Heckflosse

Heckflosse (pronounced hek-flos or hek-floss-ah (German))

A nickname for the Mercedes-Benz W111 & W112 sedans produced between 1959-1968 (1961-1971 for the coupés and cabriolets with the pruned fins) and translated in English as fintail ("finnie" the affectionate diminutive).

1959: A compound word in modern German, Heck (rear; back) + Flosse (fin).  As a surname, Heck (most common in southern Germany and the Rhineland) came from the Middle High German hecke or hegge (hedge), the origin probably as a topographic name for someone who lived near a hedge.  The link with hedges as a means of dividing properties led in the Middle Low German to heck meaning “wooden fencing” under the influence of the Old Saxon hekki, from the Proto-West Germanic hakkju.  In nautical slang heck came to refer to the “back of a ship” because the position of the helmsman in the stern was enclosed by such a fence and from here it evolved in modern German generally to refer to "back or rear".  Flosse is obscure but was probably related to the Middle English and Old English finn, the Dutch vin, the Low German finne and the Swedish fena.  Because all German nouns are capitalized, Heckflosse is correct but in English, where it's treated as a nickname, heckflosse is common.  Heckflosse is a noun; the noun plural is Heckflossen (although it has in English texts appeared as Heckflosses). 

The (low) rise and (gradual) fall of the Mercedes-Benz tail-fin

Lindsay Lohan examining the damage to a 2009 (fifth generation) Maserati Quattroporte leased by her father, the impact suffered in a minor traffic accident while her assistant was at the wheel, Los Angeles, 2009.  More than many, Lindsay Lohan probably understands the value of Peilstege.

Chrysler in 1957 really did claim their tail-fins were not mere decorations but "stabilizers" designed to move the centre of pressure rearward.  Although designed during Detroit’s tail-fin craze during the mid-late 1950s, Mercedes-Benz always claimed the Heckflosse (tail-fins), introduced in 1959, weren’t mere stylistic flourishes but rather Peilstege (parking aids or sight-lines (literally "bearing bars")), the construct being peil-, from peilen (take a bearing; find the direction) + Steg (bar) which marked the extent of the bodywork, this to assist while reversing.  It's never been clear if this interpretation existed during the design process or was applied retrospectively in response to criticism after the debut but by 1960, even in the US where the things has assumed absurd proportions, the fin-fad was fast fading.  As a cultural artefact, the distinctiveness of the Heckflosse made them a staple for film-makers crafting the verisimilitude of the 1960s High Cold War, just as the big 600s (W100, 1963-1981) from the same era are used still when wealth or evil (not always synonymous) needs to be conveyed.

1963 Mercedes-Benz 300 SE Lang (Long) (W112).

Although on a longer wheelbase than the standard 300 SE, the model designation remained the same, the SEL nomenclature not appearing until the subsequent (W109) 300 SEL (1965).  The additional framing around the badge appeared only on some early-build models and was a unique embellishment although the 300 SE, by German standards "dripped with chrome".  The chrome trim attached to the tail-fins on the 300 SE and the most expensive of the W111 range (220 S & 220 SE) wasn't fitted to the 220 or the cheaper W110 models and in a quirk of production-line economics, it transpired it was more expensive (ie labor intensive) not to fit the trim because of the additional finishing required.  The alpha-numeric soup of model designations which proliferated from the late 1960s started as something almost logical (ie a 300 used a 3.0 litre engine, a 220 a 2.2 etc) but as new product lines emerged, anomalies increased until, in the early 1990s, it was re-organized although the new system would generate its own inconsistencies and eventually the number often had only a vague relationship with engine displacement.

Heckflosse assembly line, Stuttgart, Germany, 1962.

The Heckflosse was one of the first cars to include in its design the concept of the “safety cell”, a passenger compartment designed to protect the occupants in the case of impacts or roll-overs, the structures to the front and rear (ie the engine bay and luggage compartment) essentially “sacrificial”.  This idea was the ancestor of the modern “crumple zone” in which the front and rear compartments were designed to deform upon impact rather than retaining structural integrity, the object being to absorb and dissipate the energy generated in a crash, preventing it reaching the passengers.  The concept was not new, having for generations been a part of naval architecture, warships using what designers dubbed the “armored citadel”: a kind of “box” containing the vital machinery and magazine (ammunition), the structure created by the armoured deck, waterline belt, and the transverse bulkheads.  While this design didn’t make warships “unsinkable”, it did make them harder to sink and there have been ships which have had their whole bow & stern blown off yet have remained afloat, able to be towed back to port.

