Establishment

Establishment (pronounced ih-stab-lish-muhnt)

(1) The act or an instance of establishing.

(2) The state or fact of being established.

(3) Something established; a constituted order or system.

(4) The existing power structure in society; the dominant groups in society and their customs or institutions; institutional authority (ie “the Establishment” in the popular imagination which in this context should be used with an initial capital).  “The Establishment” is a nuanced synecdoche for “ruling class” with the emphasis on a dedication to the preservation of the status quo.

(5) As a modifier, belonging to or characteristic of “the Establishment” (the dominant or hegemonic “power elite” in a field of endeavor, organization etc (“the political establishment”, “the literary establishment” etc) or their “world view” (the “establishment interpretation of history”).

(6) A household; place of residence including its furnishings, grounds etc; a body of employees or servants

(7) A place of business together with its employees, merchandise, plant, equipment etc.

(8) A permanent civil, military, or other force or organization (often used to describe the defined number of personnel, in aggregate or sectionally, the “establishment” being the approved size, composition, and equipment of a unit.  In the military, the word is often modified (peacetime-establisnment, war-establishment, overseas-establishment etc).

(9) Any institution (university, hospital, library etc).

(10) The recognition by a state of a church as the state church.  In Christianity, the church so recognized, the term most associated with the Church of England (and historically the Church of Wales and Church of Ireland).

(11) A fixed or settled income (archaic).

1475–1485: A compound word, the construct being establish + -ment, from the Middle English establishment, stablishment & stablisshement, from the Old French establissement (which endures in Modern French as établissement), from the verb establir.  The noun establishment was from the late fourteenth century verb establish, from the Old French establiss-, the present participle stem of the twelfth century establir (cause to stand still, establish, stipulate, set up, erect, build), (which endures in Modern French as établir), from the Latin stabilire (make stable), from stabilis (stable).  The -ment suffix was from the Middle English -ment, from the Late Latin -amentum, from -mentum which came via Old French -ment.  It was used to form nouns from verbs, the nouns having the sense of "the action or result of what is denoted by the verb".  The suffix is most often attached to the stem without change, except when the stem ends in -dge, where the -e is sometimes dropped (abridgment, acknowledgment, judgment, lodgment et al), with the forms without -e preferred in American English.  The most widely known example of the spelling variation is probably judgment vs judgement.  In modern use, judgement is said to be a "free variation" word where either spelling is considered acceptable as long as use is consistent.  Like enquiry vs inquiry, this can be a handy where a convention of use can be structured to impart great clarity: judgment used when referring to judicial rulings and judgement for all other purposes although the approach is not without disadvantage given one might write of the judgement a judge exercised before delivering their judgment.  To those not aware of the convention, it could look just like a typo.  Establishment is a noun; the noun plural is establishments.

The noun establishmentarian describes “an adherent of the principle of an established church” dates from 1839 which of course begat the noun establishmentarianism (the doctrine of the establishmentarians).  What came first however was antidisestablishmentarianism, every schoolboy’s favorite long word although in scientific English there are constructions longer still and even the most alphabetically prolifically forms in English are short compared to those in languages such as Welsh, German and Maori.  It’s not clear who coined antidisestablishmentarianism but William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898; prime-minister 1868–1874, 1880–1885, Feb-July 1886 & 1892–1894) used the word in his two volume work The state in its relations with the church (1841), a critique of “the ecclesiastical system established by law” and specifically the status of Church of England; it was a discussion of the implications of disestablishment (the act of withdrawing the church from its privileged relation to the state).  As words, neither establishmentarianism nor antidisestablishmentarianism now much disturb the thoughts of many in England and the only role for the latter has long been as a entry in the internet’s many lists of long, obscure or weird words.  In the narrow technical sense, the curious beast that is the Church of England became “an established church” only after the Act of Settlement (1701) and the subsequent Acts of Union (1707) which formalized the status of the institution, first in England and later Great Britain.  Functionally however, the English church can be considered “established” since the Act of Supremacy (1534) which abolished papal authority in England and declared Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) Supreme Head of the Church of England, the culmination of a process the king had triggered in 1527 when Clement VII (1478–1534; pope 1523-1534) proved tiresome in the matter of divorce law.  Although other sixteenth century statutes (notably the Act of Supremacy (1558) & Act of Uniformity (1558) which usually are referred to collectively as the “Elizabethan Religious Settlement”) added to the framework, the changes were mechanistic and procedural rather than substantive and simply built upon what had since 1534 been the established “state church” while the eighteenth century acts were essentially codifications which formalized the position in constitutional law.  Legally, little since has changed and 26 Church of England bishops (all appointed by the prime-minister (on the recommendation of the Archbishop of Canterbury)) continue (as the “Lords Spiritual”, their lay colleagues being the “Lords Temporal”) to sit in the House of Lords.

In English, establishment's original fifteenth century meaning was “a finalized and settled arrangement” (ie of income or property) while the sense of “the established church” entered the language in 1731, reflecting what had been the legal position since 1534.  The sense of “a place of business” emerged in the early 1830s while the idea of “a social matrix of ruling people and institutions” was in use as early as the mid 1920s although the phrase “the Establishment” (in the socio-political sense) didn’t enter popular use until the late 1950s, influenced by the publication in 1956 of The Power Elite by US sociologist Charles Wright Mills (1916–1962 and usually styled C Wright Mills).  Mills took a structuralist approach and explored the clusters of elites and how their relationships and interactions work to enable them to exert (whether overtly or organically) an essentially dictatorial control over US society and its economy.  Mills, while acknowledging some overlap between the groups, identified six clusters of elites: (1) those who ran the large corporations, (2) those who owned the corporations, (3) popular culture celebrities including the news media, (4) the upper-strata of wealth-owning families, (5) the military establishment (centred on the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff) and (6), the upper echelons of government (the executives, the legislatures the judges, the senior bureaucracy and the duopoly of the two established political parties.  The overlaps he noted did not in any way diminish the value of his description, instead illustrating its operation.

When the establishment fractured: Republican (for Goldwater, left) & Democratic (against Goldwater, right), 1964 presidential campaign buttons, 1964.  This was before the color coding (Republican red, Democratic blue) was standardized in 2000 by the arbitrary choice of the TV networks.

The term “Establishment Republican” (a “moderate” or “liberal” member of the US Republican Party (as opposed to the right-wing fanatics who staged a hostile take-over) emerged in the 1980s to replace “Rockefeller Republican”.  Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979; US vice president 1974-1977) was the archetype of the “liberal republican” in the decade between crazy old Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) losing the 1964 presidential election and crooked old Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) in 1974 resigning from office in the wake of the Watergate scandal.  It was in those years the right-wing began their “march through the party establishment”, a process accelerated during the Reagan (Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) years and the moderates came to prefer the term “Establishment Republican” because Rockefeller was tainted by his association with the north-east, something with less appeal as the party’s centre of gravity shifted to the Mid-West and south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  The few surviving Establishment Republicans are now derided by the right wing fanatics as RINOs (Republicans in name only) and in 2024 the more useful descriptors are probably “pre-Trump Republican” & “post-Trump Republican”.  That linguistic moment may pass but the party at this time shows little inclination of seeking to find the centre ground, a wisdom advocated even by Richard Nixon.  In the pre-Thatcher (Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990)) UK, where the existence of “the Establishment” was quite obvious, it was the journalist Henry Fairlie (1924-1990) who popularized the term, explaining the concept as a kind of individual & institutional symbiosis by which “the right chaps” came to control the country’s “levers of power, influence and social authority”, exercised through social connections established between families or at the elite schools such men attended: “By the 'Establishment' I do not mean only the centers of official power—though they are certainly part of it—but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised. The exercise of power in Britain (more specifically, in England) cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially.”

