Tchotchke

Tchotchke (pronounced chahch-kuh or chotch-kee)

(1) In Yiddish, an inexpensive, often showy trinket

(2) By adoption in English slang, an inexpensive souvenir, trinket, or ornament.

(3) In Yiddish, an attractive young woman (with variants).

(4) By adoption in English slang, an attractive young woman (now rare).

(5) In slang, objects of inferior quality (now rare US use of the word as a kind of alternative to schwag or swag (trinkets or promotional items given away at an event)) and used also of marijuana of low potency.

1950s: From the Yiddish טשאַטשקע (tshatshke) (ornament; trinket; toy and (figuratively) attractive girl or woman), from a Slavic language, perhaps the Russian цацка (tsatska) (toy or small ornamental object) or Ukrainian цяцька (tsatska (toy or trinket) but many etymologists think the Polish czaczko (trinket; knickknack) the most likely source and probably ultimately imitative of a baby’s utterances.  The Polish czaczko is long obsolete; the modern cacko exists in the same sense (originally dialect, of expressive origin).  Tchotchke is a noun; the noun plural is tchotchkes.

Classic tchotchke: Lindsay Lohan fridge magnet.  In US “tourist spots”, there are “tchotchke shops” (functionally equivalent to souvenirs shops in other places).

Quite what was tchotchke’s path through Slavic languages is not certain; no single root has ever been identified.  The sense of “a small ornament of minor value; a knick-knack, a trinket” seems first to have appeared in the 1950s while the figurative meaning “attractive girl or woman” had come into use by at least 1964.  Both are thought to have origins in Jewish communities in the north-eastern US (almost certainly New York City) from which use spread to cities in south-east Canada.  The time-line of the assumption of meanings (trinket: 1950s & attractive young woman: 1960s) are vague because tchotchke was circulating in oral use for some time before appearing in the written record; in the pre-online era, years could elapse between lexicographers acknowledging a word’s existence and its appearance in a printed volume of a dictionary (or one of the “supplements” issued between releases of revised editions).  That the transferred sense of “pretty girl” is listed as dating from 1964 reflects the publication date; not a verified first use.  With an origin in the Middle Ages, Yiddish is best imagined as beginning as a “concept”, assembled (variously and eventually) from over-lapping dialects, influenced mostly by West Germanic and Middle-Eastern languages.  Although by the 1950s (when tchotchke entered the lexicon) Yiddish was more codified, alternative spellings still were being listed, including chatchka, chachka, chatchke, chotchke, tsatske, tshatshke, tsotchke and tchotchkeleh.  The spelling tchotchke is an English transliteration of the Yiddish, not a form that follows ordinary English phonetic conventions although the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) notes consonant cluster “tch-” sometimes is used in English for “ch” (especially in foreign words) so the adaptation (with the silent “T”) is not unusual).

The dual meanings have survived despite the use to describe women being obviously sexist and sometimes derogatory (ie the latter sense transferred from “cheap trinket”) but it’s said now to be used with an emphasis on the “attractive” or “amusing” rather than any hint of “intellectually unsubstantial” with at least two Yiddish dictionaries adding “sometimes used affectionately”.  However, in many languages, with descriptors of women, there have been those who re-purpose even complimentary terms as pejoratives and documented uses of tchotchke have extended to what would in English be understood as “a kept woman”, “a manipulative minx” and “a bimbo”.  There can also be confusion with the Yiddish tsatskele (either “young woman who exploits her attractiveness to achieve her ends” or “one’s favourite daughter”, an explanatory note in Leo Rosten’s (1908–1997) The Joys of Yiddish (1968) explaining the meaning shift being effected by a change in the tone of voice).  In Yiddish, context matters much, regional uses also including “bruise”, “nobody”, “misfit” and “brat”.  That variety is emblematic of Yiddish because, unlike formal, structured Hebrew, Yiddish long grew without any sense of a “standard canon” and words used in one city district could convey a different meaning than those heard no more remotely than a few suburbs or blocks away.  Even today, not all entries in Yiddish dictionaries are necessarily comprehensive; the language varied by region and community with not every recorded sense universally understood.  If ever the term “melting pot” could be applied to languages, it was of the way Yiddish forms in the nineteenth & twentieth centuries swirled around New York City, entering (sometimes adapted but usually not) US English and the spreading.

Conservatory of Hitler's country house, Berchtesgaden: note wicker chair's incorporated swastika below armrest, “AH” in the embroidered throw and cushions in a variety of colors and designs, all gifts to the Führer from grateful German women.

There are those who inherit their tchotchkes, others acquire them while some have the thrust upon them.  Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) had the typical upper-middle class distaste for kitschy stuff and in his (sometimes reliable) memoir Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences; published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969)) the presence of not a few tchotchkes in Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) country house, on Obersalzberg of the Bavarian Alps, some years before it was enlarged in the sprawling complex centred on the Berghof: “After Berchtesgaden came the steep mountain road full of potholes, until we arrived at Hitler's small, pleasant wooden house on Obersalzberg.  It had a wide overhanging roof and modest interior: a dining room, a small living room, and three bedrooms. The furniture was bogus old-German peasant style and gave the house a comfortable petit-bourgeois look.  A brass canary cage, a cactus, and a rubber plant intensified this impression. There were swastikas on knickknacks and pillows embroidered by admiring women, combined with, say, a rising sun or a vow of ‘eternal loyalty.’  Hitler commented to me with some embarrassment: ‘I know these are not beautiful things, but many of them are presents.  I shouldn't like to part with them.’”

US three-piece band Tchotchke (Anastasia Sanchez (b 1999, drums, lead vocals), Eva Chambers (b 1999, bass, keyboards, backing vocals) and Emily Tooraen (b 1996, guitar, backing vocals).

Anastasia Sanchez and Eva Chambers had been members of a number of musical aggregations and had released some material before in 2020 recruiting Emily Tooraen as lead guitarist, the trio adopting the name Tchotchke.  Most tracks on their eponymous album (2022) had been recorded prior to Tooraen’s arrival but their second release (Playin' Dumb) in 2025 included contributions from all three.  Working in what’s described as a “retro blend” of 1960s “pure pop” and sometimes formulaic “playlist-friendly power pop”, the band often collaborates with fellow New York outfit the Lemon Twigs, both in packaged recordings and undertaking tours.  Tchotchke’s emphasis on the use of harmonies (a nod to the “girl groups” of the 1960s) and analogue recording techniques produce a “vintage sonic aesthetic” (always, their material concurrently is available on vinyl) and reviewers have noted it works as well with a touch of “old time static” as it does in the crystal-clear digital version.  Despite the obvious commercial appeal of their “candy-coated” sound, definitely the trio belong somewhere in the “art house” genre.