1961 GAZ-13 Chaika (Seagull) (1959-1981, from the Soviet Union, left), Sunbeam Alpine (1959-1968, from the United Kingdom, centre) and 1961 Chrysler Imperial Crown Windsor (from the US, right).  There's long been much comment about the Heckflosse's fins (only the factory called them Peilstege) being a unexpected concession to a styling fad but they do need to be compared with what was happening not only on both sides of the Atlantic but in Moscow too.

1957 Ford Thunderbird.  Fin-wise, the closest comparison to the Heckflosse was probably the 1957 Ford Thunderbird which, compared with what Chrysler and General Motors (GM) were doing at the time, was quite restrained.  Genuinely, the fins on the first generation Thunderbird (1955-1957) were functional as Peilstege.

On 1 October 1966, Heckflosses were part of the small motorcade in which, having served the twenty year sentences they were lucky to receive from the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946), war criminals Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) and Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974; head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) 1931-1940 & Gauleiter (district party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna 1940-1945) were driven from Spandau prison in Berlin.  The next day he boarded a Pan-Am Boeing 727 for a flight to Hanover, his first time on a jet aircraft because in 1945 permission had been denied (ostensibly on security grounds) for him to go on a test flight in one of the two-seater Messerschmitt Me-262s built for training.  Like many aspects of his life after release, the THF-HAJ flight had been planned while in Spandau, Speer particularly taken with the 727 because he'd so often seen it during its final descent while tending the prison grounds which he'd transformed into a landscaped park.

1971 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE 3.5 Coupé (1969-1971).

On the sedans, the uncharacteristic exuberances were left undisturbed until production ended in 1968 although after 1965, the range was restricted to a line of lower cost, utilitarian models.  The coupé and cabriolet were introduced in 1961 and lasted a decade; truncating the Heckflosse, they achieved an elegance of line Mercedes-Benz has never since matched but then, few have.

1969 Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3 (W109, 1968-1972).

By 1965, on the W108 and W109 (1965-1972 and which replaced the more expensive W111 models & all the W112 sedans), the fins, though barely discernible, still existed, the factory noting the contribution to structural rigidity, adding strength without the increase in weight the use of other techniques would have imposed.

1978 Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC 5.0 (C107, 1977-1981).

Advances in metallurgy and engineering meant achieving the required strength became possible even without additional curvature in the metal and in 1971 the R107 (roadster 1971-1989) and C107 (coupé 1971-1981) debuted with the rear surface an uninterrupted flat plane.

1978 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 (V116, 1975-1980).

Despite that, a year later, the W116 sedans (1972-1980) were released with the most vestigial of fins.  The retention of styling elements between generations is not unusual, the second generation Range Rover reprising the earlier model’s distinctive hood creases, even though no longer a structural necessity.  Because there was uncertainty around whether US regulators would outlaw convertibles, no coupé or cabriolet version of the W116 was developed which is why a LWB (long wheelbase) coupé version of the R107 SL was released (as the C107 SLC) and the R107 lasted an impressive 18 years, not replaced until 1989.

1954 Chevrolet Corvette.

Almost apologetically, much has always been made of Mercedes-Benz in the late 1950s not being tempted to follow the lead of GM and Chrysler (Ford never really got involved) in making the W111's tailfins (whether they were really there to help when parking or were merely thought fashionable) truly macropterous but that doesn't mean Detroit may have influenced things because they also did some small "Heckflossesque" fins.  One intriguing element on the original Chevrolet Corvette was the use of protrusions to house the taillights.  When in 1953 the Corvette was released, the fins with which US cars of the era were to become so associated had been around for a few year but hadn’t yet grown (variously upwards & outwards) to the absurd proportions they would later assume and there was nothing unusual in taillights being housed in some construction integrated with the bodywork; once just “bolted-on” lens, taillights had become a design element.  What appeared on the early Corvettes are not really fins and are most analogous with the streamlined nacelles which appeared on contemporary aircraft as enclosures for jet engines; that aspect of aviation architecture would for years be a popular motif for the taillight stylists (by then a highly valued member of the team).  Despite that, the accepted term describing the sculptural extensions is “taillight pod”.  Interestingly, in some of the internal corporate memos the term “nacelle” was used but “pod” became the accepted standard.

