, zephyr can be used to refer to
any gentle breeze or waft where the wish is to suggest a wind not strong as in
a gust, gale, cyclone, blast, typhoon or tempest, the adjectival form being zephyrean.
In Greek mythology, Ζεφυρος (transliterated as Zéphuros
or Zéphyros) was the god of the west wind, one of the four seasonal Anemoi (wind-gods),
the others being his brothers Notus (god of the south wind), Eurus (god of the
east wind) and Boreas (god of the east wind). The Greek myths offer many variations of the life
of Zephyrus, the offspring of Astraeus & Eos in some versions and of Gaia
in other stories while there were many wives, depending on the story in which
he was featured. Despite that, he’s also
sometimes referred to as the “god of the gay”, based on the famous tale of Zephyrus
& Hyakinthos (Hyacinthus or Hyacinth).
Hyacinth was a Spartan youth, an alluring prince renowned for his beauty
and athleticism and he caught the eye of both of both Zephyrus and Apollo (the god
of sun and light) and the two competed fiercely for the boy’s affections. It was Apollo whose charms proved more
attractive which left Zephyrus devastated and in despair. One day, Zephyrus chanced upon the sight of Apollo
and Hyacinth in a meadow, throwing a discus and, blind with anger, sent a great
gust of wind at the happy couple, causing the discus to strike Hyacinth
forcefully in the head, inflicting a mortal injury. Stricken with grief, as Hyacinth lay dying in
his arms, Apollo transformed the blood trickling to the soil into the hyacinth
(larkspur), flower which would forever bloom in memory of his lost, beautiful
boy. Enraged, Apollo sought vengeance but Zephyrus was protected by Eros, the god
of love, on what seems the rather technical legal point of the intervention of
Zephyrus being an act of love. There was
however a price to be paid for this protection, Zephyrus now pledged to serve
Eros for eternity and the indebted god of the west wind soon received his first
task. There are other tales of how Cupid and Psyche came to marry but in this one, with uncharacteristic clumsiness, Cupid
accidently shot himself with one of his own arrows of love while gazing upon
the nymph Psyche and it was Zephyrus who kidnapped her, delivering his abducted
prize to Cupid to be his bride.
Zephyros was in classical art most often depicted as a handsome, winged youth and a large number of surviving Greek vases are painted with unlabeled figures of a winged god embracing a youth and these are usually identified as Zephyros and Hyakinthos although, some historians detecting detail differences list a number of them as being of Eros (the god of Love) with a symbolic youth. Although sometimes rendered as a winged god clothed in a green robe and crowned with a wreath of flowers, in Greco-Roman mosaics, Zephyros appears usually in the guise of spring personified, carrying a basket of unripened fruit. In some stories, he is reported to be the husband of Iris, the goddess of the rainbow and Hera’s messenger and in others, Podarge the harpy (also known as Celano) is mentioned as the wife of Zephyrus but in most of the myths he was married to Chloris. Chloris by most accounts was an Oceanid nymph and in the tradition of Boreas & Orithyia and Cupid and Psyche, Zephyrus made Chloris his wife by abduction, making her the goddess of flowers, for she was the Greek equivalent of Flora, and living with her husband, enjoyed a life of perpetual spring.
Lindsay Lohan resisting a zephyr's efforts to induce a wardrobe malfunction, MTV Movie Awards, Los Angeles, 2008.
Ford's Zephyrs
In the inter-war era, the finest of
the big American cars, the Cadillacs, Lincolns, Packards and Duesenbergs, offered
craftsmanship the equal of anything made in Europe and engineering which was
often more innovative. The 1930s however
were difficult times and by mid-decade, sales of the big K-Series Lincolns, the
KA (385 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V8) and KB (448 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V12) were
falling. Ford responded by designing a smaller,
lighter Lincoln range to bridge the gap between the most expensive Ford and the
lower-priced K-Series Lincolns, the intention originally to power it with an
enlarged version of the familiar Ford V8 but family scion Edsel Ford
(1893–1943; president of the Ford Motor Company 1919-1943), decided instead to
develop a V12, wanting both a point of differentiation and a link to K-Series
which had gained for Lincoln a formidable reputation for power and durability. Develop may however be the wrong word, the
new engine really a reconfiguration of the familiar Ford V8, the advantage in that
approach being it was cheaper than an entirely new engine, the drawback the
compromises and flaws of the existing unit were carries over and in some aspects,
due to the larger size and greater internal friction, exaggerated.