Wish You Were a Girl (2022), official music video.

While tempting (for men at least) to assume the band’s name was chosen as an allusion to the photogenic qualities of the members, Ms Sanchez said the origin lay in the fondness she and Ms Chambers have for tchotchkes: “We like tchotchkes and have collections that are constantly growing.  Emily is more of a minimalist, which has been healing to our hoarding tendencies.”  Pleasingly though, an element of nominative determinism appeared in the in official music video of Wish You Were a Girl (2022) with many tchotchkes included as  verisimilitude.

Tchotchke with Volvo 240.  There may be a subliminal message or maybe the girls just like Volvos (sometimes, “a Volvo is just a Volvo”).

The Volvo 200 series, in production between 1974 and 1993, was the famously robust machine that more than any established the brand in the US; some 2.8 million were built.  Available mostly as two & four doors sedans and a five-door station wagon, there were some low-volume variants including LWB (long wheelbase) limousines (supplied mostly to the GDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic; the old East Germany, 1949-1990)) and a distinctive two-door PLC (person luxury coupé) with a lowered roofline (the “chop-top” 262C (1978-1980)).  The 262C, designed in-house, was built by in Turin, Italy by Carrozzeria Bertone and although fewer than 7,000 were made, the expensive model was always intended as an exclusive range-topper and was throughout its run a success, demand greatly exceeding the original projections.  Visually, the lowered roof-line atop the otherwise brick-like structure made the 262C something of a caricature but the look was less pronounced than the way it was implemented on some of the US PLCs of the 1970s, Imperials and full-sized machines from Chrysler's other divisions featuring the most exaggerated expression of the motif.

Factory publicity shot for 1981 Volvo 262C (left) and 1972 Imperial LeBaron Two-door Hardtop (right).  The 262C's “small greenhouse atop large body” was not wholly “un-Volvo like” because the look had been seen on the earlier 1800 coupés (1961-1972) and it reflected the design language of the US PLCs of the 1970s that at times approached absurdity, the ratio of cabin to what lay fore & aft as inefficient as it looked.  By comparison with them, the Volvo was better balanced, the most desirable of the 262Cs made in the final season with the unfortunate vinyl roof receiving an overdue banishment.  Alone among the 260 range, only the 262C attracts much interest but although of its genre a “minor classic” with many cachets (two doors, lavish interior, limited production, built by a storied Italian coach-building house), the collector market still prices it in the lower range.    

Unusually, although among collectors, as a general principle, desirability tends to rise as cylinder-count and displacement increases, it’s the cars powered by Volvo’s (reputedly indestructible) four-cylinder engines that are preferred to those with the PRV (Peugeot-Renault-Volvo) “Douvrin” V6 that gained a reputation for thirst, sluggishness and fragility, even before it appeared in the tail of the stainless steel fiasco that was the doomed DMC DeLorean (1981–1983); production of the V6 260 ended in 1984 and in that aspect, the long-running 200 series differed from its predecessor.  The 140 Series was produced exclusively in four-cylinder form between 1966 and 1974 but in 1969 the companion 164 appeared, powered by Volvo’s 3.0 litre (182 cubic inch) straight-six.  The 164 was highly regarded (a lack of power one of the few complaints about the 140), the robust engine (used also in marine, military, industrial and other applications) a paragon of reliability.  Unexpectedly, the 164 remained in (limited) production for a season beyond the retirement of the 140, batches needed for certain markets (notably the US and Japan) while the PRV V6 was made compliant with their more onerous emission rules.  That made those PRVs less toxic to the environment but further compromised its dubious reputation, the anti-emission plumbing sapping more of the anyway modest power, the only metrics to increase being fuel consumption and complaints.  While to this day the 240 enjoys a cult following, few lamented the demise of the 260 and even at the highest reaches of the company, the PRV seems not to have been admired.  Pehr Gyllenhammar (1935–2024) between 1970-1994 served as Volvo’s CEO (chief executive officer) & chairman and his 262C company car was a genuine one-off, fitted not with the PRV but a more vibrant B21ET (a 2.1 litre (130 cubic inch) turbocharged version of the faithful in-line four).  In the years since, some owners have followed the chairman’s lead and re-powered their own 262Cs; predictably, several have received a US V8 of some flavor.

Tchotchke (while enjoying bananas) with Volvo 240.

The NNN designation system (N=Series; N=Cylinders; N=Doors) was in 1983 simplified so 242, 264, 245 etc was replaced by 240 & 260.  The predecessor of the 200 series is a footnote in diplomatic history as what Volvo calls the “biggest car heist in history”.  In 1974, a thousand Volvo 144s were ordered by the government of the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)) and duly supplied, along with an invoice than went unpaid.  The factory got paid by the Swedish state because the transaction had been underwritten by SECA (Swedish Export Credit Agency) but, despite SECA periodically sending “reminder notices” to Kim Il-Sung (Kim I, 1912–1994; Great Leader of DPRK 1948-1994), Kim Jong-Il (Kim II, 1941-2011; Dear Leader of DPRK  1994-2011) and Kim Jong-Un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK since 2011), the invoice remains in SECA’s BD (bad debts) ledger and not even the ownership of Volvo in 2010 passing to the Chinese Geely Group seems to have assisted in extracting money from Pyongyang (Beijing among the few “friends” of the “Hermit Kingdom”).  Adding insult to injury, some of the 144s are still in use and the Great Leader, Dear Leader & Supreme Leader never contested the bill; they just ignored the letters of demand.

Supreme Daughter (left) and Supreme Leader (right) inspecting an exhibit of women’s clothes, Pyongyang, October 2026.  The Supreme Leader seemed much taken with a pair of pink sneakers which closely he examined.

