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 rock 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).

Sanchez and Eva Chambers had been part of a number of musical aggregations and had released some material before in 2020 recruiting Tooraen as lead guitarist and 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 the harder edge of “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 with some 2.8 million 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) that, although designed in-house, was built by in Turin, Italy by Carrozzeria Bertone).  Unusually, although among collectors, as a general principle, desirability tends to rise as the 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.  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 PRV less toxic to the environment but further compromised its dubious reputation, the anti-emission plumbing further sapping the anyway modest power, increasing only the fuel consumption.  While to this day the 240 enjoys a following, few lamented the demise of the 260.

Tchotchke (while eating 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 passing in 2010 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.  With the accumulated interest of a half-century odd, the total payable is now some US$455 million.

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 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.

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.

Entasis

Entasis (pronounced en-tuh-sis)

(1) In architecture, a slight convexity given to a column or tower, claimed to correct the optical illusion of concavity and create the perception of straight lines.

(2) In medicine and physiology, an involuntary or spasmodic muscular contraction (also called entasia (from the Greek ɛnˈteɪzɪə)).

(3) In typography & calligraphy, the thinning in the waist of a stroke, the technique used to compensate for the visual perception of a stroke with perfectly straight sides appearing slightly to bulge.

1745–55: From the Latin entasis, from the Ancient Greek ἔντασις (éntasis) (tension, straining), from εντείνω (enteínō) (to stretch or strain tight), the construct being enta, variant stem of enteínein (to stretch tight) + teínein (to stretch) + sis.  The –sis suffix was from the Ancient Greek -σις (-sis) and was attached to words in English often via Latin or French.  It was identical in meaning with the Latin –entia and the English –ing and was used (1) to form nouns of action or process (catharsis, dialysis, diagnosis, crisis etc), (2) in medicine to form nouns of condition (psoriasis, sepsis, tuberculosis, psychosis etc) and more generally (3) nouns as required (basis, oasis, thesis, stasis etc).  Entasis is a noun; the noun plural is entases.

The Entasis or Parthenon Principle

The Parthenon in Athens; it's the most celebrated use of entasis.

In modern architecture, entasis is the application of a convex curve to a surface for aesthetic purposes.  Its best-known use is in the columns from antiquity which curve slightly as their diameter is decreased from the bottom upward.  Because no relevant documents have yet been discovered, it’s not known whether the architects in antiquity applied the technique for aesthetic effect or as an engineering technique to enhance strength.  The latter is suggested by the design principle being described by Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (circa 75 BC–circa 20 BC) using the Greek word enteino (to stretch or strain tight), suggesting some emphasis on structural strength rather than appearance.  However, until contemporary records are uncovered, their reasons for using entasis remain mysterious, hence the two-thousand odd years of conjecture.  The earliest known documented view of the matter was that written by Greek mathematician and engineer Hero of Alexandria (circa 10-circa 70), is that entasis corrects the optical illusion of concavity in the columns that the human eye would create if the correction were not made.  

Basilica's western front of the Second Temple of Hera, a Greek temple in Paestum, Campania, Italy.

The Second Temple of Hera (circa 55 BC) was built in the Doric order, just north of the first.  For the visual effect of entasis to work, the convex curve has to be so slight as to be imperceptible and it's not known why the Second Temple of Hera has an entasis so pronounced the curvature is obvious; there is illusion of straightness.  The proportions are such that historians have speculated it must have been deliberate (presumably for structural strength) but it's at least possible the architect was afflicted by the desire many of his modern contemporaries share: The wish to produce something "original" and "new", the reason why so many modern buildings are so unpleasing to the eye, architectural awards & prizes handed out not for beauty and elegance but novelty and shock.