The V12 however was not just V8 with four additional pistons, the block cast with a vee-angle of 75o rather than the eight’s 90o, a compromise between compactness and the space required for a central intake manifold and the unusual porting arrangement for the exhaust gases. The ideal configuration for a V12 is 60o and without staggered throws on the crankshaft, the 75o angle yielded uneven firing impulses, although, being a relatively slow and low-revving unit, the engine was felt acceptably smooth. The cylinder banks used the traditional staggered arrangement, permitting the con-rods to ride side-by-side on the crank and retained the Ford V-8’s 3.75 inch (90.7 mm) stroke but used a small bore of just 2.75 inches (69.75 mm), then the smallest of any American car then in production, yielding a displacement of 267 cubic inches (4.4 litres), a lower capacity than many of the straight-eights and V8s then on the market.
Because the exhaust system was routed through the block to four ports on each side of the engine, cooling was from the beginning the problem it had been on the Ford V8 but on a larger scale. Although the cooling system had an apparently impressive six (US) gallon (22.7 litre) capacity, it quickly became clear this could, under certain conditions, be marginal and the radiator grill was soon extended to increase airflow. Nor was lubrication initially satisfactory, the original oil pump found to be unable to maintain pressure when wear developed on the curfaces of the many bearings; it was replaced with one that could move an additional gallon (3.79 litre) a minute. Most problems were resolved during the first year of production and the market responded to the cylinder count, competitive price and styling; after struggling to sell not even 4000 of the big KAs in 1935, Lincoln produced nearly 18,000 Zephyrs in 1936, sales growing to over 25,000 the following year. Production between 1942-1946 would be interrupted by the war but by the time the last was built in 1948, by which time it had been enlarged to 292 cubic inches (4.8 litre (there was in 1946, briefly, a 306 cubic inch (5.0 litre) version) over 200,000 had been made, making it the most successful of the American V12s. It was an impressive number, more than matching the 161,583 Jaguar built over a quarter of a century (1971-1997) and only Daimler-Benz has made more, their count including both those used in Mercedes-Benz cars and the the DB-60x inverted V12 aero-engines famous for their wartime service with the Luftwaffe and the Mercedes-Benz T80, built for an assault in 1940 on the LSR (Land Speed Record). Unfortunately, other assaults staged by the Third Reich (1939-1945) meant the run never happened but the T80 is on permanent exhibition in the factory's museum in Stuttgart so viewers can ponder Herr Professor Ferdinand Porsche's (1875–1951) pre-war slide-rule calculations of a speed of 650 km/h (404 mph) (not the 750 km/h (466 mph) sometimes cited).
1939 Lincoln-Zephyr Three Window Coupe (Model Code H-72, 2500 of which were made out of the Zephyr’s 1939 production count of 21,000). It was listed as a six-seater but the configuration was untypical of the era, the front seat a bench with split backrests, allowing access to the rear where, unusually, there were two sideways-facing stools. In conjunction with the sloping roofline, it was less than ideal for adults and although the term “3+2” was never used, that’s probably the best description. The H-72 Three Window Coupe listed at US$1,320, the cheapest of the six variants in the 1939 Zephyr range.