The Rover P5B, the car of the Establishment

In the UK, the Establishment had survived two world wars, the Great Depression, an abdication and even a couple of Labour governments but, by the 1960s, the acceptance of its once effortless hegemony was being challenged, not because people were becoming convinced by the writings of political theorists but as a consequence of the antics of those from the very heart of the Establishment (the Profumo scandal, the “Cambridge Five” spies et al).  In retrospect, it was the ten-odd years prior to 1973 that were the last halcyon days of the “old Establishment” for after that the UK’s anyway troubled “old” economy stagnated, triggering a series of events, notably the assault on the system from within by the improbable anti-Establishment figure of Margaret Thatcher.  The changes wrought in the last five decades shouldn’t be overstated because what happened was one Establishment was replaced by another and there was a substantial overlap in institutional and individual membership but it’s a very different apparatus from that of the 1960s.

Rover 3.5 Coupé.  Establishment figures preferred the saloon, the (four door) coupé more what used to be called a “co-respondent's” car (ie the sort of rakish design which would appeal to the sort of chap who slept with other men’s wives, later to be named as “co-respondent” in divorce proceedings).

One charming Establishment symbol from those years which are for most not in living memory was the ultimate “Establishment car”, one which while not the biggest, fastest, or most expensive available, possessed the qualities to appeal to the “right chaps”.  The Rover P5 was in production between 1958-1973, running from around the time that old patrician Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) told the working class “…most of you have never had it so good” to the last days before the first oil shock ended the West’s long, post-war economic prosperity (although the British experience of that was patchy).  The P5’s presence throughout was somehow reassuring because from its debut it embodied the virtues for which Rovers had during the 1950s come to be valued: solidity, quality, comfort and an indifference to fashions and fads.  The P5 was a presence also in parts of the old British Empire and it enjoyed a following in both Australia & New Zealand, valued because it had an “Establishment air” yet was not flashy like a Pontiac or Jaguar (the mostly badge-engineered Daimlers a remarkably effective piece of product differentiation) or a statement of wealth like a Mercedes-Benz would by the mid-1960s become.

Rover 3 Litre engine schematic.

The P5 was sold originally as the 3 Litre in three releases (Mark 1, 1958-1962; Mark II, 1962-1965 & Mark III 1965-1967), using a 3.0 litre (183 cubic inch) straight-six with an implementation of the “F-head” design in which the inlet valve sat at the top of the combustion chamber with a side-mounted exhaust valve, an arrangement which offered some advantages when designing combustion chambers suited to the lower octane fuel then used in many markets and allowed the use of larger valves than would have been possible with a conventional OHV (overhead valve) arrangement).  The latter was a matter of some significance because the Rover six came from a time when the taxation regime was based on bore diameter, something which resulted in generations of British small bore, long-stroke engines and the 3 litre six was a famously smooth device, the advertising sometimes showing a circular coin sitting (on its edge) on the air-cleaner with the engine running, the coin not even vibrating.  Technologically though, for passenger vehicles, it was a cul-de-sac and more modern power-plants from the US, Europe (and even the UK) were out-performing the old F-Head.

What transformed the P5 was the adoption of the 3.5 litre (215 cid) V8 which Rover had purchased from General Motors (GM) which, in versions made by Buick, Oldsmobile & Pontiac (BOP), had been used for the new compact lines between 1961-1963.  The UK’s industry made many mistakes in the post-war years but what became the Rover V8 was an inspired purchase, remaining in production in displacements between 3.5 litres (215 cubic inch) and 5.0 (305) from 1967 until 2006, powering everything from the original Range Rovers to executive sedans and sports cars  It was related also to the Oldsmobile version (Rover used Buick’s variant) on which Repco in Australia based the 3.0 litre (193 cubic inch) SOHC (single overhead camshaft) V8 the Brabham team would use to secure the Formula One drivers & constructors championships in 1966 & 1967.

Look of the past; glimpse of the future: 1967 Rover 3.5 Saloon (left) and 1967 NSU Ro80 (right).

It was in late 1967 the Rover 3.5 was released and the press reception was generally favourable, the improvements in performance and fuel consumption (not something often achieved when adding cylinders and displacement) attributed to a combination of greater mechanical efficiency and reduced weight, the all-aluminum V8 some 200 lb (90 kg) lighter than the hefty old six although some did note the new engine couldn’t quite match the smoothness of the old.  By 1967 however the testers seemed to be aware that whatever its charms, it was a design from the mid-1950s and the world had moved on although to be fair Rover had too, it’s P6 (2000), released in 1963 was very much a modernist take (and one which would in 1968 also be transformed by the V8, becoming the 3500 (1968-1976)).  Between 1967 and the end of production in 1967, the flavor of the press commentary about the 3.5 was very much: “outmoded but satisfying”.

Released in September 1967: Rover 3.5 saloon (left) and NSU Ro80 (right), partially exposed at the Earls Court Motor Show in October.

Like the 3.5, the NSU Ro80 had been released in September that year and the contrast was obviously between the past and the future, the German car influencing design for more than a generation (with the obvious exception of the ill-fated Wankel engine) while what the Rover represented was already almost extinct, few of the others in its market segment (the Vanden Plas Farinas, the Humber Super Snipe, the Vauxhall Viscount, the Daimler Majestic Major and the Austin 3 Litre) to see the 1970s.  Nor did other manufacturers make much effort to compete for buyers who clearly wanted something lighter and more modern although, after taking over Rootes Group, to replace the defunct Super Snipe and Imperial, Chrysler did embark on a quixotic venture to prove demand still existed by taking advantage of the old Commonwealth tariff preference scheme by importing the Australian-built Valiant (built on the US A-Body) in both straight-six & V8 form.  It registered barely a blip on the sales charts although, remarkably, both remained available until 1976 by which time the writing was on the wall for Chrysler’s entire European operation.

A UK government 3.5 waiting outside No 10 Downing Street (left) and Harold Wilson about to enter his (right).

For many however, the Rover’s reassuring presence was more appealing than modernity (although the rakish Rostyle wheels may have been a shock for some).  It certainly appealed to those at the heart of the establishment and the first prime minister to have been driven in one was the pipe-smoking Harold Wilson (1916–1995; UK prime minister 1964-1970 & 1974-1976) who, although he’d once promised to revitalize the economy with the “white heat of technological change”, was a cautious and conservative character; the car suited him and he appreciated the custom-built ashtray which held his pipe.  Edward "Ted" Heath (1916-2005; UK prime-minister 1970-1974), James "Jim" Callaghan (1912–2005; prime minister of the UK 1979-1979) and Mrs Thatcher followed him into the backseat, something made possible because the Ministry of Supply (advised production was ending in 1973), purchased a batch from the final run, stockpiling them for future VIP use, the same tactic some police forces would later adopt to secure warehouses full of Rover SD1s (another recipient of the ex-Buick V8), the front wheel drive (FWD) replacements they knew were in the pipeline not a compelling choice for the highway patrol.  Not until 1981 was Mrs Thatcher's Rover retired and replaced with a Daimler.

A tale of two rooflines: the “Establishment” 3.5 Saloon (left) and the rakish 3.5 Coupé (right).

