Pontoon

Pontoon (pronounced pon-toon)

(1) In military use, a boat, boat-like device or some other floating structure used as one of the supports for a temporary bridge (often styled as “pontoon bridge) placed over a river, canal or similar waterway.

(2) A float for a derrick, landing stage etc.

(3) In nautical use, a float (often inflatable) for raising a sunken or deeply laden vessel in the water; a camel or caisson.

(4) In aviation, a seaplane’s floats.

(5) In some places (1) an alternative name for the card game blackjack (also as 21 or twenty-one, an alteration of the French ving-un (an obsolete variant of vingt-et-un (twenty-one)) and (2) in the game, the combination of an ace with a ten or court card when dealt to a player as his first two cards.

(6) In nautical freight & passenger handling, a lighter or barge used for loading or unloading ships.

(7) In automotive design, a style in which the coachwork features smooth, flowing curves extending from the front to the rear without interruption.

1585–1595: From the Middle French ponton, from the fourteenth century Old French ponton (bridge, drawbridge, boat-bridge; flat-bottomed boat), from the Latin pontōn-, from pontō (flat-bottomed boat, punt), from pōns (bridge); a pontōnem was a “ferryboat”.  The use in some places to describe the card game (an alteration of the French ving-un (an obsolete variant of vingt-et-un (twenty-one) dates from 1916 and entered English when French & British troops played the game on the Western Front during World War I (1914-1918).  In engineering, the pontoon bridge (a roadway supported on pontoons) was described as early as 1778.  Pontoon, pontooning & pontooneer are nouns and pontooned is an adjective & verb; the noun plural is pontoons.

Bugatti T32s at the French Grand Prix, Tours, 1923.

Attracted by gains to be realized in aerodynamic efficiency, in 1923 Bugatti fabricated four T32 race cars to compete in that year’s French Grand Prix using the pontoon principle.  Bodied in aluminum, the stubby little machines were nicknamed “the Tanks” and there’s certainly a resemblance to the lines of the World War I tanks but, designed without the use of a wind-tunnel, the aviation influenced airfoil shape chosen to increase top speed also possessed that other quality need by aircraft: lift.  The combination of speed and lift was of course a recipe for instability and the T32s showed a marked inclination to leave the track.  Despite this discouraging start, the pontoon approach would ultimately prevail but for decades, instances of aerodynamically-induced instability would plague the tracks, the death toll not small.

Small & large: 1926 Hanomag 2/10 PS Coupé (Kommissbrot) (left) & 1933 Volvo Venus Bilo (right).  The larger the pontoon, the more slab-sided the tendency.

In automotive design, term "pontoon" was used to a style in which the coachwork features smooth, flowing curves extending from the front to the rear without interruption.  The use of the word alluded to the nautical term used to describe a floatation device attached to the sides of a boat or ship to provide stability.  The objectives of the early adopters of the motif included (1) aerodynamic efficiency, (2) a reduction in the number of components needed to form a body, (3) enhanced efficiency through the allocation of more usable internal space and (4) a sleek and streamlined appearance.  It took decades of experimentation and there were a number of notable failures in just about every aspect of the pursuit of those objectives but, beginning in the 1920s, literally dozens of recognizably pontoon-like forms entered production, some sold by the thousand but it’s notable the most successful ventures were those which involved smaller (sometimes on the scale which would later be called micro-cars) vehicles.  On those, the styling tended to be less jarring to the aesthetic sensibilities of those who would actually pay for the things; on the larger machines, the most commonly applied epithet was “slab-sided”.

The pontoon would prevail but in one little corner of England, the 1930s lasted until 1968.  Remarkably, when the NSU Ro80 (left) was released in 1967, the Vanden Plas Limousine (right, complete with a divided windscreen made of two flat panes) was on-sale in a showroom in the same street.

