Bogus

Bogus (pronounced boh-guhs)

(1) Not genuine; counterfeit item; something spurious; a sham; based on false or misleading information or unjustified assumptions.

(2) In printing. a matter set (by union requirement) by a compositor and later discarded, duplicating the text of an advertisement for which a plate has been supplied or type set by another publisher.

(3) In computer programming, anything wrong, broken, unlinked, useless etc).

(4) In philately, a fictitious issue printed for exclusively for collectors, often issued as if from a non-existent territory or country (as opposed to a forgery, which is an illegitimate copy of a genuine stamp).

(5) As calibogus, a US dialectical word describing a liquor made from rum and molasses (sometimes rum and spruce beer).

1827: An invention of US English, coined originally by the underworld to describe an apparatus for coining counterfeit currency.  The origin is unknown, etymologists noting the Hausa boko (to fake) and because bogus first appeared in the US, it’s possible the source arrived on a slave ship from West Africa.  An alternative speculation is it was a clipped form of the nineteenth century criminal slang tantrabogus (a menacing object), from a late eighteenth century colloquial Vermont word for any odd-looking object (which in the following century was used also in Protestant churches to mean "the devil").  The New England form may be connected to tantarabobs (a regionalism recorded in Devonshire name for the devil) although the most obvious link (for which there’s no evidence) is to bogy or bogey (in the sense of “the bogeyman”).  In this sense, bogus might thus be related to bogle (a traditional trickster from the Scottish Borders, noted for achieving acts of household trickery which sometimes operated at the level of petty crime.  The use of bogy & bogie by the military is thought unrelated because the evidence is it didn’t pre-date the use of radar (a bogie being an unidentified aircraft or missile, especially one detected as a blip on a radar display).

The noun came first, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) tracing the first use to describe the counterfeiting apparatus to Ohio in 1927, the products of the nefarious minting having also picked up the name by at least 1838, adjectival use (counterfeit, spurious, sham) adopted the following year.  Later, bogus came to be applied to anything of poor quality, even if not something misrepresenting a brand-name (ie bogus in intended function).  The adoption by computer programmers (apparently in the 1980s) to refer to anything wrong, broken, unlinked, useless etc was an example of English in action; they could have chosen any of bogus’s many synonyms but it was the word of choice and hackers use it too.  Bogus is an adjective and (an occasional) noun, bogotic is an adjective, bogusly is an adverb and bogusness a noun.

From the nerdy humor of programmers came the related bogon, the construct being bog(us) (fake, phony) + -on (the suffix used to form names of elementary particles or fundamental units) (the noun plural being bogons).  To programmers, the bogon was the the imaginary elementary particle of bogosity; the anti-particle to the cluon (the construct being clue (idea, notion, inkling) + -on (the plural being cluons) which was the imaginary elementary particle of cluefulness and thus the anti-particle to the bogon.  The slightly less nerdy network engineers adopted bogan to refer to an invalid Internet Protocol (IP) packet, especially one sent from an address not in use.  Clutron proved useful, a clutron an especially clever or well-informed nerd although it was also picked-up in the misogynistic word of on-line gaming where a slutron was a highly skilled female player a combination where meant she attracted hatred rather than admiration a make would usually enjoy.

The surname Bogus was borrowed from the Polish (masculine & feminine) forms Bogus & Boguś, or the Romanian Boguș (the plural of the proper noun being Boguses).  In the British Isles it was initially most common in Scotland before spreading south and is thought ultimately related to other named beginning with Bog- (Bogumił, Bogusław, Bogdan et al).  In Polish, Boguś is also a given name and listed as a back-formation (as a diminutive) from either Bogusław, Bogdan, Bogumił or Bogusław (+ -uś).

A real Ferrari 1963 250 GTO (left) and Temporoa's superbly made replica of a 1962 model (right).  US$70 million vs US$1.2 million. 