In automobiles, by the 1960s, the English-speaking world had (more or less) agreed a coupé was a two door car with a fixed roof and (if based on a sedan), often a shorter wheelbase, designed put a premium on style over utility.  There were hold-outs among a few UK manufacturers who insisted there were fixed head coupés (FHC) and drop head coupés (DHC), the latter described by most others as convertibles or cabriolets but mostly the term had come to be well-understood.  It was thus a surprise when Rover in 1962 displayed a “four-door coupé”, essentially their 3 Litre sedan with a lower roof-line and a few “sporty” touches such as a tachometer and a full set of gauges.  One intriguing part of the tale was why, defying the conventions of the time, the low-roof variation of the four-door was called a coupé (and Rover did use the l'accent aigu (the acute accent: “é”) to ensure the “traditional pronunciation” was imposed although the Americans and others sensibly abandoned the practice).  The rakish lines, including more steeply sloped front and rear glass were much admired although the original vision had been more ambitious still, the intention being a four-door hardtop with no central pillar.  Strangely, although the Americans and Germans had managed this satisfactorily, a solution eluded Rover which had to be content with a more slender B-pillar.

Lindsay Lohan with Porsche Panamera 4S four-door coupe (the factory doesn't use the designation but most others seem to), Los Angeles, 2012.

The etymology of coupé is that it’s from couper (to cut off) but the original use in the context of horse-drawn coaches referred to the platform being shortened, not lowered.  Others too have been inventive, Cadillac for decades offering the Coupe De Ville (they used also Coupe DeVille) and usually it was built to exactly the same dimensions as the Sedan De Ville, differing on in the door count.  So Rover probably felt entitled to cut where they preferred; in their case it was the roof and in the early twentieth century, the four-door coupe became a thing, the debut in 2004 of the Mercedes-Benz CLS influencing other including BMW, Porsche, Volkswagen and Audi.  The moment for the style clearly hasn’t passed because when CLS production ended in August 2023, the lines were carried over to the new E-Class (W214, 2023-) but there are no longer references to a “four-door coupé”.

One of Elizabeth II’s P5B Saloons outside the gates of Windsor castle (left) and Her Majesty at the wheel (right), leaving the castle, reputedly on the way to church so while one of her 3.5s won’t quite be “only driven to church on Sunday by little old lady”, being in the Royal mews, it would have been well-maintained.

Although for almost 20 years a fixture outside No 10 Downing Street, the most famous P5B owner was Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022) who upgraded from a 3 Litre in 1968 and, although not noted for being sentimental about machinery, until 1987 ran one of the several maintained in the Royal Mews during her reign.

Rover P5B headrests (left & right) and the mounting assembly for the reading lamps in the front units (centre).

Most of the focus on the Rover 3.5 has always been about the engine and the illustrious passengers but one detail of note is the bulk of the headrests, optional fittings in most markets.  Quite why they were so big isn’t clear although the shape of the rear units presumably made for an easier mounting on the parcel shelf, meaning the seat's frames & covers needed no modification, but it’s apparently not an urban myth some used by the British government had a bullet-proof panel inserted; there was certainly the space to accommodate even a thick metal plate.  The front headrests were used also to house the optional reading lamps, the wiring harness well concealed within.

Simile, Metaphor & Analogy

Simile (pronounced sim-uh-lee)

(1) A figure of speech expressing the resemblance of one thing to another of a different category usually introduced by as or like.

(2) An instance of such a figure of speech or a use of words exemplifying it.

1393: From the Middle English simile, from the Latin simile (a like thing; a comparison, likeness, parallel), neuter of similis (like, resembling, of the same kind).  The antonym is dissimile and the plural similes or similia although the latter, the original Latin form, is now so rare its use would probably only confuse.  Apart from its use as a literary device, the word was one most familiar as the source of the “fax” machine, originally the telefacsimile and there was a “radio facsimile” service as early as the 1920s whereby images could be transmitted over long-distance using radio waves, the early adopters newspapers and the military.

The simile is figure of speech in which one thing is explicitly compared to another, usually using “like” or “as”; both things must be mentioned and the comparison directly stated.  For literary effect, the two things compared should be thought so different as to not usually appear in the same sentence and the comparison must directly be stated.  Dr Johnson (Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)) thought a simile “…to be perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble the subject." but many long ago became clichéd and far removed from nobility.

It went through me like an armor-piercing shell.
Slept like a log.
Storm in a tea cup.
Blind as a bat.
Dead as a dodo.
Deaf as a post.

Metaphor (pronounced met-uh-fawr)

(1) A figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance.

(2) Something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol.

1525-1535:  From the Middle French métaphore & the (thirteenth century) Old French metafore from the Latin metaphora, from the Ancient Greek μεταφορά (metaphorá) (a transfer, especially of the sense of one word to a different word; literally "a carrying over”), from μεταφέρω (metaphérō) (I transfer; I apply; I carry over; change, alter; to use a word in a strange sense), the construct being μετά (metá) (with; across; after; over) + φέρω (phérō, pherein) (to carry, bear) from the primitive Indo-European root bher- (to carry; to bear children).  The plural was methaphoris.  In Antiquity, for a writer to be described in Greek as metaphorikos meant they were "apt at metaphors”, a skill highly regarded: “It is a great thing, indeed, to make a proper use of the poetical forms, as also of compounds and strange words. But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars" (Aristotle (384-322 BC), Poetics (circa 335 BC)).

The words metaphor, simile and analogy are often used interchangeably and, at the margins, there is a bit of overlap, a simile being a type of metaphor but the distinctions exist.  A metaphor is a figure of figure of speech by which a characteristic of one object is assigned to another, different but resembling it or analogous to it; comparison by transference of a descriptive word or phrase.  It’s important to note a metaphor is technically not an element or argument, merely a device to make a point more effective or better understood.  It’s the use of a word or phrase to refer to something other than its literal meaning, invoking an implicit similarity between the thing described and what is denoted by the word or phrase.  It has certain technical uses too such as the recycling or trashcan icons in the graphical user interfaces (GUI) on computer desktops (a metaphor in itself).  The most commonly used derivatives are metaphorically & metaphorical but in literary criticism and the weird world of deconstructionism, there’s the dead metaphor, the extended metaphor, the metaphorical extension, the mysterious conceptual metaphor and the odd references to metaphoricians and their metaphorization.  Within the discipline, the sub-field of categorization is metaphorology, the body of work of those who metaphorize.  

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,--
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Richard II (circa 1594), Act 2 scene 1.

Analogy (pronounced uh-nal-uh-jee)

(1) A similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based:

(2) A similarity or comparability.

(3) In biology, an analogous relationship; a relationship of resemblance or equivalence between two situations, people, or objects, especially when used as a basis for explanation or extrapolation.

(4) In linguistics, the process by which words or phrases are created or re-formed according to existing patterns in the language.

(5) In logic a form of reasoning in which one thing is inferred to be similar to another thing in a certain respect, on the basis of the known similarity between the things in other respects.

(6) In geometry, the proportion or the equality of ratios.

(7) In grammar, the correspondence of a word or phrase with the genius of a language, as learned from the manner in which its words and phrases are ordinarily formed; similarity of derivative or inflectional processes.

1530-1540: From the Old French analogie, from the Latin analogia, from the Ancient Greek ἀναλογία (analogía), (ratio or proportion) the construct being ἀνά (aná) (upon; according to) + λόγος (logos) (ratio; word; speech, reckoning), from the primitive Indo-European root leg- (to collect, to gather (with derivatives meaning “to speak; to pick out words”).  It was originally a term from mathematics given a wider sense by Plato who extended it to logic (which became essentially “an argument from the similarity of things in some ways inferring their similarity in others”.  The meaning “partial agreement, likeness or proportion between things” fates from the 1540s and by the 1580s was common in mathematics; by the early seventeenth century it was in general English use.  The plural is analogies and the derived forms include the adjective analogical and the verbs analogize & analogized.  In critical discourse there’s the “false analogy” and the rare disanalogy.