With interest accumulated over a half-century odd, the total owed is now some US$455 million but despite hacker operation TraderTraitor (known also as the Lazarus Group and allegedly the 414 Liason Office within the DPRK state apparatus) recently stealing a reputed US$6.4 billion in cryptocurrency from the Binance exchange, it’s unlikely the anyone at SECA is expecting a cheque in the mail.  Apart from all else, the Supreme Leader has other demands on his purse, photos published by the KCNA (Korean Central News Agency, the DPRK's energetic and highly productive propaganda arm) suggesting Supreme Daughter (Kim Ju Ae, (b circa 2013), by Kim Jong-Un out of Ri Sol-ju (b circa 1988)) has very expensive tastes in clothes, shoes, handbags and such.  Still, the DPRK’s in-house hacking operation is making progress, cybersecurity company Elliptic revealing their analysis suggested TraderTraitor was taking a recently emerged approach to cyber-laundering, minting worthless meme tokens simply as “pass-through devices” to move stolen cryptoassets through decentralized exchange liquidity pools, meaning there’s no direct path from wallets holding stolen assets to wallets intended as ultimate recipients.  The method’s attraction is its low cost (the tokens created as “throw-aways”) and the convolutions created on the blockchain, the latter making more time-consuming the task of those investigating the heist.  The DPRK’s foreign ministry has denied the state engages in any form of hacking and certainly had nothing to do with the “Binance incident” but, just as rule during the Cold War (1948-1911) was “nothing can be confirmed as true until denied by the Kremlin”, the industry seems assured it has found the culprit, the DPRK having “a bit of previous”: An outfit that would steal a thousand Volvos would not be squeamish about pickpocketing Bitcoins.

Monica Lewinsky, pleased to see “big schmuck” Bill Clinton, 1996.

Yiddish has enriched English, the words often a “highlight” of the sentence in which they appear.  Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky (b 1973, with whom Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001) “did not have sexual relations") was a good Jewish girl (who got led astray) and one of her emails (discussing gifts Mr Clinton had purchased from The Black Dog at Martha’s Vineyard and sent her through the office of his secretary Betty Currie (b 1939)) to college friend Catherine Davis (b 1973) was published in the “Starr report” (Referral from Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr in Conformity with the Requirement of Title 28, United States Code, Section 595(c) (1998) by Ken Starr (1946–2022; independent counsel investigating the Clinton-era Whitewater(gate) affair and other matters).  “Well, I found out from Betty yesterday that he not only brought me a t-shirt, he got me 2 t-shirts, a hat and a dress!!!!  Even though he's a big schmuck, that is surprisingly sweet – even that he remembered!”  Some other Yiddish words most frequently used in English include:

Bupkis (or bubkes): Emphatically nothing or a worthless amount (as a Jewish mother telling her daughter: “Your new boyfriend isn't worth bupkis”).

Chutzpah (pronounced hutz-pah): Impudent nerve, supreme self-confidence, or audacity.

Glitch: A minor technical malfunction or sudden error (as in “a glitch in the matrix”).

Klutz: A clumsy, uncoordinated person (from the Yiddish word for a wooden block or beam).

Kvell: To beam with pride and joy, especially over a child or family member.

Kvetch: To whine, complain, or squeeze out a grievance (a word that might have been coined for crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013).

Mensch: A good, honorable, and decent person of integrity (rarely used by most people).

Meshuggah (or meshugener): Crazy or senseless.

Nebbish: A timid, ineffectual, or unfortunate simpleton.

Nosh: To snack or nibble on food.

Oy vey: An interjection expressing dismay, exhaustion, or grief.

Plotz: To collapse, burst, or explode from overwhelming emotion (laughter, stress, or anger).

Schlemiel: A clumsy or chronically incompetent person.

Schlep: To drag, haul, or travel with great difficulty or heavy effort.

Schlimazel: A chronically unlucky person (often used in conjunction with “schlemiel”: “The schlemiel spills the soup; the schlimazel is the one on whom it lands”).

Schmaltz: Excessive sentimentality or melodrama (most of the reading list for women’s book clubs).

Schmooze: To chat in a friendly, conversational way, often to make social connections or gain an advantage.

Schmuck: A foolish, obnoxious, or contemptible person (although sometimes used affectionately of one loved despite their flaws).

Schmutz: Dirt, grime, or a smudge of filth.

Spiel: An elaborate, rehearsed, or persuasive sales pitch or story.

Verklempt: Choked up or overcome with emotion.

Yenta: A nosy, gossipy person or busybody.

Teaspoons: Functional when stirring one's coffee, tchotchkes when displayed in arrays.

There are words that can be synonyms of tchotchke including “trinket”, “ornament”, “kitsch”, “souvenir”, “knick-knack”, “gewgaw” and “bric-à-brac” but the significance of the Yiddish word is it’s so specific in meaning “small & inexpensive”.  In that, it differs from “ornament”, “kitsch”, “souvenir”, all terms that can be applied to stuff that can be large and costly (sometimes inexplicably expensive) and differs from “trinket” because there's not the same sense of the dismissive; a trinket intrinsically is “useless” while a tchotchke might fulfil some purpose, even if abstract.  Souvenirs, by definition, tended to be “location or event specific” and while tchotchkes certainly could be souvenirs, not all were.  In the US, tchotchke also entered the jargon of business, the small toys in breakfast cereal boxes and the stuff in bags handed out in conferences also described thus.  So, of all these words there’s a definite “evaluative undertone” and while none are exactly positive, as terms of derision all are fairly mild although “ornament” is an outlier in that ornaments can be both exquisite and expensive so are more like bibelots (by convention, used of stuff both beautiful and expensive).  Depending on the context (and item(s)), the term can have a connotation of worthlessness or disposability as well as tackiness: To say: “She’s a collector of porcelain figurines” is neutral whereas: “She collects tchotchkes” probably in the minds of most summons visions of clutter, perhaps a room full of lovingly curated teaspoon collections, all in wall-mounted display cabinets.

Gasoline

Gasoline (pronounced gas-uh-leen)

(1) A volatile, flammable liquid mixture of hydrocarbons, obtained from petroleum and used as fuel in internal-combustion engines or as a solvent.

(2) In the slang of drug users, marijuana, especially if notably potent (also as gas and there’s evidence both gas and gasoline have been used of other drugs).

(3) In slang, a cocktail made by mixing a spirit with an energy drink (the original believed to be a combination of vodka & Red Bull (a mix linked with fatalities in certain climatic conditions).