1954 Corvette taillight (left) in pod with finlets.

The pair of small blades adorning the upper surface (although sometimes referred to as “finettes”) were in the documents of the GM Design Studio called “taillight bezels” or “ornamental finlets” and, modest as they were, the C1 Corvette probably was the first production car with “four fins”, those with them tending to fit them in pairs although, as a piece of biomimicry of aquatic species, some of the memorable inter-war and early post-war Tatras from Czechoslovakia had a single "central fin" running downwards from the rear of the roof.  The Tatra's fin (the concept familiar from LSR (Land Speed Record) machines) was there to enhance straight line stability and it was needed because of the car's configuration (advanced aerodynamics, a rear-mounted V8 engine and swing axles).  The fin did what it said on the tin but did little to alter the handling characteristics which, by virtue of the mechanical layout, could in unskilled hands be challenging.  The Corvette's behavior was more predictable but that didn't apply to the stylists (they weren't yet "designers") at GM and Chrysler who embarked on a process of “finflation” from which, mercifully, Chevrolet's sports car was spared.  Those on the early Corvettes were at least in a similar aspect ratio to those which appeared on actual jet engine nacelles where they were used to direct airflow in the desired direction and there would have been a slight aerodynamic effect (for better or worse) but the finlets were essentially decorative as GM’s memos indicated and similar additions even appeared on some dagmars (such as the 1954 Buicks).  The Corvette’s designers clearly though the moment had passed for when the restyled 1956 range was released, the pods had been banished, never to return.

1959 Pontiac Bonneville Convertible (left) and 1959 Pontiac Catalina Convertible (right).  Pontiac used the elongation of the elliptical taillights as a marker of a model's place in the division's hierarchy.

On the Corvette, the “taillight pod” and “ornamental finlets” combo didn’t make it into the 1956 range but the idea clearly became lodged somewhere in the GM collective memory because, on a grander scale, both were reprised on the 1959 Pontiacs; longer, higher and wider than the 1953 original, the look might have attracted more publicity had GM’s take on fins that year not been dominated by the Cadillac with the “twin bullet taillights” and the Chevrolet’s “bat wings”.  Compared with those extravagances, what Pontiac did was almost subtle and anyway overshadowed by two of the division’s more enduring debuts, the “split grill” and “year of the wide-track” campaign, the former coming and going, the latter lasting for more than a decade.  In a harbinger of what was to come (and ultimately doom Pontiac), all five GM divisions built their cars using the single platform of the GM B-Body and it was remarkable the stylists were able to achieve noticeably different appearances despite sharing the same structural core.  Whether the 1959 Pontiac's four finlets made them a more functional Peilstege than the two on the 1959 Heckflosse seems dubious although at 213.7 inches in length (5,428 mm) compared with the W111's 192 (4,875), drivers of Pontiacs would have needed them more.  Even a 1959 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II was only 213 inches (5,410) long and its bustleback had no fins whatever but many were chauffeur-driven so presumably “the help” were anyway good at parking. 

The Heckflosse as rally and race car

Mercedes-Benz 220 SE, Monte Carlo Rally, 1960.

To those accustomed to how things are done in the modern WRC (World Rally Championship) or have memories of the marvellous Group B cars of the 1980s (a category which enthralled everybody except the clipboard crew at the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the International Automobile Federation)) which, being international sport’s dopiest regulatory body, of course outlawed the things) it will seem improbable the Heckflosse would have been a successful rally car but the record was illustrious.  It’s best remembered for the 220 SE which won the 1960 Monte Carlo Rally but there were many other successes including the 1961 Algiers-Cape Town Central Africa Rally, an arduous event of some 13,500 kilometres (8400 miles) conducted over several weeks on a route from Cape Town to Algiers (a 190 D (a diesel-engined W121 “pontoon” rather than a Heckflosse) had won in 1959 which proved it was a rally which didn’t rely solely on speed).  First run in 1951 and based on an event staged in 1930, in 1956 a Fiat 1100 and a Ford Ranch Wagon V8 (two vehicles most unalike) had tied for first place, the latter driven by Elon Musk's (b 1971) maternal grandfather, chiropractor Joshua Norman Haldeman (1902–1974), who was an interesting character.