For millennia, entasis and its place in the history of architecture has been one of the most persistent tales from Antiquity but there have long been contrarians prepared to argue the concept, while not exactly a myth, is greatly exaggerated in significance.  In September 2026, Belgian mathematician Professor Alain Goriely (b 1967; professor of mathematical modelling at the University of Oxford) published the findings of his study, challenging the belief the Parthenon’s “curves” were included to correct “optical illusions” that would have made pure straight lines appear “distorted”.  What the professor’s modelling was said to reveal was (1) the “curves” are practically imperceptible and the alleged “illusion” they were claimed to correct doesn’t exist; “the illusions are illusory”.  Deconstructing Vitruvius, the study begins with the claim the sides of the Parthenon’s stylobate (base) are not horizontal but form a very flat “V”, rising gently 60 mm (2.36 inches) towards the centre.  According to Vitruvius, this was to correct the illusion that, when viewed as a whole, the base appears to “sag in the middle”.  For centuries, the “sagging effect” was attributed to one of two “tricks of the light”: (1) That because of the way light is interpreted by the human brain, long horizontal lines “appear to slump” towards the centre or (2) That the structure’s marble columns create the illusion; this based on the “Hering illusion” (where in 2D (two dimensions) parallel lines can appear “bowed” when intersected by other lines).  Professor Goriely found nothing to support either proposition, noting the Hering illusion (discovered in 1861 by German physiologist Ewald Hering (1834--1918) is most apparent when lines intersect at acute angles and the Parthenon’s columns are anyway “too close to the vertical” to produce the illusion.  Additionally, extensive modelling produced no proof the effect would manifest on the Parthenon even in 3D (three dimensions), viewed from any angle.

The persistent claims of entasis.

Those details were really footnotes in architecture textbooks, entasis the most famous of the legends.  What that suggests is “bulges” in the Parthenon’s columns (the curvature called entasis) were included by the builders to correct an optical illusion that would make them appear “too narrow” in the middle.  Not only did Professor Goriely found no evidence the illusion exists but the columns bulge by a mere 18 mm (less than ¾ inch) which, at that scale, is simply not perceptible to the human eye at a typical viewing distance.  What he doesn’t dispute is the architects may have had some reason to include variations in the dimensions; it’s just he found no evident they were there as “optical correctives”, the slopes on the base perhaps there for a reason as mundane as preventing puddles forming after rain; as every builder knows, only a very slight incline is needed for water to flow.  The very minor increase in width in the columns’ centre sections is more mysterious and may have been something to do with what would have been a very labor-intensive production process but there seems to be no optical effect.

Beyond the math, Professor Goriely speculates the reason the myth has proved so enduring was the extraordinary level of veneration granted to the engineers, philosophers and architects of Antiquity when, in the late Medieval period and (especially) the Renaissance, so many of the texts were “re-discovered” and a the perception emerged of Ancient Greece as a supremely knowledgeable and ingenious civilisation.  For centuries, in Western Europe, the Classical World was idealized and unless explicitly disproved (as came to be done of their medicine, cosmology and such), the texts were treated with great respect, thought something of “Civilization’s gold standard”.  In the modern age, the veracity of what Vitruvius wrote tended to be reinforced by internet users repeating the tale, search engines affording a greater credibility to “facts” appearing in the greatest volume.  Now of course, AI (artificial intelligence) bots have centuries of architectural texts from which to harvest information and given what Vitruvius who wrote about the Parthenon (400 years after its construction), came to be treated as something “scriptural” (despite the loss of loss of the many Greek texts about their temple architecture he claimed to have read when preparing his own), the authority was strengthened.  Untypically for an academic paper, the professor recommends not too much dwelling on his findings but commending instead: “Trust your own eyes, question what you see and decide for yourself whether the theory of optical corrections holds up.”  Professor Goriely concluded entasis “might be the oldest myth that we have” before mischievously adding “apart from religion.”

1964 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III Flying Spur; coachwork by H.J. Mulliner Park Ward.

One orthodoxy to emerge in the twentieth century was the famous Rolls-Royce radiator grille owed as much to Classical architecture as to being something there to prevent stones damaging the fragile core behind; if Rolls-Royce was going to be influenced by anyone, it’d be the architects of Antiquity.  According to chapter 4 of The Lexicon of Rolls‑Royce (the company doesn’t have web pages, it has chapters), what it styles as the “Pantheon Grille” was “…inspired by Rome’s imposing Pantheon temple, the Rolls-Royce grille is iconic. The Pantheon’s majestic columns were purposefully built with wider middle sections so that the human eye perceives each long pillar to be completely straight. It’s a perfect optical illusion and a genius stroke of design.  Taking inspiration from this, the Rolls-Royce grille is tactfully arranged using wider columns at the edge and thinner columns towards the middle to create an aesthetic illusion of symmetry when admired from the front. It’s a design that appears more perfect than nature intended.”  The days are gone when Rolls-Royce’s documents were characterized by understatement (it once described its engines’ power outputs as “adequate”), the vulgar numbers revealed only when German regulators humorlessly insisted.