1864: As used to describe the “light, volatile liquid obtained from distillation of petroleum”, gasoline was a variant of Gasolene (trade-marked in the UK in 1862).  Gasolene was a petroleum-based lighting oil, sold by English publisher and tea & coffee merchant John Cassell (1817–1865) who branched out into lighting fuel, marketed as both Cazeline & Cazzoline (his publishing house Cassell & Co endures today as an imprint of the Octopus Group).  The surname Cassell was from the Anglo-Norman castel (a cognate of the English castle), from the Old French castel, from the Latin castellum, a diminutive of castrum.  The -eline suffix was from the Ancient Greek ἔλαιον (élaion) (oil, olive oil), from ἐλαία (elaía).  Etymologists speculate the spelling of gasolene (and thus gasoline) may have been influenced by Gazeline, an Irish product that was a clone of Cazzoline; either the promoters liked the assumed association with “gas” or simply they found it a more attractive word.  It’s thought the general construct (gas+o+line) was built with the “o” representing the Latin oleum (oil) and the ending a borrowing from the chemical suffix -ine.  The -ine suffix was from the Middle English –in & -ine, from the Old French -in, & ine, from the Latin -īnus, from the primitive Indo-European -inos.  It was used (1) to form demonyms (2) in chemistry to form names of chemical substances (especially basic (alkaline) substances, alkaloidal substance, or halogen elements’ (3) in anthropology to form vernacular nouns and adjectives relating to hominoid genera and (4) in commercial use generally.  The alternative form gasolene is extinct in every market except Jamaica.  Gasoline is a noun & adjective and gasolinic is an adjective; the noun plural is gasolines.

Moderne BV-Aral Tankstelle (modern BV-Aral gas station), Bochum, FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany, 1949-1990)), 1958.  The cars are an Opel Rekord (left), a Volkswagen Type 14 (Karmann Ghia) coupé (centre) and a Volkswagen Type 1 (Beetle) (right).  In the background stands the head office of the oil company BV-Aral AG.

In the US, the shortened form “gas” was in common use by at least 1897 but on the pattern typically applied, it’s likely it was around almost as soon as gasoline went on sale.  The “gas station” (place to fill up one’s automobile (“gassing up”) with gasoline by use of a “gas pump”) was recorded in California in 1916 and was part of the US vernacular by at least the early 1920s.  The “gas pedal” (the accelerator) was first recorded in 1908 and is still used even in markets where the term petrol is preferred, as in the phrase “step on the gas” (depress the accelerator (ie go faster)), used generally to suggest increasing speed or effort and not confined to automobiles.  Indeed, ever those driving EVs (electric vehicle) might sometimes be urged to “step on the gas”, and that can be a lively experience give the torque & power now generated by some.  The alliterative “gas guzzler” (a large or powerful car with high fuel consumption) was coined in 1973 after the first oil shock and in 1978 the US federal government imposed the first stage of its long-running “gas-guzzler tax” (CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy)).  The noun gasohol (a gasoline with a small percentage of ethanol was coined in 1975, the mix another reaction to the increase in the oil price and occasional shortages in the era.  To “pour gasoline on the fire” is a suggestion some action is making an already bad situation worse.

Rod Stewart (b 1945), Gasoline Alley (1970).

The term Avgas (the construct being av(iation) + gas) was coined during World War I (1914-1918) when it was found the mix used in automobiles was unsuitable for aircraft, the latter needing a mixture with higher specific energy (ie high octane).  In automotive use, aviation fuel remains of interest to the handful of people still running in their original configuration certain high-performance V8 cars built in the US during the mid to late 1960s with very high compression ratios.  The machines are entertaining to drive, neophytes always impressed by the extraordinary "engine braking" but the drawback is the fuel is not as readily available as "pump gas" so trips to airports or specialist suppliers usually are required; additionally, the stuff is expensive.  The amount that has to be "blended" with pump fuel for the engines satisfactorily to run varies with the model but is one of the aspects making something like a Chevrolet Corvette L88 a high-maintenance mistress.  The use in North America (and a handful of other places) of “gas” to refer to what is otherwise generally known as “petrol” sometimes mystifies because in many markets the usual distinction for road transport is between vehicles fueled by diesel, petrol & gas (usually LPG (liquid petroleum gas) or CNG (compressed natural gas)).

ET (Entertainment Tonight) deconstructs Lindsay Lohan’s dance moves at a New Jersey gas station, October 2019.  With typical attention to detail, ET reported the routine was executed between gas pumps 3 & 4.

In chemistry, gas is matter in an intermediate state between liquid and plasma that can be contained only if it is (1) fully surrounded by a solid, (2) in a bubble of liquid or (3) held together by gravitational forces; it can condense into a liquid, or can (in rare cases) become a solid directly by deposition. The common synonym is vapor (also as vapour).  The word was a borrowing from the Dutch gas, coined by Brussels-based chemist & physician Jan Baptist van Helmont (1580–1644), from the Ancient Greek χάος (kháos) (chasm, void, empty space) and there may also have been some influence from geest (breath, vapour, spirit).  More speculatively, there were also the writings of the Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance Theophrastus von Hohenheim (circa 1493-1541 and known usually as Paracelsus) who wrote of kháos in the occultist’s sense of “proper elements of spirits” or “ultra-rarified water”, both of which accorded with van Helmont's definition of gas that he introduced to the world in Ortus medicinae, vel opera et opuscula omnia (The Origin of Medicine, or Complete Works (1648)) with the words Hunc spiritum, incognitum hactenus, novo nomine gas voco (“This vapor, hitherto unknown, I call by a new name, ‘gas’”).

Lindsay Lohan gassing up her Porsche, Malibu, California, April 2020.

The use in science in the modern sense dates from 1779; it was adopted for specific applications as technologies emerged or were commercialized: To describe a “combustible mix of vapors” the term “coal gas” was first used in 1794; the use in medicine for the analgesic N₂O (nitrous oxide) was from 1794 (made famous in dentistry as “laughing gas” although the laughter was induced by impurities introduced in the early production processes rather than the intrinsic properties of N₂O).  “Poison gas” dates from 1900, use of which would become notorious during World War I.  The meaning “intestinal vapors” emerged in 1882 while the not unrelated sense of “empty talk” was from 1847 (meaning something like “hot air”) although more positively, by 1953 “it’s a gas” meant “something exciting or excellent”, “a gasser” in 1944 meaning much the same.  James Joyce (1882–1941) in Dubliners (1914) used gas to mean “fun, a joke”, an Anglo-Irish form thought linked to the use of laughing gas in dentistry.  In drag racing “gassers” (so named because they were fueled by gasoline rather than methanol or nitromethane) were the most common of the highly modified road cars in the early days of the sport but the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) in 1972 retired the category, split participating gasoline-powered vehicles into a number of classes.