Mercedes-Benz factory rally team (part of the competition department, scaled down since the withdrawal from top-flight Formula One and sports car racing after 1999),  Acropolis Rally, 1963.

The most prestigious African rally was the East African Safari and a Heckflosse 220 SE won in 1961, following victories by 219s the previous two years. The 219 (W105, 1956-1959) was a curious anomaly among the post-war Mercedes-Benz saloons in terms of both nomenclature and engineering.  Using a “mix & match” approach which had been part of the transportation business even before things became motorized, the 219 used the 2.2 litre six-cylinder engine familiar in the various 220s (W128 & W180) but mounted it on the shorter “pontoon” platform used by the 4-cylinder 180 & 190 (W120 & W121) variants, the sacrificed length all accounted for by the shorter rear-doors (and thus wheelbase).  It was one of the more elaborate “de-frilling” exercises seen around the world, the variations including a lower cost version of an existing model (Citroën ID vs DS, Cadillac Calais vs De Ville or Chevrolet Biscayne vs Bel Air & Impala) or an existing body with a smaller engine substituted (Humber Hawk vs Super Snipe).  The 219’s designation was unusual in that it was the only occasion the familiar three numerals featured something other than a “0” as the last digit and it’s notable also because the factory, in a blatant attempt to evade the taxes levied on cars with 2.2 litre engines, slightly reduced the displacement.  The FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany) 1949-1990) government must have decided this was “un-German” trickery (dieselgate was decades away) because eventually they informed Daimler-Benz the 219 would be taxed as a 2.2 litre vehicle,  This brought production to an end because the effect of the tax increase would have negated the advantage the 219 had enjoyed.

The winning Mercedes-Benz 300 SE, Spa-Francorchamps 24 Hour, 1964.  Note the absence of the chrome trim which usually adorned the W112, the same weight-saving measure not always applied to the rally cars.

Although not obviously a machine built for the circuits, the Heckflosse did win enjoy success on the track, a 220 SE in 1961 winning the second Armstrong 500 in Australia, the event which became the annual Bathurst 1000.  It was even less obviously a rally car but the 220 SE enjoyed a remarkable record in the Poland Rally, winning four successive titles between 1960-1964 and the car also won the 1962 Liège-Sofia-Liège, the factory taking the title in the same event in 1963 with the new 230 SL (the W113 “Pagoda”, 1963-1971).  The Heckflosse also won the Acropolis Rally in two successive years, a 220 SE taking the chequered flag in 1962 and a 300 SE (W112) the following year.  The 300 SE was very much a luxury model which used the then still novel engineering of air suspension which provided a smooth ride but added to weight and complexity, neither quality sought by teams using cars in competition although the system did have the advantage of permitting ground clearance easily to be adjusted; to compensate for the added mass, the 300 SE used a variant of the 3.0 litre straight-6 from the 300 SL (W198; 1954-1963) Gullwing and roadster, a powerful, robust unit.  However, by 1963 it was obvious the days of the big sedans being effective rally cars was drawing to a close; the greater power of the 300 SE had permitted the Heckflosse quite an Indian summer but the immediate future clearly belonged to lighter, more nimble machines such as the Alfa Romeo Giulia, Mini Cooper, Saab 96 and Volvo 122.

Ewy Rosqvist with 220 SE Heckflosse.