An analogy is a comparison in which an idea or a thing is compared to another thing that is quite different from it, aiming to explain the idea or thing by comparing it to something that is familiar.  Further to confuse, metaphors and similes are tools used to draw an analogy so an analogy can be more extensive and elaborate than either a simile or a metaphor.

The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), The Day Is Done (1844).

“They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water.”

George Orwell (1903-1950), A Hanging (1931).

The Mean Girls mall scene, at the water hole in the jungle clearing where the “animals gather when on heat”.

Similes, metaphors & analogies are used frequently as devices in fiction including in Paramount Production’s Mean Girls (2004) and the similes were quite brutish including “You smell like a baby prostitute”; “She's like a Martian”; & “Your face smells like peppermint”.  The metaphors were obvious (this was a teen comedy) but worked well.  The “Plastics” implied the notion of things artificial, superficial, and shiny on the outside but hollow inside while “Social Suicide” would to the audience have been more familiar still.  The idea of the “Queen Bee” (a metaphorical position of one individual as the centre of the hive (school) around which all dynamics and activities revolve) was one of several zoological references.  The idea of it being “…like a jungle in here” was a variation of the familiar metaphorical device of comparing modern urban environments (the “concrete jungle” the best known) with a jungle and in Mean Girls stylized depictions of wild animals do appear, the school’s mascot a lion, a link to the protagonist having come from the African savanna.  There was also the use of a malapropism in the analogy “It's like I have ESPN or something”, the novelty being it used an incorrect abbreviation rather than a word.  The Mean Girls script is not the place to search for literary subtleties.

Of Pluto

The New Zealand physicist Lord Rutherford (1871-1937), who first split the atom (1932), explained its structure by drawing an analogy with our solar system.  Rutherford always regarded physics as the “only true, pure science” while other disciplines were just expressions of the properties or applications of the theories of physics.  In 1908, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “…for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances.”  It was said he was amused by the joke.

This image includes Pluto as a planet.  Historically, the Galileian satellites of Jupiter were initially called satellite planets but were later reclassified along with the Moon.  The first observed asteroids were also considered planets, but were reclassified when became apparent how many there were, crossing each other's orbits, in a zone where only a single planet had been expected.   Pluto was found where an outer planet had been expected but doubts were soon raised about its status because (1) it was found to cross Neptune's orbit and (2) was much smaller than had been the expectation.  The debate about the status of Pluto went on for decades after its discovery in 1930 and the pro-planet faction may have become complacent, thinking that because Pluto had always been a planet, it would forever be thus but, after seventy-six years in the textbooks as a planet, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2006 voted to re-classify Pluto as a dwarf planet on the basis that the icy orb failed to meet a set of criteria which the IAU claimed had for decades been accepted science.

To be a planet, the IAU noted, the body must (1) orbit a star, (2) be sufficiently massive to it pull itself into a sphere under its own gravity and (3), “clear its neighbourhood” of debris and other celestial bodies, proving it has gravitational dominance (cosmic hegemony in its sphere of influence by political analogy) in its little bit of the solar system.  Pluto fails the third test.  Because it orbits in the Kuiper Belt (a massive ring of asteroids and planetoids that stretches beyond the orbit of Neptune), Pluto is surrounded by thousands of other celestial bodies and chunks of debris, each exerting its own gravity.  Pluto is thus not the gravitationally dominant object in its neighborhood and therefore, not a planet and but a dwarf (a sort of better class of asteroid).  The IAU’s action had been prompted by the discovery in the Kuiper Belt of a body larger than Pluto yet still not meeting the criteria for planethood.  Feeling the need to draw a line in the sky, the IAU dumped Pluto.

However #plutoisaplanet is a thing and Pluto’s supporters have a website, arguing that while it’s universally accepted a planet should be spherical and orbit the Sun, the “clearing the neighbourhood” rule is arbitrary, having appeared only in a single paper published in 1801.  The history is certainly muddied, Galileo having described the moons of Jupiter as planets and there are plenty of other more recent precedents to suggest the definitional consensus has bounced around a bit and there are even extremists really to accept the implications of loosening the rules such as the moons of Earth, Jupiter and Saturn becoming planets.  Most however just want Pluto restored.

The most compelling argument however is that the IAU are a bunch of humorless cosmological clerks, something like the Vogons (“…not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous.”) in Douglas Adams' (1952–2001) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979-1992) and that Pluto should be restored to planethood because of the romance of the tale.  Although lacking the lovely rings of Saturn (a feature shared on a smaller scale by Jupiter, Uranus & Neptune), Pluto is the most charming of all because it’s so far away; desolate, lonely and cold, it's the solar system’s emo.  If for no other reason, it should be a planet in tribute to the scientists who, for decades during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, calculated possible positions and hunted for the elusive orb.  In an example of Donald Rumsfeld's (1932–2021; US secretary of defense 1975-1977 & 2001-2006) “unknown knowns”, the proof was actually obtained as early as 1915 but it wasn’t until 1930 that was realized.  In an indication of just how far away Pluto lies, since the 1840s when equations based on Newtonian mechanics were first used to predict the position of the then “undiscovered” planet, it has yet to complete even one orbit of the Sun, one Plutonian year being 247.68 years long.

Dagmar

Dagmar (pronounced dag-mahr)

(1) The stage-name adopted by Virginia Ruth "Jennie" Lewis (née Egnor; 1921-2001), a star of 1950s US television (initial upper case).

(2) Slang term for the symmetrically-paired bumper extensions used by a number of US vehicle manufacturers and associated mostly with Cadillac 1946-1958 (initial lowercase).

(3) In the study of marketing, as DAGMAR, the acronym of Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results (usually all upper case).

(4) A female given name from the Germanic languages and of Norse origin, in occasional use since the last nineteenth century (initial upper case).

Pre-1000: A given name of Scandinavian origin, almost always female.  It was the name of a queen of Denmark (1185–1212), a Czech by descent, originally Dragomíra (related to the contemporary Slovak Drahomíra), the construct being the Old Church Slavonic dorgb (dear) + mirb (peace), rendered in medieval Danish under the camouflage of dag (day) + már (maid).  In Danish the meaning is listed as “day” and “glory” and it’s used also in Slovakia, Poland (Dagmara), the Netherlands, Estonia and Germany.  The ultimate source was the the Old Norse name Dagmær, the construct being dagr (day) + mær (daughter; mother; maiden).

The Tsarina (Princess Dagmar; 1847–1928) in 1885 (colorized).

Maria Feodorovna  was known before marriage as Princess Dagmar of Denmark.  She became Empress of Russia upon marriage to Alexander III (1845-1894; Tsar 1881–1894) and was the mother of the last Tsar, Nicholas II (1868–1918; Tsar 1894-1917).  Historians regard Maria Feodorovna as the most glittering of all the Tsarinas.  Renowned for her beauty, her dark eyes were mentioned in both poems and diplomatic dispatches and a glance was said to be able to "fix men to the spot".  She was also one of the most admired "clothes horses" in Europe, her statuesque, slender figure ("tall, thin and sort or weird looking" as the fashion photographers describe their ideal) of the type seen today on catwalks and in London, Paris and Milan, couturiers in the fashion houses  would write letters to the Russian court (including sketches), sometimes offering their services in exchange for nothing more than the royal imprimatur.

The evolution of Cadillac’s dagmars, 1941-1959

Lockheed P-38 Lightning (left) & 1949 Cadillac (right).