Art Deco gas station, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, 1931.

The “gas-works” was first described in 1914 and was a little misleading because they were actually bulk-storage facilities from which gas was distributed either by fixed lines or cylinders delivered to the premises.  The kitchen appliance the “gas-oven” was mentioned first in 1851 although “gas-stove” by then had been in use for three years.  The notorious “gas chambers” used by the Nazis in their mass-murder programmes are most associated with the attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe but the first were built in 1939, as part of Aktion T4, involving the killing of those with physical and intellectual disabilities; these early facilities used carbon monoxide and were built within Germany's borders.  They served also to murder other prisoners and although by later standards inefficient, were adequate for the numbers involved.  As territories to the east were occupied, similar structures were built in those places and there were even experiments with “mobile chambers”, large, air-tight van coachwork added to truck chassis into which the engine's exhaust gasses were ducted.  Again, these worked but by 1941 the Nazis planned to exterminate as many a eleven million Jews and other "undesirables" and the most efficient method was found to be scaled-up fixed chambers (disguised as shower rooms) into which the hydrogen cyanide-based anti-vermin fumigant Zyklon B was introduced, permitting a throughput at the most productive death camps of some 5500 a day, sometimes for months at a time.  The term “gas chamber” was widely used during the post-war hearings conducted by the IMT (International Military Tribunal) at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) but as a method of judicial execution, many nations had by then at various times used such structures and the US only recently abandoned the method.

Roadsters line up to gas up, Gasoline Alley, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, May 1960.  This was one of the official postcards sold in the speedway's gift-shop.

Gasoline Alley remains the name of the garage area at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  That wasn’t the original name but in the 1920s, “gasoline alley” was drivers’ slang for the forecourt at the back of the garages where the cars were taken to refuel.  Whether linked or not, there was in the era a popular newspaper comic strip called Gasoline Alley and the use of the name soon extended to the strip dividing the two rows of garages.  It caught the public imagination and the facility managers in the early 1950s added signage, resulting in the whole area becoming associated with the term.  Because of reconstructions necessitated by fires, modernization & expansion, Gasoline Alley is not recognizable compared to its original appearance but the name remains, even thought actual gasoline is now rarely pumped, the open-wheel cars switching first to methanol (1965) and later (2006) ethanol; it’s only when other categories use the track that gasoline is in the tanks.  If the sport is compelled to convert to electric (or hopefully hydrogen) propulsion, the place is so vested with history the name is unlikely to change.

Flookerang & Fratzog

Flookerang (pronounced flook–ah-rang)

A corporate logo adopted in 1957 by Chrysler Corporation for use in promoting the dramatically restyled versions of the company’s “Forward Look” designs (1955-1956).

1957: The construct was flook + (boom)erang.  Now mostly obsolete, flook was an alternative spelling of fluke (in the sense of “blade at the end of an anchor”).  In wide nautical use, flook (fluke) was used of any of the triangular blades at an anchor’s end, the appendages there to “catch” on the seabed or riverbed, keeping the vessel moored in position (ie not drifting away with the tide).  In armaments design, the flook was a metal hook that appeared close to the tip of many staff weapons (such as a bill) with the effect in combat depending on use; if thrust, could be penetrative (armor or flesh as need be) while if swung it could work as a “grappling hook”.  Fluke & flook are old words, documented since at least the tenth century although, anchors, staff weapons, arrowheads and such having by then been in use for millennia, the forms may well be more ancient.  The origin was the Middle English flok, fluke & flewke, from the Old English flōcand and cognate with the Old Norse flōki; it may be compared with the Old High German flah (flat (source of the modern German flach)), from the Proto-Germanic flakaz although for technical reasons related to the phonetics, etymologists seem to prefer a link with the Middle Low German vlögel (wing) and the Germanic vlōch & vlucht (used in the sense of both “wing” & “flight”) or even vlunke (the modern Low German Flunk (wing, pinion)).  The modern use in German of fluke to describe the tail of whales and such is thought borrowed from English.  The use of sea creatures came from the Old English flōc (flatfish), of Germanic origin, related to the German flach (flat), the Old Saxon flaka (sole), the Old High German flah (smooth) and the Old Norse floke (flatfish, flounder, flak, floe; disk), all ultimately from Proto-Germanic flakaz, from the primitive Indo European root plak- (to be flat).  The parasitic worm was so named in the 1660s by virtue of the distinctive (flat) shape.

A Flookerang: Chrysler corporation brochure, 1958.

In general use, “fluke” has become familiar as the description of the two lobes of the tails of whales (or similar creatures) and whales “fluking” their tails (appearing above the surface just as a deep dive is about to begin) have long been an Instagram staple; once hunted close to extinction for their meat and oil, the charismatic beasts are now among nature’s most prolific content providers although their flukes do occasionally suffer the indignity of being labelled “fishtails”.  Being mammals, they belong to the order Cetacea and are within the zoological class Mammalia, not Pisces.  Interestingly, although “fluke” & “flook” were historically used of the barbed projections added to some arrowheads, the terms seemed to have vanished from modern specialist terminology, replaced by “barbed arrowhead”, the two projections (pointing backwards towards the shaft) designed to resist withdrawal after penetration (and doing victim much damaged during the extraction).  The link with (in this case unfortunate) whales is that the biggest of the barbs were on the biggest of the arrows (the harpoons on whaling ships).  The variant in Scots English was fluik, known to be in use by at least the early seventeenth century.  The way use evolved differently in specialist vocabularies does make sense with nautical jargon retaining fluke or flook for an anchor's broad, seabed-catching blades while in archery, the industry settled on “barb”, presumably because the purpose of the structures mirrored the natural world, barbs in animals and plants doing much the same job.  Boomerang entered English texts only in 1827 and was from būmariny (missile weapon used by Australian Aborigines (a historic term for the native tribes in the continent of Australia, now generally classified as “indigenous” or “first nations” peoples)), the recorded phonetic form of a word in one of the now extinct languages spoken by the Dharuk people native to an area in what is now NSW (New South Wales) and known to geographers as the Sydney Basin.  A word pronounced as wo-mur-rang was noted in NSW in 1798 and it may have been related but there’s no documentary evidence.  Flookerang is a noun, Fratzonic is an adjective and Fratzonically is an adverb; the noun plural is Flookerangs.