However, whether on the circuits or the rally course, there was in the early 1960s nothing unusual about men winning trophies but something of note happened on November 4, 1962 when two Swedish women (driver Ewy Rosqvist (1929–2024) & co-driver Ursula Wirth (1934–2019)), in a 220 SE Fintail (Heckflosse) won the VI Gran Premio Internacional Standard Supermovil YPF (Sixth Touring Car Grand Prix of Argentina), conducted over five days and 2,874 miles (4,625 km) on some of the country’s gruelling, mountainous roads.  The women not only won but dominated the event; for the first time, a single vehicle won all six stages and they set a new race record.  To rub it in, all other competitors were men.  Ewy Rosqvist’s only complaint about the 220 SE was that when driving in the mountains, she’d have preferred one with power steering.  According to company lore, the rough road and hot weather testing of one of the competition department's Heckflosses was conducted in the Australian outback (a good place to find both qualities) and, as test drivers, the factory sent with the car the Ott brothers (dubbed by the locals “Crash Ott” and “Red Ott”); the report from the two burly Bavarians assured head office power assistance was “not needed” because the steering was  “acceptably light”.  

220 SE Heckflosse with spotter plane above.

Working as a veterinary assistant travelling between remote farms, Ewy Rosqvist was brought up on a diet of twisty, often icy roads of dubious quality and it was on those she learned the finer points of rally-style driving, travelling sometimes up to 200 km (125 miles) in a day.  With animals to care for, speed was required (in her bag was often some “time-critical” bull semen) and she took to keeping a log-book in which she recorded how long it took to go from one farm to the next; these entries she regarded as her “lap times”.  Later, she would recall the “unpaved roads, gravel paths and farm roads” with some gratitude because they honed techniques which proved good enough for her to win several European rally championships; she called her memoir Fahrt durch die Hölle (Driving through Hell (1963)).

Argentine Turismo Standard Grand Prix, 1962.

Victory celebrations: Ewy Rosqvist (left) with Ursula Wirth (right).  Between them (in sunglasses) stands Mercedes-Benz team manager Karl Kling (1910–2003) who was a factory driver in 1954-1955, driving both the W196R F1 cars and W196S (300 SLR) sports cars.

Although Daimler-Benz was not unaware of the publicity which would be generated by having a women driving for their competition department, when in 1962 the factory offered her a seat in the Mercedes-Benz works team, genuinely the appointment was on merit and with what was achieved in South America, she justified her place.  The team had appeared in Argentina with a four-car entry (two 220 SEs (W111) and two 300 SEs (W112)), the operation run with the sort of thoroughness which had characterized their Grand Prix campaigns in the 1930s & 1950s and, given the conditions encountered, it was just as well: of the 286 vehicles which started only 43 would finish.  Immediately the women made an impression by winning the first stage and they repeated the feat on the subsequent five, eventually finishing three hours ahead of the second-placed Volvo and setting a new record average speed of 126.87 km/h (78.84 mph).  Undeniably, the women were the most glamorous and photogenic in the field and they captured the country’s imagination, German language newspaper Freie Presse (published in Buenos Aires) reporting: “It was not the Cuban missile crisis [16-28 October 1962], but rather the two blondes from Scandinavia who dominated the headlines in the country’s daily newspapers.”

Bastard

Bastard (pronounced bas-terd, br-sted, or bar-stad)

(1) A person born of unmarried parents; an illegitimate child (technically gender-neutral but historically applied almost exclusively to males).  Use is now mostly in a historic context.

(2) In slang as a term of disparagement, a vicious, despicable, or thoroughly disliked person.

(3) In slang, an expression of sympathy for a man who has suffered in some way (unlucky bastard, poor bastard etc).

(4) In slang, an expression used of someone who has been fortunate (lucky bastard).

(5) In jocular slang, a term of endearment (chiefly Australia & New Zealand).

(6) Something fake, phony, irregular, inferior, spurious, or unusual; of abnormal or irregular shape; of unusual make or proportions (now rare).

(7) In engineering, politics, architecture etc, something which is a mixture of inputs as opposed to pure versions.

(8) In metalworking & woodworking, a type of file.

(9) In informal use an extremely difficult or unpleasant job or task.

(10) In animal breeding, a mongrel (biological cross between different breeds, groups or varieties) (now rare).

(11) A sword midway in length between a short-sword and a long sword.

(12) In sugar refining, (1) an inferior quality of soft brown sugar, obtained from syrups that have been boiled several times or (2) a large mold for straining sugar.

(13) A very sweet fortified wine, often with spices added.

(14) In commercial printing, paper not of a standard size.