On first looking at the 1949 Cadillac, a borrowing of the motif of the tail fins and propeller hubs from the Lockheed P-38 Lightning (first flown in 1939 and built 1941-1945) does seem obvious but while it appears to be true of the fins, all contemporary evidence suggests the conical additions to the front bumper bar were intended by the stylist Harley Earl (1893–1969; then General Motors' (GM) vice president of design), to evoke the idea of a speeding artillery shells.  In the twenty-first century, it may seem curious to use the imagery of military munitions in the marketing of consumer goods but that's the way things were once done.  GM claimed also they afforded additional collision protection but given it wasn’t until the 1970s that regulations existed to require front and rear bumpers to be the same height, in many impacts, it’s likely they acted more like like battering rams used on medieval siege engines.

1941 Cadillac.

The bumper guards (later called over-riders) on the 1941 Cadillac were neither novel nor unique but, being on a Cadillac, they were bigger and shinier than many.  Nor was the linking bar unusual, offered by many manufacturers and emulated too by aftermarket suppliers, used often as a mounting bracket for accessory head lamps.  There was in 1941 nothing new about the idea of additional bumper guards (or over-riders) which were not unknown in the early days of the automobile in the nineteenth century and similar devices, entirely functional as protective protuberances, can be identified on horse-drawn and other forms of transport dating back centuries.  It was only in the twentieth century they became a styling feature.

1942 Cadillac.

A chromed pair, recognizably dagmaresque, made their debut in the 1942 model year, production of which began in September 1941.  Just as stylists had drawn from earlier influences such as aeronautical streamlining and art deco architecture, Cadillac’s designers, although the US was not yet a belligerent in what was still a European war, picked up a motif from the military: the conical shape of the artillery shell, presumably to invoke the imagery of speed and power rather than destruction.  One quirk of the early dagmars was that after the US entered the war in December 1941, the government immediately imposed restrictions on the use of certain commodities for consumer goods and this affected chrome plating so the last of much of the the 1942 production runs left the factory with painted bumpers.  Automotive production for civilian sale in the US ceased on 22 February 1942, the  manufacturing capacity converted rapidly to war purposes.

1946 Cadillac.

Although the administration had allowed car production to continue until April, most of the output was used to create a stockpile of over half a million cars and light trucks, made available for the duration of the war to those for whom the allocation was deemed essential.  The sale of cars to private buyers was frozen from 31 December 1941 by Office of Production Management (OPM) although, upon application, local rationing boards could issue permits for cars to be delivered if the contract had been executed before 1 January.

By April 1944, only some thirty-thousand new cars remained in the stockpile and the manufacturers received authorization to undertake preliminary work on experimental models of civilian passenger cars with the proviso there must be no interference with war work and limits were imposed on the resources allocated.  At this stage, the invasion of mainland Europe had not happened and although progress on the atomic bomb was well-advanced, it was top-secret and not even tested so planning continued with the expectation conflict would continue into 1946 or even 1947.  The war instead ended in August 1945 and that month, Cadillac finished its last M-24 tank, the production lines reverting to cars as soon as September.  By the first week of October, car production was in full swing, the 1946 models essentially the 1942 range with a few detail differences.  The dagmars were retained and re-appeared also on the 1947 line.  Even by 1942 Americans had become accustomed to annual updates to the appearance of automobiles but such was the pent-up demand from the years of wartime restrictions that people in 1946-1947 queued to fill the order books for what were "new" versions of 1942 cars.  In the special circumstances of the time the approach worked in a way recycling for 2016 crooked Hillary Clinton's failed candidacy for the 2008 nomination didn't work for the Democratic party.

1948 Cadillac.

Smaller and more agile, Studebaker was the first manufacturer with a genuinely new post-war range and reaped the benefits although there was some resistance to the modernist lines which seemed then so radical.  GM was more conservative but nobody would mistake the 1948 Cadillacs for something earlier although while the bodies were new, the drive-train substantially was carried over.  Tail-fins weren’t entirely new to cars because the aviation influence had been seen pre-war but this was the model which began Detroit’s tail-fin fetish which, although starting modesty, would grow upwards (and occasionally outwards) for more than a decade.  Although inspired by the P-38 Lightning, the fins served no aerodynamic purpose, but unlike Mercedes-Benz’s later claim the fins on the 1959 Heckflosse were Peilstege (parking aids), Cadillac never bothered to suggest they were there to assist those reversing; at the front, a tribute to the Lockheed's twin propeller hubs seemed to compliment the fins.  The fins were mostly admired but the big news for 1949 was the new overhead valve (OHV) V8 which marked the start of a power race which would run for almost a quarter century before environmental concerns, safety issues and the first oil crisis (1973-1974) wrote finis for such things for a generation.

In a manner echoing pre-war practice, the new 331 cubic inch  (5.4 litre) V8 was actually smaller than its predecessor; that would not be the post-war trend and Cadillac’s V8s would grow to 500 cubic inches (8.2 litre) until reality bit in the 1970s and that reality did intrude on what was planned.  When Cadillac introduced their 331 V8 in 1949 it was designed with expansion in mind, able to be enlarged to around 430 cubic inches (7.0 litres), a displacement expected not ever to be required, such had been the advances in efficiency of internal combustion engines compared with pre-war units.  However, the American automobile became bigger & heavier while the highway network expanded, ushering in high-speed motoring, meaning the demand for more powerful engines grew too and by 1964, the Cadillac V8, then enlarged to 429 cubic inches (7.0 litres) had reached the end of its development potential and it was known both Chrysler and Ford would soon release V8s of even greater capacity.  Accordingly, in late 1967 they trumped the Chrysler 440 (7.2) and Ford's 462 (7.6) with the Cadillac 472 (7.7), a block designed to be able to grow to a remarkable 600-odd cubic inches (circa 10 litres), the precaution taken to ensure the corporation was ready for whatever market trends or regulatory impositions (fuel economy standards weren't envisaged in an era of "cheap, limitless oil") might emerge.  It was a shame because the Cadillac 429 was (by Detroit's seven litre standards) a compact and economical unit.  As things transpired, after growing in 1970 to 500 cubic inches, progressively the behemoth was down-sized to 425 (7.0) and 368 (6.0) before being retired in 1984 when it was the last of the US "big block" V8s still in passenger car use.  If Greta Thunberg (b 2003) thinks such things are bad now, she may be assured they used to be worse.  

1949 Ford "single spinner" (left) & 1951 Ford "twin spinner" (right).

The industry’s inspiration certainly came originally from the military, influenced either by artillery and aviation.  The first new Fords of the post-war years came to be known as “single spinners” and “twin spinners”, referencing the slang term for propeller and that use was a look back, jets, missiles & rockets providing designers with their new inspirations, language soon reflecting that.

"Dagmar", Virginia Ruth "Jennie" Lewis (née Egnor, 1921–2001).

Television was the great cultural disrupter of the post-war years, creating first a national and eventually an internationally shared experience unimaginable in the diverse media environment of the twenty-first century.  Television needed content and, beginning in 1949, some of it was provided by Dagmar.  Ms Lewis adopted the persona of the "dumb blonde" but soon proved to be no airhead, becoming the star of the show on which she'd been hired as the supporting act, parlaying her fame to become one of the celebrities of the era.  She was also impressively pneumatic which may have accounted for her popularity with at least some of the audience and the vague anatomical similarity to the Cadillac's chromed pieces quickly saw them nicknamed "dagmars".  She was said to be amused by the connection, exploiting it whenever possible and Harley Earl's notion of speeding explosive shells was soon forgotten.

Art and Engineering: The automobile, the sweater, the "bullet" or "torpedo" bras and the cross-over of techniques from the structural to the decorative; from jet aircraft & rockets to fashion, in the 1950s, the industry had no shortage of inspiration and role models.  Unfortunately, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) didn't live to see the dagmars sprout from cars and while it may be assumed he'd have thought them worthy of analysis, probably he'd have conceded "sometimes a bumper is just a bumper".