1957 Chrysler brochure with Flookerang.  While the 1957 cars were (for better and worse) immensely influential, Virgil's real masterpiece was the 1955-1956 “Forward Look”; frankly, there he should have paused for a few seasons.

Although the The Flookerang can best be described as a pair of stylized boomerangs, one with an especially acute angle overlaid atop another in a more conventional shape and it can be assumed Chrysler used flook in the sense of the appendages on weapons rather than the homophonic fluke’s sense of (1) a lucky or improbable occurrence unlikely to be repeated or (2) to by pure chance obtain a successful outcome (although, in retrospect, there was an element of both in the corporation’s 1957 ranges).  The shape obviously was abstract and did not represent one of Chrysler’s manufacturing divisions (in 1957: Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler & Imperial) or a specific model or range.  It was instead a mid-century modernist allusion to the latest version of the company’s “Forward Look” design, introduced for the 1955 season and styled by Virgil Exner (1909–1973; vice president of styling, Chrysler Corporation 1957-1962).  The 1955-1956 Chryslers were for the corporation a watershed because although the mechanical engineering had always been sound (in some ways, often industry-leading), by the late 1940s the styling of the cars had become “frumpy”, a product of the design ethos of Kaufman Thuma “K.T.” Keller (1885–1966; president of Chrysler Corporation 1935-1950 and chairman of the board 1950-1956) who believed a car should be able to be “driven by a gentleman with his fedora or Stetson on”.  This resulted in cars that were tall & boxy; while comfortable to sit inside and drive, they looked old-fashioned and out of step with styling trends from Europe or elsewhere in Detroit.  Basic engineering was the message (“function over fashion” in the modern parlance) and although there were critics of the approach (including many within Chrysler), Keller was unmoved, quoted as saying that while none of the corporation’s cars would: “…knock your eyes out, neither will they knock your hat off as you enter or exit”.  He also had earthier ways of explaining his philosophy.

Flookerang variations: 1958 Plymouth Fury (left), 1961 Dodge Dart Phoenix (centre) and 1961 Plymouth Fury (right).

Trouble was, in the unexpectedly prosperous US of the early 1950s, folk were becoming more interested in style and less in their hats and when Exner’s “Ford Look” appeared late in 1954, buyers responded to “longer, lower, wider” as predictably they would for most of the next two decades.  The lines were elegant, the dimensions well proportioned and, at least in the more expensive versions, there was nicely detailing and it was a direction the industry could have taken but the US of the mid 1950s had become something of a candy-store and there were lots of kids with pocket money; prosperity begat excess.  Exner’s 1957 range more than any was the one that ushered in mass-market fins and a half-decade of bloat in the American automobile; in retrospect, it was “the curse of plenty”.

Exner's masterpieces: 1955 Chrysler C-300 (left) and 1957 Imperial Crown Southampton (right).

Still, the macropterous era was among the most memorable era in an industry that’s had a few and, if excess there must be, it should be “laid on with a trowel”; that Exner’s re-styling for 1957 did but within a couple of seasons, compared with the ways GM (General Motors) outposts like Buick and Cadillac would explore the theme, the 1957 Chryslers appeared (almost) restrained.  By contrast with the extravagance seen on the cars the emblem was created to promote, the Flookerang was subtle, the overlaid shapes denoting (1) rapid forward progress and (2) the sweep of those big fins rearward.  As a conceptual link it was one of the more successful of its kind but, unfortunately, the species it referenced soon went extinct.  Chrysler in 1957 had announced the look in banner headlines reading “Suddenly, it’s 1960” and, in a period when the “futuristic” was everywhere in films, newspapers and fiction, the cars did seem to offer a glimpse of a bright, shiny new world.  The problem was however that once on the path of excess there is nowhere to go but “more excessive” and that’s what happened; by the time it really was “1960”, the moment had passed and the fins soon would be pruned, Exner fired (actually relegated to a face-saving consultancy) with the Flookerang in 1961 (mostly) abandoned, replaced by the mysterious Fratzog.

Flookercharger.

Chrysler’s use of the Flookerang was inconsistent, both in variations in shape and placement on vehicles, on some models appearing one season, vanishing the next, only to re-appear for an encore, perhaps explaining why it never really became culturally embedded as a symbol, its relatively short life contributing also.  It must though have appealed to at least one custom-builder who blended the tail-fins of a 1960 Plymouth Fury with a 1966 Dodge Charger, the Flookerangs left in place despite the tendency of those crafting such things to remove “extraneous detailing”.  The styling of the 1966-1967 Chargers was received with restrained enthusiasm (although, once a small spoiler had been added to the trunk (boot) lid to tame the “lift” encountered at high speed, the fastback lines proved aerodynamically efficient on the NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) ovals) but few would have suggested grafting on a 1960 Fury’s fins would have improved the aesthetics.  That was however done by one visionary soul who didn’t stop at what clearly was thought a callipygous optimization, a 1967 interior used with the dashboard modified to house a remarkable 19 gauges, the four electroluminescent pods on the driver’s side matched by a symmetrical quartet to the right.  The engine was a 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) V8 that may have been original although it included a Sonoramic cross ram induction system (most photogenic but never offered by the factory with the 440); the transmission a TorqueFlite 727 Automatic.  Given the configuration, adding five hood scoops seemed appropriate and the steering wheel boss retained its original Fratzog.  Unfortunately, the unique machine was damaged in a garage fire (one unkind comment on a Mopar site suggesting it may have attracted “the wrath of God”) and its fate is unknown.

Fratzog (pronounced frat-zog)

A corporate logo since 1961 used from time to time by Chrysler Corporation (and of late revived by Stellantis, the multi-national automotive manufacturing concern into which Fiat-Chrysler was in 2021 absorbed).