(15) In theatre lighting, one predominant color blended with small amounts of complementary color; used to replicate natural light because of their warmer appearance.

(16) In theology, a heretic or sinner; one separated from one's deity (archaic).

(17) In biology, a botanical tendril or offshoot (rare and used only in the technical literature).

(18) In linguistics, any change or neologism in language that is viewed as a degradation.

1250–1300: From the Middle English bastarde, basterd & bastart, from the Anglo-Norman bastard (illegitimate child), from the eleventh century Medieval Latin bastardus of unknown origin but perhaps from the Germanic (Ingvaeonic) bāst- (related to the Middle Dutch bast (lust, heat)), a presumed variant of bōst- (marriage) + the derogatory Old French –ard (the pejorative agent noun suffix), taken as signifying the offspring of a polygynous marriage to a woman of lower status (ie the acknowledged child of a nobleman by a woman other than his wife), a pagan Germanic custom not sanctioned by the Christian church.  The Old Frisian boask, boaste & bost (marriage) was from the proto-Germanic bandstu- & banstuz (bond, tie), a noun derivative of the Indo-European bhendh (to tie, bind).  It was cognate with the French bâtard (bastard), the West Frisian bastert (bastard), the Dutch bastaard (bastard), the German Bastard (bastard) and the Icelandic bastarður (bastard).  Etymologists caution that charming as it is, the traditional explanation of Old French bastard as derivative of fils de bast (literally “child of a packsaddle”, the source of this the idea of a child conceived on an improvised bed (medieval saddles often doubled as beds while traveling)) is dubious on chronological and geographical grounds.  The Medieval Latin Bastum (packsaddle) is of uncertain origin.

One etymologist noted that while the origin of bantling (a young child known or believed to be "a bastard") was uncertain, it could be from the German Bänkling (bastard-child) which was from the Luxembourgish Bänk, from the Middle High German and Old High German bank, from the Proto-West Germanic banki, from Proto-Germanic bankiz (and cognate with the German Bank, Dutch bank, English bench, Swedish bänk and Icelandic bekkur.  The alleged link with bastard offspring is that conception took place on "a bank" rather than in a bed where responsible & respectable folk did such things.  In music, a song titled Lindsay Lohan List was released by an artist named That Trending Bastard.  The noun bastarditis is pseudo-Latin used (usually in an offensive or derogatory way) to suggest some tendency to act like a bastard; the formation of the word hints the behavior may be due to disease or affliction (the -itas suffix was from the Proto-Italic -itāts & -otāts (-tās added to i-stems or o-stems, later used freely) and ultimately from the primitive Indo-European -tehats.  There are literally dozens of uses of "bastard" as a modifier and it has been applied to plants animals and devices but it has also proved one of English's more productive nouns:  Bastard is a noun, verb & adjective, bastardliness, bastardizatio, bastardness, bastardy, bastardship, bastardism, bastardhood & bastardling are nouns, abastard, abastardized, abastardizing, bastardise & bastardised are verbs, bastardish, bastardous, bastardly, bastardless & bastardlike are adjectives and bastardly is an adjective & adverb; the noun plural is bastards.

US film star James Dean (1931–1955) with 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder (chassis 550-0055) shortly before his death.

The 1955 Ford Country Squire with tandam-axle trailer (behind Little Bastard) was the the team’s tow vehicle while the Cadillac to the right was a 1953 model.  Beyond both having four wheels and running on gas (petrol), one of the few things the Cadillac had in common with the Porsche was the availability of a manual transmission (Porsche at the time offered no self-shifting choice).  The black Cadillac was probably fitted with the company's four-speed Hydra-Matic automatic transmission although, after a fire destroyed the factory, almost 30,000 were in 1953 equipped with Buick's famously smooth but inefficient two-speed Dynaflow.  After the end of production of the 1953 Series 75, almost three decades would pass before Cadillac again offered a model with a manual transmission although that didn't end well (among the Cadillac crowd the Cimarron (1982-1988) is never spoken of except in the phrase "the unpleasantness of 1982") but in a much more convincing way the option returned to the list in 2004 and by 2013, while one could buy a Cadillac with a clutch pedal, one could not buy such a Ferrari.  For most of the second half of the twentieth century, few would have thought that anything but improbable or unthinkable.