1951 Cadillac.

For 1951, the dagmars not only grew but evolved stylistically from their bolt-on beginnings to become visually integrated with the bumper itself although, technically, they remained separate parts.  The growth of the dagmar is illustrative of Charles Darwin's (1809-1882) theory of natural selection; beneficial mutations within the genetic code that aid an organism's survival will be passed to the next generation.  The sales performance of the brand in the post-war years would proved Darwin correct, the increasing bulk of Cadillacs rewarded on the sales charts and for much of Cadillac’s next twenty-five years, bigger would be better.  While the dagmars soon would reach an evolutionary dead-end and go extinct, for a (human) generation or more, size would continue to matter.

1953 Cadillac.

Whether or not Cadillac was influenced by the cultural impact of Ms Lewis isn’t documented but in one way the anthropomorphism became a little more explicit in 1953, this time with uplift, supported still by the bumper but notably higher.  However, for 1953, the dagmars also returned to their military roots with the addition of small stabilizer fins so those seeking meaning in the metal should make of that what they will.  It was in 1953 the Cadillac Eldorado first appeared as a low volume convertible, production prompted after the positive response to the 1952 El Dorado “Golden Anniversary” show car.  Lavishly equipped, it featured a unique body and is notable for the first appearance on a Cadillac of the “wrap-around” windscreen which would become an industry feature for almost a decade and one historian suggested the several days of incapacity suffered by Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) during the 1960 presidential campaign (his knee damaged by the “dog-leg” windscreen pillar in his Chevrolet) may have been a factor in him losing the contest by “an electoral eyelash”.  The 1953 Eldorado was very expensive and only 552 were built but despite that, in subsequent decades, US manufacturers often couldn't resist the lure of such unprofitable ventures, justified usually as "prestige projects".

1954 Cadillac.

Cadillac slightly enlarged the tails fins for 1954 but abandoned the little fins on the dagmars, the shape returning not merely to something approximating Ms Lewis but hinting also at the bullet bra style so associated with the era.  Why the dagmars dropped a cup size in 1954 isn't known but although it must at the time have seemed a good idea, the era's mantra of "never do in moderation what can be done in excess") soon prevailed.  It was clear there was demand for something like the Eldorado but the stratospheric price of the exclusively bodied 1953 car had meant buyers were few.  In 1954 Cadillac re-positioned the Eldorado as a blinged-up version of the regular-production line, enabling the price to be reduced by 35%; in response, sales almost quadrupled and almost immediately the thing was among the most profitable in the GM stable, something which encouraged over the years a number of “special edition” Eldorados with predictably fanciful names.

1955 Cadillac.

Peak dagmar was reached in 1955.  Although techniques in steel fabrication existed to allow them further to grow, imagining such things can conceive of them only as absurd and there's no evidence in the GM archives that anything bigger was contemplated; from now on, they would have to evolve in another way.  Such was the importance of the dagmar, to afford them additional space, the parking lamps were moved to a spot directly below the head lamps and 1955's uplift was quite explicit, the superstructure suggestive of the cantilever effect which underlay the structural engineering of the underwire bra.  Pursuing the metaphor, this was definitely up a couple of cup sizes from the year before; while it’s hard to be exact, by 1955 Cadillac was well into the alphabet.  Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner (1926-2017) drove a 1955 Cadillac Series 62 convertible; amateur psychoanalysts may be inclinded to ponder on that.

1956 Cadillac.

Apparently now content with the shape of the protrusions, Cadillac may have realized that even by their standards the 1955 fittings may have been too big so slightly they were pruned and some attention was devoted instead to the surrounding details, the grill now with a finer texture and the parking lamps moved to lacunae cut into the bumpers.  A novelty for 1956 was the option of the grill being embellished in gold as an alternative to the standard satin finish and the fins, although higher than the originals, remained restrained.  That was not to last.

1955 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham Show car (left) and 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham (right).

Longer to lengthen the lingerie link, the uplifted dagmars now gained padding (which were technically more like pasties given they didn't increase a dagmar's size), the rubber attachments actually quite a good idea given how far their chromed metal predecessors stuck out.  Although obviously not at the time foreseen, the idea would be revived by some in the early 1970s as a quick, cheap solution to meet the new frontal-impact regulations and the rubber buffers must in 1957 have prevented some damage, both to victim and perpetrator.  Predictably, they were quickly nicknamed “pasties”, a borrowing of the term used in the female underwear business to describe a stick-on attachment designed for purposes of modesty.  The quad headlamps previewed on 1955 Eldorado Brougham Show car became lawful in many US states in 1957 (and soon all 48) and that meant the front end was becoming very busy with its array of circular shapes.

1958 Cadillac.

GM's corporate body for 1958 was released with the usually high expectations.  However, not only was the a brief, though sharp, recession which affected sales but the ranges suffered stylistically against the sleek new Chryslers which more than any embodied the "longer, lower, wider" motif which would characterize the era.  The Cadillacs were certainly longer in 1958, one aspect addressed in response to the perception the 1957 models had looked, remarkably, too short; a thing of relative proportions as well as absolute dimensions.  Still padded, the dagmars moved towards the edges and the fins grew, losing the forward slope on some models which had contributed to the sense of stubbiness.  What GM's designers looked at most longingly however were the Chrysler's sweeping tail-fins; they would respond.

1959 Cadillac.

Cadillac retired the dagmars for 1959; Darwinian natural selection again. (1) The dagmars, even if padded, did cause damage, both to themselves and whatever it was they hit (2) the adoption of the newly lawful quad headlamps in 1957-1958 created an opportunity for stylists render something new and (3) whatever may have be the linkage with women’s fashion, the old imagery of artillery shells or twin propellers was outmoded in the jet-age, the new inspiration being the twin-engined nacelle seen on the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress and the Convair B-36 Peacemaker, four of which Cadillac grafted on, two for the head lamps, two for the park lamps.  Even in Detroit in the 1950s, to add a pair of dagmars to that lot might have been thought a bit much.  As it was, probably few noticed or long lingered over their absence because it was the tail-fins and tail-lamps which drew the eye.

1948 Chrysler Newport Limousine (left), 1949 Chrysler Town & Country Convertible (centre) and M4 Sherman “Rhino” Tank (France, 1944, right).

However, from the 1940s to the 1960s the dagmar’s path wasn’t lineal.  There’s nothing to suggest Chrysler had any sort of anthropomorphic mutation in mind when the corporation added a third bumper guard for the 1948 range (top left) and the rational was probably nothing more than “more is better”, a philosophy which in Detroit would linger in Detroit into the 1970s.  For 1949 there was more still when a fourth bumper guard was added (top right), all now less dagmaresque and the range anyway made its debut some months before Ms Lewis first appeared on television.  More than anything, the 1949 Chrysler’s impressive array recalled the front of the “rhino tank”, the American nickname for Allied tanks to which “tusks” had been added to allow the vehicles to “cut through” the hedgerows (the lines of thick shrubbery which separated parcels of land in the hinterland on which was fought much of the Battle of Normandy which followed the D-Day landings (6 June 1944)).  Originally an ad-hoc battlefield modification fabricated with steel from the defensive devices the Germans had laid upon the beaches, most of the “Rhinos” had three, four or five “tusks” (or “prongs” as the British called them) but Chrysler were never tempted and no models left the factory with more than four bumper guards.  Interestingly, although fond of fins, the corporation never joined the dagmar bandwagon.

Lycia Naff (b 1962) as the three breasted prostitute (left) in Total Recall (1990), the idea revived on the catwalk, Milan Fashion Week, 2018 (right).

