Doodlebug

Doodlebug (pronounced dood-l-buhg)

(1) In entomology, the larva of an antlion (a group of some 2,000 species of insect in the neuropteran family Myrmeleontidae, the appellation “doodlebug” an allusion to the “doodle-like” marks they leave in the sand as tracks of their movement.

(2) In entomology (UK), a cockchafer (genus Melolontha).

(3) In entomology (US regional), a woodlouse.

(4) As “doodlebugger”, a dowser (divining rod) or similar device supposedly useful in locating underground water, hydrocarbons, minerals etc.  By extension, the word was applied to geophysicists or geologists undertaking field work (especially oil prospecting or mineral exploration); they were said to be doodlebugging.

(5) In World War II (1939-1945) UK slang, the German cruise missile the V1, (Fs-103), also known informally as the “flying bomb” or “buzz bomb”, the latter an allusion to the distinctive sound made by the craft’s pulse-jet power-plant.  The slang began among RAF (Royal Air Force) personnel and later spread to the general population.

(6) In US rural slang, as “doodlebug tractor”, a car or light truck converted into tractor used (usually for small-scale agriculture), first noted as a type during the Great Depression years of the 1930s.  During World War II, the improvisation continued because new tractors were in short supply because most production was allocated to the military. 

(7) Individual self-propelled train cars (obsolete).

(8) Any of various small, squat vehicles (as both nickname and official designation).

(9) In informal use, a term of endearment (now rare).

(10) In informal use, a slackard (an archaic form of slacker) or time-waster (now rare).

(11) In informal use, an idiot (as used casually rather than in its once codified sense in mental health).

(12) In informal use, someone who habitually draws (or doodles) objects.

1865-1870: A coining in US English, the construct being doodle + bug, the first known use as a US dialectal form (south of the Mason-Dixon Line) to describe certain beetles or larva.  Doodle dates from the early seventeenth century and was used to mean “a fool or simpleton”.  It was originally a dialectal form, from dudeldopp (simpleton) and influenced by dawdle (to spend time idly and unfruitfully; to waste time, pointlessly to linger, to move or walk lackadaisically; to “dilly-dally”), thus the later use of doodle to mean “a slackard (slacker) or time-waster”.  The German variants of the etymon included Dudeltopf, Dudentopf, Dudenkopf, Dude and Dödel (and there’s presumably some link with the German dudeln (to play the bagpipe)).  There is speculation the Americanism “dude” may have some connection and the now internationalized (and sometimes gender-neutral) “dude” has in recent decades become one of slang’s more productive and variable forms.  The song Yankee Doodle long pre-dates the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) but it was popularized in the era by being used as a marching song by British colonial troops, the intention being to poke fun at their rebellious opponents; that didn't work out well.  From this use was derived the verb of the early eighteenth century (to doodle), meaning “to swindle or to make a fool of”.  The predominant modern meaning (the drawings regarded usually as “small mindless sketches”) emerged in the 1930s either from this meaning or (as seems to have greater support), from the verb “to dawdle” which since the seventeenth century had been used to mean “wasting time; being lazy”.  In slang and idiomatic use, doodles uses are legion including “the penis” and any number of rhyming forms with meanings ranging from the very good to the very bad.  The hyphenated doodle-bug has appeared and Urban Dictionary has the usual array of alternative, user-generated meanings.  Doodlebug, doodlebugging & doodlebugger are nouns; the noun plural is doodlebugs.

A doodled Volkswagen “bug” on Drawn Inside.

Bug dates from 1615–1625, the original use being to describe insects, apparently as a variant of the earlier bugge (beetle), thought to be an alteration of the Middle English budde, from the Old English -budda (beetle) but etymologists are divided on whether the phrase “bug off” (please leave) is related to the undesired presence of insects or was of a distinct origin.  Bug, bugging & debug are nouns & verbs, bugged is a verb & adjective and buggy is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is bugs.  Although “unbug” makes apparent sense (ie remove a bug, and thus synonymous with the modern “debug”), it doesn’t exist whereas forms such as the adjectives unbugged (not bugged) and unbuggable (not able to be bugged) are listed as standard.  The array of compound forms meaning “someone obsessed with an idea, hobby etc) produced things like “shutterbug” (amateur photographer) & firebug (arsonist) seems first to have emerged in the mid nineteenth century.  The development of this into “a craze or obsession” is thought rapidly to have accelerated in the years just before World War I (1914-1918), again based on the notion of “bitten by the bug” or “caught the bug”, thus the idea of being infected with an unusual enthusiasm for something.