The Little Bastard being serviced.

James Dean was pronounced dead on 30 September, 1955, shortly after crashing the Porsche 550 Spyder he'd bought for use as a race car.  Like the prototype Porsche 356/1 of 1948 the 550 was mid rather than rear-engined as all Porsches had to that point been and while an ideal configuration for racing, it did possess quirks which meant it was best handled by experts.  It was never envisaged as a road car and had few of the then rudimentary safety features which were beginning to appear in series production models.  Dean clearly was a gifted driver and had enjoyed some success but since his death, a minor industry has existed to create or perpetuate myths about the Porsche and it's not certain why the Little Bastard nickname was bestowed (the stories differ) thought it may not be related to the car's handling characteristics.  What is agreed is the name was painted in black script on the 550's tail by Dean Jeffries (1933–2013) who divided his time between stunt work for film production and customizing cars.

The crash aftermath.

The crash happened on SR (South Route) 466 (now SR 46) near Cholame, California, en route to October’s upcoming Salinas Road Races and Mr Dean was driving to familiarize himself with the machine.  In the dimming light of the late afternoon, the Porsche collided with the passenger-side of a 1950 Ford Tudor (two-door sedan) which had just entered the highway, driven by California Polytechnic State University student Donald Turnupseed (1932-1995).  Mr Turnupseed (later cleared by authorities of any blame) suffered only minor injuries while Mr Dean, less than an hour later, was pronounced DoA (dead on arrival) at hospital.  The wreck of Little Bastard was sold and parts were used in other race cars and although the legend of the Little Bastard curse remains entrenched in US urban mythology, the extent of its links to other racing accidents seems overstated and although there was certainly one confirmed death, more then than today, motorsport was a dangerous business and in some seasons it wasn't unknown for drivers to attend a couple of funerals. 

Little Bastard's salvaged transaxle in display frame mounted on wheels.

There is a corner of the collector market which focuses on the trade in macabre items and while a big event like the sinking of RMS Titanic on her maiden voyage in 1912 has provided a wealth of memorabilia (watches, menus, crockery, flatware etc), the death toll need not be in the dozens for collectors to be drawn to relics associated with tragedy; one celebrity can be enough.  In 2021, the four-speed transaxle from film star James Dean’s 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder (550-0055) sold in an on-line auction for US$382,000.  Again, based on the serial number (10 046) & part number (113 301 102), factory verified the authenticity and of the auction lot and it was only the transaxle which had been salvaged from the wreck, the display stand and peripheral bits & pieces (axles, axle tubes, brake assemblies etc) all fabricated.

The bastard son of a hundred maniacs: Mr Krueger with glove.

Freddy Krueger, the fictional antagonist of the A Nightmare on Elm Street horror film franchise (first seen in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) was best known for his gloved hand with "built-in" blades.  In the third and best of the series (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors), Mr Kruger's origin was revealed as the son of a nurse in a lunatic asylum who, because of a filing error or some other oversight, was for a long weekend locked in a ward with hundreds of the worst of the criminally insane, the consequences predictable.  Thus was Mr Kruger known as "the bastard son of a hundred maniacs".

In pre-modern Europe, being born to unmarried parents was not always regarded as a stigma although the Church in canon law prohibited bastards from holding clerical office without an explicit papal indult.  Royalty and the aristocracy, famously prolific in the production of bastards, seemed often unconcerned, Norman duke William, the Conqueror of England, is referred to in state documents as "William the Bastard" and one Burgundian prince was even officially styled “Great Bastard of Burgundy”.  From this, came the idea of something bastardized being associated with the creation of an inferior copy or version of something, hence the sense of corruption, degradation or debasement, hence the association with words like counterfeit, fake, imperfect, irregular, mongrel, phony, sham, adulterated, baseborn, false, impure, misbegotten, mixed & spurious, the adjectival form common by the late fourteenth century.  However, the word eventually became used to describe things deliberately designed to be variations of something, typically between two established types.  Thus emerged bastard agrimony, the bastard alkanet, bastard bar, bastard hartebeest, bastard file, bastard hemp, bastard hogberry, bastard pennyroyal, bastard pimpernel, bastard quiver tree, bastard tallow-wood, bastard tamarind, bastard teak, bastard musket, bastard culverin, bastard gemsbok, bastard mahogany, bastard toadflax, bastard trumpeter, bastard cut, bastard eigne & bastard amber.