Nor is there any evidence Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven (b 1938) was familiar with the 1948 Chrysler when he conceived the three-breasted sex worker in Total Recall (1990), played by Lycia Naff (b 1962) although his first thoughts were apparently 1949ish because in an interview with The Ringer, the director explained he originally wanted four: “I know that some women had, let’s say, not two nipples, but they have four nipples.  Like a dog, whatever.  That’s what they have.  They exist, basically, and I’ve seen the medical photos when I was at university.  And I knew that. I wanted four nipples and breasts, with big breasts and smaller breasts underneath.  And [special effects specialist] Bob Bottin (b 1959), I think, felt that it was too realistic for the film.  And basically that three breasts would be more, let’s say, in the style of the whole movie.”  Now we know.

Translatable motifs: The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress and the 1959 Cadillac.

Built between 1952-1962, the B-52 has been in service under fourteen presidents and has seen several generations of airplanes come and go; when first it flew, Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) was nine, Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) was six and crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) was five (though even then probably already lying about her age).  No longer used for its original purpose which was to overfly Russian & Chinese targets, dropping gravity bombs, the platform has proved adaptable and has been subject to a number of upgrades and revisions, new generations of engines (quieter, more economical and less polluting) fitted and some modern materials integrated to replace the some of the period steel & aluminium.  The most obvious updating however is that the B52s still in service are hybrids in that they're a mix of analogue and digital, the flight controls, weapons systems and other avionics reflecting in some cases almost all of the technical generations of the last sixty-odd years.  It’s not impossible some may still be in service in 2052, a century after the first flight.  In most ways, the B-52’s design has proved more durable than the 1952 Cadillac.

Translatable motifs: The Convair B-36 Peacemaker and the 1959 Cadillac.

The nacelles of aircraft engines provided Cadillac with a rich source of inspiration and if they couldn't decide between propellers and jets, some aircraft offered both.  The earliest of Messerschmitt's prototype twin-jet ME-262s were equipped also with a propeller driven by a Jumo 210 engine, a necessity for the test-pilots given the unreliability of the early jets and many manufactures adopted the approach for their prototypes.  For some aspects, Cadillac settled on on one which, unusually, combined both propulsion systems in a mass-produced model, the Convair B-36 Peacemaker (1946-1954) a transitional airframe which straddled the two eras which was one of the earliest strategic bombers designed specifically as a delivery system for nuclear weapons.  With a greater payload even than the B-52, in its final configuration the B-36 was powered by a remarkable ten engines, six radial propeller units and four jets which lent the B-36 its slogan within Strategic Air Command (SAC): "six turnin' and four burnin' ".  However, the propellers were in an unusual pusher configuration, facing the opposite direction from the usual practice so it would have been a challenge to continue the tribute to Ms Lewis.  Instead, for 1959 Cadillac "mixed and matched": the B-52's twin nacelles at the front, the B-36 lending its lines to the tail lamps at the rear.

Jayne Mansfield (1933-1967) in her 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarrritz.

She may neither have noticed nor cared that Cadillac deleted the dagmars on the 1959 range but Jayne Mansfield anyway brought her own when she bought a 1959 Eldorado convertible.  As a marketing ploy, the two-door hardtops had for some time been called the "Eldorado Seville" while the companion convertible was the "Eldorado Biarritz".  The dagmars may have gone but it's for the "twin bullet" tail-lamp assemblies that the 1959 range is remembered; while not the tallest fins on the era (the 1961 imperials winning that dubious award by about an inch (25 mm)), they probably were the most extravagant.  Also, despite the number of pink 1959 Cadillacs now in existence, none ever left the factory painted thus, a rose-colored exterior hue offered in only 1956.  It was that Elvis Presley (1935-1977) owned a pink Cadillac and the use of the phrase in popular culture (song & film) that made the trend a thing although his car was a 1955 Fleetwood Sixty Special which was originally blue with a black roof.  The roof was later re-sprayed white but people adopting the motif usually go all-pink.

1959 Cadillac Cyclone (XP-74) concept car (left) and North American F-86-50-NA Sabre (right).

However, although Cadillac abandoned the use of dagmars in their 1959 models (a rare example of restraint that year), just to remind people what they were missing, simultaneously they toured the show circuit with the Cadillac Cyclone (XP-74) concept car, an example of how far things had come from Ford's "spinners" a decade earlier.  Although it was powered by the corporation’s standard 390 cubic inch (6.5 litre) V8, there was some adventurous engineering including a rear-mounted automatic transaxle and independent rear suspension (using swing axles, something far from ideal but not as bad as it sounds given the grip of tyres at the time) but few dwelt long on such things, their attention grabbed by features such as the bubble top canopy (silver coated for UV protection) which opened automatically in conjunction with the electrically operated sliding doors.  This time the link with military aviation was quite explicit, the black dagmars actually functional radomes like those familiar on the F-86-D Sabre, containing the radar-controlled proximity sensors used electronically to alert the driver with an audible signal and warning light should an automobile or other approaching object be detected.  The system apparently worked although it would have been too expensive to offer as an option.  In 2024, such systems are produced by the million at low-cost and are standard equipment on many vehicles.

Trends in one industry do get picked up in others and it can be difficult to work out who is being influenced by whom, cause and effect sometimes amorphous.  Like the tailfin fad, the dagmar era came and went during the first generation of the affluent society, a brief, chromed moment during which excess could be enjoyed without guilt although, even at the time, there were critics although there were probably few dissenters among those who actually bought the big Cadillacs, Lincolns and Imperials.  Whether being in the avant-garde of dagmar trends much influenced buying patterns is doubtful because the Cadillac, Lincoln & Imperial crowd tended to be a tribal lot and conquest sales happened at scale only if some thing genuinely innovative (like the 1955 & 1957 Imperials) appeared and even then, Cadillac owners were seen as a breed apart; a separate population.  Only about one thing did probably most concur: everybody likes boobs.

Not only Cadillacs

1958 Lincoln Continental Mark III Convertible (left) and 1960 Lincoln Continental Mark V Executive Limousine.

Ford's 1958 Lincoln Continental was a reasonable technical achievement, being at the time the largest vehicle of unitary construction ever built and in convertible form it remains the longest the industry made since World War II (1939-1945).  It was also a failure in the market which went close to dooming the Lincoln brand and the reasons for that included the sheer size of the things (there were many garages, even in affluent places, in which where one simply wouldn't fit) and the appearance, a mashup of lines, curves and scallops which made some speculate each part may have been designed by a different committee, all working is isolation.  Ponderously, the body survived for three seasons during which Lincoln apparently couldn't decide about dagmars; after appearing in 1959, they were deleted the next year, only to return for the range's swansong in 1960.  Clearly, Lincoln lacked Cadillac's passion. 

The size did however come in handy when building limousines.  The black car was leased by Ford to the White House for an annual US$500 and was the one presidents used for personal journeys around Washington DC.  Replaced during Lyndon Johnson's (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) administration (1963-1969) as part of the periodic updating of the White House fleet, it was sold by public tender as just another used car and there wasn't then the same sensitivity attached to objects associated with events.  The 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible in which President John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was assassinated in 1963 was, after being repainted black (it was originally midnight blue), fitted with a permanent roof and titanium armor plating, returned to the White House car pool where it served until 1977, an unsentimental pragmatism probably unthinkable now.  Although their own extravagances were hardly subtle, the fins on Fords, Lincolns and even Edsels never reached the heights or bent to shape the contortions GM and Chrysler pumped out.  To their eternal credit, Lincoln didn't add dagmars to the memorable 1961 Lincoln; there would have been an absurd clash with the severe lines.