While Professor Goriely’s computer models could find no evidence of the effect, a century-odd earlier, Rolls-Royce’s designers were convinced by the optical tricks of the Greeks and in 1925 integrated one of their optical techniques their new grille.  Although the “squared-off” shell dates from shortly after the company’s formation in 1904, not until 1928 did the now familiar grille with its upright bars become standardized.  Prior to 1925, the radiators were fronted by horizontal “slats” best thought of as “louvers” in that they functioned like “venetian blinds” (controlled by a lever next to the driver) to enable the airflow to be controlled (thus regulating engine temperature).  By the time of the release of the model Twenty in 1928, improvements in thermal-management technology meant the slats were no longer needed so the designers could start with a “clean sheet” and, being Rolls-Royce, the went neo-classical and built their own Pantheon, refining the ideas first seem in 1925 on the “New Phantom” (known retrospectively as the “Phantom I” (1925-1931) after new generations of the model followed).  So, although Professor Goriely’s math couldn’t detect any evidence entasis produced a detectable effect for those looking at the Parthenon, what Rolls-Royce does has been modelled and although slight, the effect of their trick is real.

Lindsay Lohan in Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupé (2007-2017).  By the 1970s factory (mostly) had ceased to use the historic terms FHC (Fixed-Head coupé) and DHC (Drop-Head Coupé (DHC) and the revival in 2007 for the Phantom Drophead Coupé has proved (thus far) a nostalgic one-off.  Over the decades, the designers generally were successful in their adaptations as they were required to make the grille wider and lower but the Phantom would have benefited aesthetically if a more traditional approach had been taken with the headlamps (centre) and even hidden units (right) would have been more pleasing.  Still, twenty-first century customers seem more accommodating of stylistic innovation than earlier generations.

According to opticians, what the design does (wider bars at the edges, more slender towards the centre) is create the illusion of symmetry when viewed straight on (at even a slight angle there will be no effect).  That’s said to be because when viewing such a structure, the brain processes the image as a whole (not a sequence of individual bars) and, paradoxically, what the slight difference in width does is render an “artificial equalization”.   Because of the way the brain processes the sight of a series of “parallel bars”, were they equally-spaced and equally wide, there would be a “hollowing” effect with a “pinching” towards the centre, caused by the natural human tendency to perceive outer edges as tapering away.  The eye is an outgrowth of the brain and it’s the brain doing the processing; while “looking at a grill” might sound a simple task, in the Rolls-Royce grille there’s a lot of “information” and processing it all is an act of high-level cognition.

Hi-rise Pantheon: 1965 Rolls-Royce Phantom V.  This was about at tall as the grille got; it appeared on the Phantom V (1959-1968) & VI (1968-1990).

All else being equal, the brain tends first to focus on an image’s centre (that information sent to the fovea centralis (the part of the retina handling “sharp central vision”)) with the edges simultaneously entering the “peripheral vision” where spatial resolution decreases (the brain therefore gathering less precise detail about the outer dimensions).  All this happens in a fraction of a second but does still happen sequentially, the brain using “predictive modelling” to “fill in the blanks” and there is much to process, the grille a large, highly reflective three-dimensional object with repeating lines.  The brain’s visual cortex has much to do understand the contrasting light patterns and depth cues and that it does all this in a fraction of a second in an indication of how powerful a machine it is.  Additionally, Rolls-Royce further assists the brain in “manufacturing perfection by machining each bar with a very slight outward curve, not detectable to the naked eye.  The combination of this functionally imperceptible “width-shifting & curvature” uses the way the brain operates to induce the required corrective “shortcuts”.

The Pantheon Temple, Rome (left) and 1985 Rolls-Royce Camargue (right).