The synonyms can include fraudulent, pseudo, fake, faux, phony, false, fictitious, forged, fraudulent, sham, spurious, artificial, dummy, ersatz, imitation, pretended, pseudo, simulated, counterfeit but bogus is what’s known as a “loaded word”.  Bogus implies fake (and less commonly “of poor quality”) but just because something isn’t real doesn’t mean it need be thought bogus.  Ferrari made only 39 (it can also be calculated at 36 or 41 depending on definitions) 250 GTOs and one has sold for US$70 million but it’s possible for experts to create an almost exact replica (indeed one of higher quality than an original although given the standard of some of the welding done in the factory in those years that's really not surprising) but it will only ever be worth a fraction of the real thing (a fine example offered for US$1.2 million).  Whether such a thing should be regarded as a replica, recreation, clone or whatever is something about which there's debate but few would dismiss such a work as bogus.  It really hangs on disclosure and representation.  With only 39 250 GTOs on the planet, all with well-documented provenance, it’s not possible to claim a replica is authentic but there are cars which have been produced in the hundreds or even thousands which some try to pass off as genuine; in these cases, they have created something as bogus as knock-off handbags.  One popular use of bogus is to describe various members of royal families who parade themselves in the dress military uniforms of generals or admirals, despite often having never served on been near a combat zone.  

With something digital, just about anyone can create an exact duplicate, indistinguishable from the source, hence the attraction of the non-fungible token (NFT) which, thus far, can’t be forged.  NFTs have been linked to real-world objects, as a sort of proof of ownership which seems strange given that actual possession or some physical certificate is usually sufficient, certainly for those with a 250 GTO in the garage but there are implications for the property conveyancing industry, NFTs possibly a way for real-estate transactions to be handled more efficiently.  For those producing items which attract bogus items (running shoes, handbags etc), there’s interest in attaching NFTs as a method of verification.

Humble beginnings: Publicity shot for the 1960 Ford Falcon.

When Ford released the Falcon in 1960, it was modest in just about every way except the expectations the company had that it successfully would counter the intrusion of the increasingly popular smaller cars which, worryingly, many buyers seemed to prefer to the increasingly large offerings from Detroit.  A success in its own right, the Falcon would provide the platform for the Mustang, the Fairlane, the Mercury Cougar and other variations which, collectively, sold in numbers which would dwarf those achieved by the original; it was one of the more profitable and enduring platforms of the twentieth century.  In the US, it was retired after a truncated appearance in 1970 but it lived on in South America and Australia, the nameplate in the latter market lasting until 2016, a run of over half a century during which the platform had been offered in seven generations in configurations as diverse as sedans, vans & pick-ups (utes), hardtop coupés, 4WDs, station wagons and long wheelbase executive cars.

Ford Falcon GTHO Phase I leading three Holden Monaro (HT) GTS 350s, Bathurst 1969.

Most memorably however, between 1969-1972, it was also the basis of a number of thinly disguised racing cars, production of which was limited to not much more than was required by the rules of the time to homologate the strengthened or high-performance parts needed for use in competition.  The Falcon GT had been introduced in 1967 and had proved effective but the next year faced competition from General Motors’ (GM) Holden Monaro GTS which, with a 327 cubic inch (5.3 litre) Chevrolet V8 out-performed the Ford which had by then had benefited from an increase in displacement from 289 cubic inches (4.7 litres) to 302 (4.9) which proved not enough.  The conclusion reached by both Ford & GM was of course to increase power so for 1969 the Falcon and Monaro appears with 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) and 350 (5.7) V8s; the power race was on.  Ford however decided to make sure of things and developed homologation-special with more power, some modification to improve durability and, with endurance racing in mind, a 36 (imperial) gallon (164 litre) fuel tank, quickly (and inexpensively) fabricated by welding together two standard tanks.  The car was called the GTHO (written variously in documents as also as G*T*H*O, GT-HO & G.T.H.O. (and as GT·HO on the glovebox lid)), HO apparently understood by the Ford engineers to mean “high output” but presented to the public as “handling options”, the company not wishing to frighten the horses with fears of racing cars being sold for use on the streets (and such a furore did ensue in 1972 which proved the GTHO’s death knell.

1970 Falcon GTHO Phase II.

If the 1967 GT had been something beyond what Ford in 1960 thought the Falcon might become, the GTHO would have been beyond their wildest imaginings.  Still usable as a road car, it also worked on the circuits although, because of a bad choice of tyre which was unsuited to the techniques of the drivers, it failed to win the annual Bathurst 500, then (as now), the race which really mattered.  Determined to win the 500, a revised GTHO was prepared and, in a novel move, was known as the Phase II (the original retrospectively re-christened the Phase I), the most obvious highlight of the revised specification a switch to Ford’s new Cleveland 351 V8 which, heavier and more powerful, replaced the Windsor 351.  Underneath however, there were changes which were just as significant with the suspension re-calibrated to suit both racing tyres and the driving style used in competition.  Said to have been developed with “a bucket of Ford’s money in one hand and a relief map of the Bathurst circuit in the other”, the Phase II drove like a real racer and probably few cars sold to the public have deliberately been engineered to produce so much oversteer.  On the track it worked and victory at Bathurst followed, something which drew attention from the early unreliability of the Cleveland 351, the implications of it’s less elaborate lubrication system not for some months appreciated.