1963 Ford Galaxie 500XL convertible (G-Code 406 Tri-power).

Notably, GM's other divisions rarely tried to match Cadillac in the size, lift and projection of dagmars, Buick the most committed though other manufacturers, albeit spasmodically, would use the theme.  Mercury and Packard offered them on various models between 1953-1956 and Chevrolet's were modest and often rubber-padded.  That idea was picked up by Ford in the early 1960s, their final  A-cup fling on the 1963 Galaxie; perhaps as a sign of the times, uniquely, they were offered only as an optional extra.  In a distinctly un-dagmaresque way, a pair appeared also on the rear bumper and were obviously there genuinely to offer some modest protection against the damage which might be suffered in low-impact events such as those suffered in car parks.  The insurance industry had already noted the disproportionately large costs they were incurring fixing damage suffered while parking and were planning their own strategy.

Clockwise from top left: 1974 Jaguar XKE (E-Type), 1974 Triumph TR6, 1978 Triumph Spitfire and 1973 Dodge Monaco.

There was no suggestion of anything organically Darwinian about the sudden addition of ungainly blocks of rubber to certain US-market cars in the early 1970s.  They were a consequence of the lobbying efforts of the insurance industry proving more effective in having the congress pass legislation imposing "bumper standards" than were those of the car industry to delay or prevent their introduction.  Presumably also, the "campaign funds donations" of the insurance industry were both greater and better "packaged".  Some US manufacturers bolted them on as a stop-gap solution while the engineering was done to create the "railway-sleeper" bumpers to comply with the next year's tougher standards while some British sports cars would see out their final years so disfigured.  A few were built on platforms designed in the 1950s which either couldn’t be adapted or were so close to end-of-life the economics were not compelling.  The quick and dirty solution produced what proved to be distinctly non-anthropomorphic dagmars, this time made almost entirely of padding so predictably dubbed “falsies”.  Awkward looking though they were, worse was to come; some of the solutions used to meet the rules were truly ghastly, a few of which lasted well into the 1980s.

Sabrina, the English Dagmar

Television penetrated most of the Western world during the 1950s and in an era of generally (though not without the odd hiccup) rising prosperity, the sets became increasingly ubiquitous in domestic households.  The content however was much more regionally specific than would become the trend in succeeding decades.  While production centres in the UK did distribute some of their product elsewhere (and not only in the English-speaking world), by volume and cultural influence the US were by far the most successful, much of what was seen on many screens was locally produced, something easier to achieve in an era when 24 hour TV was not yet a thing and it was industry practice to repeat broadcasts with some frequency.  Additionally, there were often “local content” requirements (quotas) which were industry protection trade barriers erected obsessively to save viewers from what even then was understood as “cultural imperialism”.  Although that phrase had been used even prior to World War I (1914-1918), it wasn’t until it appeared in Mass Communications and American Empire (1969) by US sociologist Herbert Schiller (1919–2000) that it would become part of the mainstream language of critical theory.  However, not only was the particular phenomenon of American cultural influence well documented in the 1950s, it was also appreciated that television would be a force like no previous form of distribution, a concept Dr Schiller also discussed as “packaged consciousness”, an idea later refined as “encapsulated cultural hegemony”.

1962 Reliant Sabre (1961-1963): It was only the early cars which were adorned with the rather bizarre “sabrinas”.

But in the 1950s, more cultural references than now were regionally specific, although international trade (globalization had actually been well underway by before the World War I (1914-1918) and its aftermath of decades imposed an intermission) meant objects spread and in fields like architecture something like an “international style” had emerged.  So, the dagmars on the cars made it to Europe but, without Ms Lewis appearing of screens, the nickname didn’t come into use.  Except for Detroit’s cars, not many examples of the classic dagmar bumpers were seen but England did have Norma Ann Sykes (1936–2016), better known by her stage name: Sabrina.

Sabrina in some characteristic poses.

Sabrina’s early career was as a model, sometimes in various stages of undress, but it was when in 1955 she was cast as a stereotypical “dumb blonde” in a television series she achieved national fame.  On stage or screen, she remained a presence into the 1970s but without great critical acclaim although the University of Leeds did confer an honorary D.Litt (Doctor of Letters) for services to the arts so there was that.  What was of course noticed was her "presence" and as well as the unusual fittings to the nose of the Reliant Sabre, the “sabrina” moniker was applied to parts of equipment on machinery as varied as heavy trucks and Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter jets.

Triumph sabrina engine in TRS, Le Mans, 1960.

There was also a “sabrina” engine, or more correctly its cylinder head.  For various reasons, it wasn’t easy for European manufacturers to pursue the path to power and performance by adopting the American approach of big displacement so they chose the alternative: greater specific efficiencies & higher engine speeds.  In Italy, as early as 1954 Alfa Romeo had proved the once exotic double overhead camshaft (DOHC) configuration was viable in relatively low-cost, mass-production machines and even in England, MG’s MGA Twin Cam had been released, short-lived though it was.  Triumph’s sports cars had enjoyed much success, both in the marketplace and on racetracks but their engines were based on one used in a tractor and while legendary robust, it was tuneable only up to a point and that point had been reached, limiting its potential in competition.  The solution was a DOHC head atop the old tractor mill and this the factory prepared for their racing team to run in the 1959 Le Mans 24 Hour classic, naming the car in which it was installed the TR3S, suggesting some very close relationship with the road-going TR3 although it really was a prototype and a genuine racing car.

The Le Mans campaigns with the sabrina Engine: TR3S (1959, left), TRS (1960, centre) and the TRS team crossing the line in formation for what was a "staged  photo-opportunity", none of the cars having completed the requisite number of laps to be classified a "finisher" (1960, right).  In 1961, all three went the distance, taking the "Teams Prize".    

Some resemblance in the mind's eye of an engineer: Sectional view of the sabrina.

Triumph used the sabrina engine for three consecutive years at Le Mans, encountering some problems but the reward was delivered in 1961 when all three cars completed the event with one finishing a creditable ninth, the trio winning that year’s team prize.  Satisfied the engine was now a reliable power-plant, the factory did flirt with the idea of offering it as an option in the TR sports cars but, because the differences between it and the standard engine were so great, it was decided the high cost of tooling up for mass production was unlikely to be justified, the projected sales volumes just not enough to amortize the investment.  Additionally, although much power was gained by adding the DOHC Hemi head, the characteristics of its delivery were really suited only to somewhere like Le Mans which is hardly typical of race circuits, let alone the conditions drivers encounter on the road.  As a footnote in Triumph’s history, it was the second occasion on which the factory had produced a DOHC engine which had failed to reach production.  In 1934 the company displayed a range-topping version of their Dolomite sports car (1934-1940), powered by a supercharged two litre (121 cubic inch), DOHC straight-8.  The specification was intoxicating and the lines rakish but, listed at more than ten times the price of a small family car, it was too ambitious for the troubled economy of the 1930s and only three were built.

Professor Regitz-Zagrosek's "bikini triangle": Lindsay Lohan illustrates.

When viewing the casing containing the gears and timing chains running from the bottom-end to the front camshaft bearings, one can see why Sabrina rapidly would have entered the mind of an engineer.  Apparently it began with a chance remark at the assembly bench but nobody could think of a more appropriate description so the official project name it became, the original "20X" soon forgotten.  Anatomically, the engineers were of course about right because the front sectional view of the sabrina engine’s internals do align with what Dr Vera Regitz-Zagrosek (b 1953; Professor of Cardiology at the University of Zurich), describes as “the bikini triangle”, that area of the female human body defined by a line between the breasts and from each breast down to the reproductive organs; it’s in this space that is found all the most obvious anatomical differences between male & female although the professor does caution that differences actually exist throughout the body, down to the cellular level.