The use to mean a demon, evil spirit, spectre or hobgoblin was first recorded in the mid-fourteenth century and was a clipping of the Middle English bugge (scarecrow, demon, hobgoblin) or uncertain origin although it may have come from the Middle Welsh bwg (ghost; goblin (and linked to the Welsh bwgwl (threat (and earlier “fear”) and the Middle Irish bocanách (supernatural being).  There’s also speculation it may have come from the scary tales told to children which included the idea of a bugge (beetle) at a gigantic scale.  That would have been a nightmarish thought and the idea remains fruitful to this day for artists and film-makers needing something frightening in the horror or SF (science fiction) genre.  The use in this sense is long obsolete although the related forms bugbear and bugaboo survive.  Dating from the 1570s, a bugbear was in folklore a kind of “large goblin”, used to inspire fear in children (both as a literary device & for purposes of parental control) and for adults it soon came to mean “a source of dread, resentment or irritation; in modern use it's an “ongoing problem”, a recurring obstacle or adversity or one’s pet peeve.  The obsolete form bugg dates from circa 1620 and was a reference to the troublesome bedbug, the construct a conflation of the middle English bugge (scarecrow, hobgoblin) and the Middle English budde (beetle).  The colloquial sense of “a microbe or germ” dates from 1919, the emergence linked to the misleadingly-named “Spanish influenza” pandemic.

A doodlebug (left) and his (or her) doodles in the sand (right).

That the word doodlebug has appeal is obvious because since the 1860s it has been re-purposed many time, often with the hint something “small but not cute”, that something understandable given the original creature so named (larva of an antlion) is not one of nature’s more charismatic creations.  Doodlebugs are squat little things which live mostly in loose sand where they create pit traps and genuinely are industrious creatures, their name earned not because they are idle time-wasters but because the tracks they leave in the sand are strikingly similar to the doodles people often wile away their time drawing.  The frankly unattractive ant leave their doodles behind because, as they percolate over the ground, their big butts drag behind them, leaving the erratic trails.  So compelling is the name, it has been applied to a number of other, similar insects.  Another use is attributive from the link with the seventeenth century notion of a doodle being “a simpleton or time-waster”, extended later to “an idiot” (the word used casually rather than as it once was codified in mental health); in the 1930s it came be used of those who incessantly sketch or draw stuff, the idea being they are squandering their time.  What they draw are called “doodles”, the source of the name for the artist.

Doodles on a rendering of Lindsay Lohan by Stable Diffusion.

The mid-twentieth century art (some of its practitioners claiming it was a science) of doodlebugging was practiced by doodlebuggers who used a method said to be not greatly different from the equally dubious technique of the water diviner.  All the evidence suggests there was a general scepticism of the claims that a bent rod waived about above the earth could be used to locate hydro-carbons and the use of “doodlebuging” to refer to the process was originally a slur but it became an affectionate name for those intrepid enough to trek into deserts seeking the “black gold” usuing more orthodox prospecting techniques.  In the 1940s when the “profession” was first described, any reliable means of detecting sub-surface oil deposits simply didn’t exist (other than drilling a hole in the ground to see if it was there) and the early doodlebuggers were scam merchants.  The science did however advance (greatly spurred on by the demands of wartime) and when geologists came to be able to apply the modern machinery of seismic mapping and actually had success, they too were called doodlebuggers and happily adopted the name.

Texaco Doodlebug fuel tanker, one of eight built in 1934-1935 during the industry's "streamliner" era.  It was a time when art deco's lovely lines appeared in many fields of design. 