It may sound strange that in a country still recovering from the Great Depression Ford would introduce a V12 but the famous “Flathead” Ford V8 was released in 1932 when economic conditions were at their worst; people still bought cars. The V12 was also different in that although a configuration today thought of as exotic or restricted to “top of the line” models, for Lincoln the Zephyr was a lower-priced, mid-size luxury car to bridge a gap in the corporate line-up. Nor was the V12 a “cost no object” project, the design using the Flathead’s principle elements and while inaccurate at the engineering level to suggest it was the “Ford V8 with four cylinders added” the concept was exactly that and if the schematics are placed side-by-side, the familial relationship is obvious. Introduced in November 1935 (as a 1936 model), the styling of the Lincoln Zephyr attracted more favourable comment than Chrysler’s Airflows (1934-1937), an earlier venture into advanced aerodynamics (then known as “streamlining”) and the name had been chosen to emphasize the wind-cheating qualities of the modernist look. With a raked windscreen and integrated fenders, it certainly looked slippery and tests in modern wind tunnels have confirmed it indeed had a lower CD (drag coefficient) than the Airflows which looked something like unfinished prototypes; the public never warmed to the Airflows, however accomplished the engineering was acknowledged to be. By contrast, the Zephyrs managed to cloak the functional efficiency in sleek lines with pleasing art deco touches; subsequently, New York’s MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) acknowledged it as “the first successfully streamlined car in America”. So much did the style and small V12 capture the headlines it was hardly remarked upon that with a unitary body, the Zephyr was the first Ford-made passenger vehicle with an all-steel roof, the method of construction delivering the required strength at a lighter weight, something which enabled the use of an engine of relatively modest displacement.
In 1942, just after the US had entered the war (thereby legitimizing the term “World War II” (1939-1945)) the expatriate (the apocope “expat” not in general use until the 1950s when Graham Greene's (1904-1991) novel The Quiet American (1955) appears to have given it a boost) UK-born US journalist Alistair Cooke began a trip taking from Washington DC and back, via Virginia, Florida, Texas, California, Washington state and 26 other states, purchasing for the project a 1936 Lincoln Zephyr V12, his other vital accessories five re-tread tyres (with the Japanese occupation of Malaya, rubber was in short supply and tyres hard to find), a gas (petrol) ration coupon book and credentials from his employer, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). It was a journalist’s project to “discover” how the onset of war had changed the lives of non-combatant Americans “on the home front” and his observations would provide him a resource for reporting for years to come. Taking photographs on his travels, he’d always planned to use the material for a book but, as a working journalist during the biggest event in history, it was always something done “on the side” and by the time he’d completed a final draft it was 1945 and with the war nearly over, he abandoned the project, assuming the moment for publication had passed. It wasn’t until two years after his death that The American Home Front 1941-1942 (2006) was released, the boxed manuscript having been unearthed in the back of a closet, under a pile of his old papers.
Cooke had a journalist’s eye and the text was interesting as a collection of unedited observations of the nation’s culture, written in the language of the time. In the introduction Cooke stated: “I wanted to see what the war had done to the people, to the towns I might go through, to some jobs and crops, to stretches of landscape I loved and had seen at peace; and to let the significance fall where it might.” During his journey, he interviewed many of the “ordinary Americans” then traditionally neglected by history (except when dealt with en masse), not avoiding contentious issues such as anti-Semitism and racism but also painted word-pictures of the country through which he was passing, never neglecting to describe the natural environment, most of it unfamiliar to an Englishman who’d spent most of his time in the US in cities on the east and west coasts. As a footnote, although the Zephyr’s V12 engine has always been notorious for the deficiencies in its cooling system, at no time during the journey did Cooke note the car overheating so either the radiator and plumbing did the job or he thought the occasional boil-over so unremarkable he made no remark.
There was also the name. The original Lincoln Zephyr had existed only between 1935-1942 and, except a as niche among collectors, had long ago faded from public consciousness, the same phenomenon which made the choice of “Maybach” by Mercedes-Benz so curious; Toyota’s decision to create “Lexus” was a much better idea and perhaps an indication Japanese MBAs were better informed than German MBAs. For 2007 the Zephyr was renamed MKX and even that “naming strategy” (now an MBA fixation) may not within the corporation been well-communicated because initial suggestions for pronunciation included “Mark 10” & “Mark X”, picking up on the (actually quite muddled) history of Lincoln's “Mark” cars which, off & on, existed between 1956-1998 (although the label was in 2006-2007 revived for a pick-up truck(!)). Neither caught on and before long, like everyone else, company executives were saying “em-kay-zee”. The “Mark” moniker would have been tempting because, as the “Zephyr affair” demonstrated, despite a history stretching back to 1917, the only Lincoln brand names with any traction in the public imagination are “Continental” and “Mark something”. When MKZ production ended in 2012, the demise wasn’t so much unlamented as unnoticed.
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