All Men are Bastards diary, 1995.

Variations of the word existed in many languages including the Scots bastart & bastert, the French bâtard, the Old French bastardus, the Galician bastardo, the Middle Dutch bastaert, the Dutch bastaard, the Italian bastardo, the Late Latin bastardus, the Indonesian bastar, the Saramaccan bása, the Sranan Tongo basra, the Middle English bastard, bastarde, basterd & bastart.  Use as a generic vulgar term of abuse for a man appears to date from circa 1830 although presumably it may have be slanderously applied in the past.  The early fourteenth century noun bastardy (condition of illegitimacy) was from the Anglo-French and Old French bastardie and appears from the 1570s in contemporary documents in the sense of "begetting of bastards, fornication".  The early seventeenth century verb bastardize meant "to identify as a bastard", predated by the figurative sense, "to make degenerate, debase" which dates from the 1580s, probably because bastard since the 1540s had also served as a verb meaning "to declare illegitimate".  The later use of bastardize, bastardized, bastardizing & bastardization to mean “rituals and activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation as a way of initiating a person into a group or organization” was associated with the military, crime gangs and university fraternities, (ie structures where the membership is predominately made up of males aged 17-25.  The terms hazing, initiation, ragging & deposition were synonymous and all began as regionally-specific but soon tended towards the internationalism which marks modern English.  The once useful phrase “political bastardry” is still seen but is now rare, a victim of association; as children born out of wedlock are now no longer described as bastards, the word is also being banished from some other contexts, including political discourse which is also losing many gender-loaded expressions.

One of the opening sequences used for Alexei Sayle's Stuff, a comedy sketch show that, over 18 episodes, was shown on BBC2 for three seasons (1988-1991).  Alexi Sayle (b 1952) was a left-wing comedian and one of the show's signature lines was "Who is that fat bastard?"

Notable bastards include Confucius (circa 551-479 BC), William the Conqueror (circa 1028-1087), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Lawrence of Arabia (1888-1935), Eva Peron (1919-1952), Fidel Castro (1926-2016) & Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962).  There was once some sensitivity to any admission of the status and as late as 1971, in The Gorton Experiment (a study of the prime ministership of Sir John Gorton (1911-2002; prime-minister of Australia 1968-1971)), the journalist Alan Reid (1914-1987) mentioned his subject was "A bastard by birth" but added the footnote: "Normally, I would ignore as irrelevant the circumstances of Gorton’s birth, but Alan Trengrove [1929-2016] in a biography of Gorton, written with Gorton’s full cooperation, recorded the facts until then unknown even to Gorton intimates."  He noted also: "Trengrove suggests that the mature Gorton can be understood fully only in the light of Gorton’s childhood 'insecurity' which was the product of his illegitimacy."  Journalists still find it hard to resist acting as amateur psychologists. 

The bastard file.

A bastard file is a half-round file.  It gained the name from being rendered with an intermediate cut, neither very coarse nor very fine and was thus neither one thing nor the other; it was something impure.  The concept of things in engineering, architecture, literature etc being thought bastardized versions if in any way hybrids or deviations from established forms can apply also to proper nouns.  Bob Cunis (1941-2008) was a New Zealand cricketer described as a “medium pace bowler”.  That may have been generous though he also extracted little movement from the ball without ever being classed a a spinner.  Still, between 1964-1972 he played in 20 test matches and coached the national side for three seasons in the late 1980s.  His contribution to the list of linguistic amusements came when BBC Radio commentator John Arlott (1914-1991), unimpressed by the bowler’s pedestrian deliveries commented: “Cunis, a funny sort of name, like his bowling, neither one thing nor the other."  It passed into the sporting annals but may have be plagiarized, apparently appearing in an earlier newspaper report on a match the tourists played against a county side and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) had sometime before 1952 used the line after learning the name of a MP (member of parliament) was Alfred Bossom (1881–1965).