Still, as the 1930s unfolded, the trend was certainly gaining strength and had it not been for the blast of war, things might have evolved much as they did although like many of the aspects of science and engineering which benefited from the extraordinary progress realized during those years, the evolution at the very least would probably have taken much longer.  As it happened, in the late 1940s as the first generation of post-war vehicles was released in the US, the pontoon motif was almost universal, only some vestigial traces of the old, separated ways remaining to reassure.  In Europe, some clung longer to the old ways and in the UK, even by the late 1960s there were still traditionalists finding a tiny market still existed for the old ways bit but mostly, during the previous decade the pontoon had taken its place as one of the symbols of mid century modernism.

Bridge on the road to the pontoon: 1948 Mercedes-Benz 170 (left) & 1951 Mercedes-Benz 220 (right).

One range was so definitively pontoonish that it even picked up the nickname “pontoon”.  Daimler-Benz emerged from World War II not so much diminished as almost destroyed and in 1945 the board of directors felt compelled to issue a statement declaring “Daimler-Benz had ceased to exist in 1945” although that proved pessimistic, a modest programme of repair and maintenance soon established and the next year, small scale production resumed of the pre-war 170V although circumstances were challenging and in two years barely 600 left the improvised assembly line.  However, the currency reform and economic stabilization of 1948 transformed things and marked the birth of the post-war Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) and the 170 range, so appropriate to the austere times was soon augmented and then replaced by more advanced models but the pre-war styling was carried over substantially unchanged.

The Mercedes-Benz Pontoons: 1953 180 (left), 1956 219 (centre) and 1959 220 SE cabriolet (right).

Lindsay Lohan on pontoon, Sardinia, 2016.

It was however obvious that the approach was antiquated and in 1951 work was begun on a new range of mass-produced four-door sedans which abandoned the old separate chassis for a unibody.  This was the car which came to be called the pontoon and the first version was released in 1953 as the 180, fitted with 1.8 litre (110 cubic inch) four-cylinder engine in both petrol & diesel forms.  Stylistically, it was among the simplest, least adorned interpretations of the pontoon idea and has been compared both to “three boxes” and “on loaf of bread atop another” and among mainstream vehicles, probably only the contemporary British Fords (the Mark Consul, Zephyr & Zodiac (the so called “three graces”)) enjoyed the same austerity of line.  The pontoon though looked undeniably modern compared with its predecessors and it was a success, soon augmented by the longer 220 fitted with the 2.2 litre (134 cubic inch) straight-six with which more than any other the company rebuilt its reputation.  As the Wirtschaftswunder gathered pace, demand emerged for something more exclusive and a 220 coupé and cabriolet were added although, very expensive, production didn’t reach far into four figures.  More popular was the blend of the six cylinder engine with the short body of the 180, the engineering of which was simple enough but finding the appropriate nomenclature must have required some discussion and, given the way thing were then done by Germans, presumably reached board level for approval.  The solution was to call it the 219 which was a unique departure from the factory’s naming conventions and the only time in recent history the base three-digit model designation has ended in other than a 0 (zero).  Model proliferation would follow and the problem would reoccur and in later years another convention was adopted which lead to a confusing alpha-numeric soup (190 E 2.6, 300 E 2.8 et al so under that regime the 219 would have become the 180 2.2) until in the early 1990s the whole system was re-organized.  The pontoon line lasted until 1963 although by then it looked a relic and had been cut to a few lower-cost utilitarian models.  The pontoons were really the last memory of the austere years before the exuberance of the 1960s affected even Daimler-Benz.

OSI Silver Fox.  Race car designers had before tried the twin-pontoon idea without great success but in 1967, attracted by the uniquely achievable aerodynamic advantages offered by what was essentially a “wing with wheels”, OSI built the Silver Fox for the Le Mans 24 Hour endurance race.  Financial difficulties doomed that project and the potential of concept was undermined when the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the FIA; the International Automobile Federation (and international sports dopiest regulatory body)) banned “movable aerodynamic aids”).