The Pantheon's Latin inscription M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT isn't all that poetic and reads like a note the draftsman might have put on the blueprint (had there then been blueprints): it translates as "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, made [this building] when consul for the third time.", crediting the Roman statesman & general, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (circa 63 BC–12 BC) who commissioned the construction during his third consulship in 27 BC.  The Pantheon that stands today was rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian (Publius Aelius Hadrianus, 76–138; Roman emperor 117-138) circa 126 AD after the original structure suffered severe damage in a blaze; Hadrian chose to retain Agrippa's inscription as a tribute (not all the emperors were narcissists).  Since 609 AD, the Pantheon has been a Roman-Catholic church and is known as the Basilica Santa Maria ad Martyres (Basilica of St. Mary and the Martyrs).   In 1975, when the Camargue (1975-1986) was released, the novelty of it being the first Rolls-Royce designed using exclusively metric measurements (except for the odd carry-over component) attracted little attention but there was much comment about it being the first built with anything but a perfectly vertical grille.  The Camargue's grille was slanted at a (for mid-century Rolls-Royce) rakish 7^o.

Waftability

Parthenon Grill, Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Understandably, the malapropism “Parthenon grill” is sometimes heard (and there is a well-reviewed Greek restaurant in Murfreesboro, Tennessee of that name) and despite occasional claims, the Pantheon grille doesn't feature a classic entasis (slight swelling in the middle of a column to counteract the alleged illusion of concavity) but the slight curve of the bars is real and can be checked with equipment no more complex than a “straight-edge” (a 12 inch (300 mm)) metal ruler ideal for the purpose.  Although for much of the twentieth century Rolls-Royce was much associated with straight lines (the “knife-edge” models bodied by coach-builder Hooper between 1935-1959 the high point of the brief era of  blending of a severe rectilinearly with the flowing lines of the pre-war aesthetic although, despite the mix, the approach was not within the lineage of post-modernism) curves have often been a component and in 2009 Tom Purves (b 1949; CEO of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars 2008-2010) announced the neologism “waftability” was “the essence of the brand”.  That, he defined as “calm perfect motion and accelerating quickly without fuss”.  Back then (and 2009 seems now little less remote than the days of the Cold War (1947-1991)), the CEO was describing the relationship between the appearance of a static Rolls-Royce as something that embodied that definition, revealing the internal name for the “gentle, upswept line of the sill” on the new Ghost model was a “waftline” (actually borrowed from the fashion business), the idea being it created “a powerful, poised stance and makes the car appear to be moving when stationary.”

1988 Rolls-Royce Corniche Convertible.  Although rendered redundant by electric motors, the Pantheon Grille will endure; it will be wider and lower (as has already happened) and some functional use may even be found but as an essential element in “brand identity” it won't go away.

The significance of “waftability” was Rolls-Royce was then still in the business of making large-displacement engines running on fossil fuels sound and behave as if they were electric motors but, by 2023, the company announced the Spectre, the brand’s first purely electric car.  So it had taken a while but the interest in electric energy predated even the formation of the company in 1904.  Sir Henry Royce (1863–1933) was an engineer who had designed dynamos, electric crane motors and patented the bayonet-style light bulb fitting while Charles Rolls (1877–1910) as early as 1900 drove an electric car declaring it the almost ideal form of propulsion, observing: “The electric car is perfectly noiseless and clean. There is no smell or vibration, and they should become very useful when fixed charging stations can be arranged.  But for now, I do not anticipate that they will be very serviceable – at least for many years to come.”  So it proved.  By 2023 however, the technology was ready and so (more debatably) was the infrastructure and there is nothing better at waftability than something large, luxurious and electric, Rolls-Royce saying that some time in the next decade, their last car running on fossil fuel will leave the assembly line.  Nothing lasts forever and, having spent more than a century trying to make ICEs (internal combustion engine) as smooth and silent as electric motors, the times seem now to suit Rolls-Royce.  For others (such as Ferrari, Porsche, Dodge etc), selling to a customer base with an emotional attachment to the howl, throb & scream of gasoline (petrol) exploding in six, eight or twelve combustion chambers, the challenge is to find a way to make them content with a piped soundtrack.  Engineers have conquered matters of performance and even range but nostalgia may prove harder to package.  For Rolls-Royce however, the task is simpler because it’s purely visual: While an electric car needs no radiator and thus no protective grill, it can be guaranteed Pantheon Grilles, severely cut in stainless steel, will continue to appear.

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).  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.