1971 Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III (Clone).

The Phase III followed in 1971 with increased power, the propensity to oversteer toned down and it proved even more successful, the legacy due to be continued by a Phase IV with four-wheel disk brakes (something probably more helpful than more power) but the project was abandoned after a moral panic induced by a Sydney newspaper which ran a front page which alleged “160mph (257 km/h) supercars” were about to fall into the hands of teenagers to use on city streets and highways.  That certainly frightened the horses and politicians, always susceptible to anything which appears in a tabloid, vowed to act and prevailed on the manufacturers to abandon the homologation specials.  Thus ended the era of the GTHO and also the similar machines being prepared by GM and Chrysler, the handful of Phase IV GTHOs built quietly sold off, never to see a race track although one did, most improbably, enjoy a brief, doomed career as a rally car.

1972 Ford Falcon GTHO Phase IV.

Over the decades, as used cars, the surviving GTHOs (many destroyed in accidents on and off the track) have become collectable and of the 1222 made (including circa 115 of the (unofficial) Phase 1.5 with a milder (hydraulic valve lifters) Cleveland engine), it’s the Phase III (300 built) which is the most coveted at auction (the handful of Phase IVs seem to change hands mostly in private sales and the record is said to be circa Aus$2 million) and while the prices achieved track the state of the economy, the current record is believed to be Aus$1.3 million.  Based on what was essentially a taxicab which was produced in the hundreds of thousands, there’s an after-market ecosystem which produces all the parts required for one exactly (except for tags and serial numbers) to create one’s own GTHO at considerably less than what a real one now costs so it’s no surprise there are many acknowledged replicas (also described as clones etc) but the odd bogus example has also been unearthed.

Ford Falcon GTHO Phase IVs being prepared for racing, Melbourne, 1972.

Quite how many of the 287 Phase IIs survive isn’t known and the prices are high so it’s little surprise some have been tempted to misrepresent a bogus example as something real and there are legal implications to this, both criminal and civil.  There are even examples of the less desirable Falcon GTs and in 2011, in a judgment handed down in the District Court of Queensland (Sammut v De Rome [2011] QDC 294), a couple was ordered to pay the plaintiff AU$108,394.04 (US$107,200 at the then favorable exchange rate).  The defendants had sold to the plaintiff what they advertised as a 1969 Ford Falcon GT, a vehicle they had in 2006 purchased for Aus$18,000.  The plaintiff undertook due diligence, inspecting the car in person and in the company of a expert in bodywork before verifying with Ford Australia that the VIN (vehicle identification number) was legitimate car.  Once the VIN had been confirmed as belonging to a 1969 Falcon GT, a sale price of Aus$90,000 was agreed and the sale executed, the buyer having the car transported by trailer to Sydney.

Bogus & blotchy: Lindsay Lohan with fake tan.

Two years later, when the plaintiff attempted to sell the car, a detailed inspection revealed it was a bogus GT, a real GT’s VIN having been used to replace the one mounted on an ordinary 1969 Falcon, an x-ray examination of the firewall confirming the cutting and welding associated with the swap.  It was never determined who was responsible for creating the bogus GT and expert testimony given to the court confirmed that then, a non-GT Falcon of this year and condition was worth between Aus$10-15,000 while the value of an authentic GT was between Aus$65-70,000.  Accordingly, the plaintiff sued for breach of contract, requesting to be compensated to the extent of the difference between what he paid for the car and its current value, plus associated matters such as transport, interest and court costs.  The court found for the plaintiff in the sum of Aus$108,394.04 although the trial judge did note that the defendants likely didn't know the car was bogus, thereby opening for them the possibility of commencing action against the party from whom they purchased the thing, his honor mentioned that because of the civil statute of limitations, they had less than a month in which to file suit.  It's to be hoped they kept the car because in 2022, well-executed replicas of XW Falcon GTs are being advertised at more than Aus$125,000.