1960: According to industry legend, a wholly meaningless word made up on the spur of the moment by the shape’s designer.  If the designer (whose name remains unknown) had some inspiration for their choice, it seems never to have been documented but frequently it’s been assumed the construct was frat(ernity)+ zog.  Fraternity was from the Middle English fraternite, from the Old French fraternité, from the Latin frāternitās, ultimately from frāter (brother).  Although almost certainly unrelated to Fratzog, in the Albanian language, zog translates literally as “bird” (zogu (“the bird”, using the definite article)).  The Zogolli family’s (the construct being the root Zog + the Ottoman-Turkish patronymic suffix –oglu (son of)) most famous member was Zog I (Ahmed Muhtar Bey Zogolli; 1895–1961); King of Albania 1928–1939) and in 1922 (after the Ottoman Empire was dissolved), he Albanized and shortened his surname to Zogu, six year later clipping the final “-u” and adopting the mononym King Zog as his royal title.  Fratzog also predates by some 16 years the acronym ZOG (used also as Zog) (Zionist Occupation Government, Zionist Occupational Government, or Zionist-Occupied Government), a term (dating from 1976) for the US government used by certain antisemitic conspiracy theorists claiming Jews secretly control the US government (a recurrent theme in Nazi propaganda under the Third Reich (1933-1945) extended also to the UK government).  JOG (Jewish Occupational Government) has also been used but, historically, SOG was preferred it was thought to distinguish “Jewish subversive conduct” from “being Jewish” although that subtlety escaped most.  Fratzog is a noun; the noun plural is Fratzogs.

1966 Dodge Charger.  In case people didn't “get the message”, Dodge added a fratzog to the hubcaps (top left), gas cap (top left) and grille (centre) while a Flookerang appeared on the C-Pillar (bottom left) with a pentastar behind the front wheel-arch (bottom right).

Using standard etymological deconstruction, a surface analysis of Flookerang reveals the portmanteau construction but all that’s known of the origin of Fratzog is the logo emerged in mid 1960 from Chrysler’s Highland Park styling studio, then under the direction of Elwood Engel (1917–1986; Chief Designer, Chrysler Corporation 1961-1973).  Whether it was the work of an individual or something of a team effort is unclear but, given the simplicity of the task, that it came from the hand of a single designer is quite plausible.  While never named, some sources have referred to the designer as “he” so it’s reasonable to assume it was a man (throughout Detroit the styling studios then an almost exclusively male domain although women had for decades being involved in color choices and interior detailing) but no documentary evidence has ever been sighted.  The meaning of Fratzog has long been a mystery with the industry legend being it was “made up on the spot” after someone in the marketing department sent a request asking how they should refer to the thing.  Having the punchy qualities of being short, memorable, phonetic, unique and needing only two syllables, it would have had some appeal to marketing types but whether they ever sent a “follow-up” asking what it meant, isn’t known.

Cornell University's Chi Phi fraternity house, 107 Edgemoor Lane, Ithaca, New York.

Probably it was good they didn’t pursue the matter because the orthodoxy is “Fratzog” has no meaning, speculation focused usually on the “frat” element with the most popular theory being it may be a borrowing of the clipping of “fraternity” (a social organization of male students at a college or university) and familiar in forms such as “frat party” (much associated with drunkenness, frat houses to this day one of the most convenient paths to alcohol for those under 21 (in the US the minimum age at which alcohol may be purchased and consumed)).  Many of the designers at Highland Park would have been “frats” (members of a fraternity and habitués of frat houses) so it’s not impossible “fratzog” may have been slang among certain drunken students although that’s wholly speculative but there is a rich history of such constructs including “frat boy” & “frat rat” (members of a fraternity, the most obnoxious of the breed dubbed “fratholes”), “frat house” (a fraternity's building) and “frat flick” & “frat lit” (movies & books about fraternities or appealing to the frat boy stereotype (“fratire” the ultimate form of the literature, now understood as a stream of “toxic masculinity”)).  As might be predicted given the elements of frat house life (males aged 17-25, ample stocks of alcohol, disposable income and proximity to sorority houses (a source of female students aged 17-25)), behavior can be less than ideal and recent scandals at Cornell University have illustrated aspects of the culture.  Sorority was from the Renaissance Latin sorōritās, from the Classical Latin soror (sister), from the primitive Indo-European swésōr; the word may be compared with the Portuguese sororidade, the Spanish sororidad and the French sororité.

Lindsay Lohan “on theme” in the livery of the Cincinnati Bengals (a football team in the NFL (National Football League) as a member of the AFC (American Football Conference) North division (left) and 1968 Dodge Charger Bengal Edition (right).

The Dodge Charger Bengal Edition was created in 1968 by Cincinnati Dodge dealer to celebrate the formation of an NFL franchise for the city, arranging with Chrysler’s fleet supply staff to have the cars painted in orange and fitted with black vinyl roofs to match the team’s colors.  Amusingly, Chrysler had no such orange in the color charts for its passenger cars but a shade mixed for Michigan Department of Transportation's fleet proved a perfect match.  An order of 50 was required for the specialized run so 50 duly were ordered in a variety of mechanical configurations.  Reflecting Dodge’s usual build practice for 1968 Chargers, Fratzog logos were fitted on the grille and rear panel unless the R/T package also was ordered in which case R/T badges were substituted.  In either case, a Fratzog appeared on the steering wheel boss but mysteriously, some 1968 Charger R/Ts exist with a small Fratzog on the instrument panel while others have a miniature R/T.  “Special editions” like the Bengal Charger often appeared to stimulate sales of slow-selling models but the 1968 Charger was a hit from day one and although the product planners had projected sales that season of around 20,000, they were pleasantly surprised when more than 96,000 left the showroom, a second assembly line quickly added to meet demand.  It was a remarkable increase on its slab-sided predecessor (1966-1967) that in 1967 had struggled to achieve a volume of less than 15,000.

A Fratzog.

King Zog I of Albania died in 1961 but there’s nothing to suggest Fratzog’s second element was inspired by or a tribute to the deposed monarch, by then living in France (the culmination of a peripatetic exile made comfortable by having looted the Albanian treasury of its gold reserves) where he would succumb to cancer, his 65 years a reasonable achievement for someone who reputedly smoked some 200 cigarettes a day (if true, assuming he slept 8 hours a day, that’s a fag about every 5 minutes which does seem a heroic devotion to the art).  It’s intriguing to ponder whether being dubbed a “fratzog” was something good or bad but, whatever might be the history of the name (that might to some sound like something associated with the rituals in a Masonic Temple), the shape is no mystery to mathematicians, the Fratzog based on a Deltoid curve (the roulette created by a point on the circumference of a circle as it rolls without slipping along the inside of a circle with three or one-and-a-half times its radius).  Its year of debut came of course at the at the dawn of the space race but while the shape (three delta-forms arranged in an equilateral triangle) might be thought (at least vaguely) evocative of an aerospace theme, that would not much have encouraged more pessimistic types who saw only a “fractured deltoid”.  So, no translation, acronym or verified linguistic origin exists but despite that it certainly caught on, first appearing on the 1962 Dodge Polara 500 and Custom 880, before being applied to various Dodge and other Chrysler models until 1976 and in some places lingering until 1981 when, at the instigation of the new CEO, Lee Iacocca (1924–2019), the pentastar logo was standardized corporation-wide.

Fratzog on 1972 Australian Chrysler Valiant Charger E55 SE 340; not only the Americans had long model names.

Nor is it known if the Fratzog’s “triangular” theme was an allusion to the company’s original logo.  The Dodge brothers' (Horace (1868–1920) and John (1864–1920) engineering business had begun production of passenger cars just before World War I (1914-1918) and their first emblem had been a dual interlocking triangle that resembled a stylized Star of David.  The family was not Jewish and it’s believed the logo used representations of the Greek letter delta (in upper case use a triangle shape) meant to represent the two brothers who had always been close (John dying of pneumonia during the 1918-1921 influenza pandemic and Horace expiring the same year from cirrhosis of the liver).

Flookerang: 1966 Dodge Charger brochure.

Other logos would appear after Chrysler purchased Dodge in 1928 (following an abortive earlier attempt) but none were even vaguely Fratzogish so history is not much help in tracing the origin; the industry legend of a designer just “liking the shape” may really be true.  It did though have a longer and more diverse career than the Flookerang, serving variously as body badges & grille emblems and appearing also on gas (petrol) caps & horn buttons.  Despite the proliferation, the Fratzog never became thematic in print advertising the way the Flookerang had been used in the 1950s.  So that's it, both words (one a conventional portmanteau, the other possibly one but genuinely mysterious) emerging from a Detroit styling studio although, had anyone concluded Flookerang & Fratzog was likely either an unfinished novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) or a firm of Jewish accountants, that would have been understandable. 

The original Dodge Brothers logo, used between 1914 and 1930.  The oft-repeated story the logo was adopted to annoy the notoriously anti-Semitic Henry Ford (1863-1947) is now thought an urban myth.

Except among collectors or students of such things, by 2024, neither logo probably much registered in the public consciousness in the way of Chevrolet’s bow-tie or Ford’s “Blue Oval” (that font a hand-drawn rendition based on Henry Ford’s signature although PostScript and TrueType emulations variously are available (FordScript the closest, Fabiola Script & Neville Regular similar)) but despite the collective memory having faded, in 2024 Dodge announced the Fratzog would be revived as symbol of its new range of electric power-trains, assuring the world the constant advances in battery chemistry meant the days of thousand HP (horsepower) EVs with AWD (all-wheel-drive) and a 500 mile (800 km) range were nigh; burning rubber wasn’t going away, it’d just no longer require gas.  To make the historic link, there was CGI (computer generated graphics, generative AI (artificial intelligence) at that point not sufficiently refined) footage with Fratzogs, a rationale and lots of tyre smoke.  As things turned out, batteries continued to improve but Dodge’s announcement 2023 would be the end of the line for their gas-powered V8 muscle cars turned out to be premature though genuinely that was the intent.

1967 Wolseley Hornet (1961-1969, left) and 2022 Dodge Charger Daytona SRT EV Concept (right).  Although six decades apart, there are still commonalities, both having four wheels and illuminated grille badges.

Keen-eyed observers of promotional material for the 2024 (EV) Charger Daytona noted Fratzog logos on the wheel hubs with the one in the centre of the grille being illuminated, a feature long associated with the English manufacturer Wolseley which, under a number of corporate umbrellas between 1901 and 1975 variously thrived, survived or struggled until finally becoming one of the many victims of the doomed British Leyland (1968-1986).  Wolseley never produced a muscle car but in the 1950s & 1960s was one of the "preferred suppliers" for many of the UK's metropolitan police forces.  The Wolseley trademark is now in the hands of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), the state-owned SAIC Motor (formerly Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation) acquiring it by virtue of the MG Rover Group having in 2005 been absorbed by SAIC subsidiary Nanjing Automobile.  Although Nanjing has since 2008 produced vehicles using the MG name, there has never been any indication the Wolseley marquee might be revived, presumably because unlike MG which retained strong “brand recognition” because of the following enjoyed by its pre-1980 sports cars, Wolseley has faded from the collective memory, most of its original customers now dead. 

EV: The future of Fratzog.  Dodge's EV shtick is that “people buy performance, not a mechanical specification”, a variant of the hardware store's “people don't want 20 mm drill bits, they want 20 mm holes); it'll be interesting to see if the “US muscle car model” (front-mounted V8, RWD (rear-wheel-drive)) can be re-defined to “performance breakdown”.  The market will decide.

There was also a neologism, “Frazonic” emblazoned on the rear valance; it turned out that adjective referred to the “Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust” (piped “engine noise”, replicating in tone and dB (decibels) the song of a Hellcat V-8; the adverb presumably “Fratzonically”).  Just as government regulations had by the early 1970s contributed to the demise of the first muscle car era (although the insurance companies did their bit), so it seemed clear that five decades on, government edicts might also drive extinct at least the V8-powered monsters of the new generation, production of such things no longer viable given the new fleet fuel efficiency mandate.  However, as things turned out, there may be a stay of execution, internal documents “obtained” by various sites appearing to confirm Dodge’s EV ranges may in 2028 be augmented by a Charger running the supercharged 6.2-liter (376 cubic inch) Hemi Hellcat V8 in a RWD (rear-wheel-drive) configuration.  The internal designation appeared as “HEV” though that stood for not the by now common “Hybrid EV” but the wholly more subversive “Hellcat Equipped Vehicle”; that repurposing may not have been mischievous but someone at Dodge may have been trying to annoy Greta Thunberg (b 2003).  So Dodge is gearing up for what may be one last hard ride for those who can remember the way things used to be done (when noise was organic and not Fratsonic) but within the Stellantis product planning department, the only poem much read is likely to be To a mouse (1785) by Robert "Rabbie" Burns (1759–1796) with focus on the two famous lines: “The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men / Gang aft agley” (ie however well-planned, things can go awry).  Corporate America has found Donald Trump’s (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) second administration more accommodating than its immediate predecessor but, like many, keenly they’ll be watching the returns from the 2026 mid-term elections.