In the early twentieth century, a doodlebug was a self-propelled rail car, used on rail lines which were short in length and subject only to light traffic.  These were autonomous vehicles, powered both by gasoline (petrol) (in the US, it was the the pre-diesel era) and electricity; they were an attractive alternative for operators, being much cheaper to run than the combination of large locomotives & carriage cars, eminently suited to routes with lower passenger numbers.  The concept may be compared with the smaller (often propeller or turbo-prop) aircraft used for shuttle services or on regional & feeder routes where demand be sufficient to make viable the use of larger airliners.  Although the doodlebugs carried relatively few passengers, their operating costs were correspondingly lower so the PCpM (passenger cost per mile) was at least comparable with the full-sized locomotives.  While it may be a myth, the story is that one rail employee described the small, stumpy rail car as looking like a “potato bug” and (as English informal terms tend to do) this morphed into the more appealing doodlebug.

Some assembly required: a doodlebug tractor with hydraulic pump-driven crane, the agglomeration dating from circa 1934.

Although the mechanical specification of each tended to vary as things broke and were replaced with whatever fell conveniently to hand or could be purchased cheaply, when discovered, it included a 1925 Chevrolet gasoline engine, Ford Model T firewall and steering, Ford Model A three-speed manual transmission, Ford Model TT (truck) rear end and AM General HMMWV rear wheels and tires.  The "mix & match" approach was typical of the genre and it's doubtful many were for long exactly alike.

A doodlebug could also be a DIY (do it yourself) tractor.  During the Great Depression of the 1930s, smaller-scale farmers (then more prevalent than today) in the US no longer had the capital (or access to loan-capital) to purchase plant and equipment on the same scale as in more prosperous times but needed still to make their land productive, a essential tool being the tractor, one of modernity's many devices which greatly had increased the efficiency of agriculture.  New tractors being thus for many being unattainable, necessity compelled farmers to turn to what was available and that was the stock of old cars and pickup trucks, now suddenly cheaper because the Depression had lowered demand for them as well.  With saws and welding kits, imaginative and inventive farmers would crop & chop and slice & dice until they had a vehicle which would do much of what a tractor could and according to the legends of the time, some actually out-performed the real thing because their custom design was optimized for a specific, intended purpose.  What made the modifications possible in the engineering sense was that it was a time when cars and pick-ups in the US always used a separate chassis; the bodies could be removed and it was possible still to drive the things and it was on these basic platforms the “doodlebug” tractors were fashioned.  They were known also as “scrambolas”, “Friday night specials” and “hacksaw tractors” but it was “doodlebug” which really caught on and so popular was the practice that kits were soon advertised in mail-order catalogues (the Amazon of the day and a long tradition in the rural US).  Not until the post-war years when economic conditions improved and production of machinery for civilian use resumed at full-scale did the informal industry of the doodlebug end.

1946 Brogan Doodlebug (right) with 1942 Pontiac Torpedo (left).  In the US, some passenger car production continued in the first quarter of 1942. 

Although now what’s most remembered about the US cars of the post-war era are the huge and extravagantly macropterous creations, there were more than two dozen manufacturers in the 1940s & 1950s offering “micro-cars”, aimed at (1) female drivers, (2) inner-city delivery services and (3) urban drivers who wanted something convenient to manoeuvre and park.  The market however proved unresponsive and as the population shift to the suburbs accelerated, women wanted station wagons (in many ways the emblematic socio-economic symbol of suburban American of the 1950s) and the delivery companies needed larger capacity.  As the Volkswagen Beetle (Type 1, 1938-2003) and a few other niche players would prove during that decade’s “import boom”, Americans would buy smaller cars, just not micro-cars which even in Europe, where they were for a time successful, the segment didn’t survive to see the end of the 1960s (although various factors would see later revivals).  But there was the Brogan Doodlebug, made by the B&B Specialty Company of Rossmoyne, Ohio and produced between 1946-1950 although that fewer than three dozen were sold hints at the level of demand at a time when Detroit’s mass-production lines were every day churning out thousands of “standard sized” cars.

1946 Brogan Doodlebug.

Somewhat optimistically (though etymologically defensible) described as a “roadster”, the advertising for the Doodlebug exclusively featured women drivers and it certainly was in some ways ideal for urban use (except perhaps when raining, snowing, in cold weather or the sun was harsh).  It used a three wheeled chassis with the single wheel at the front, articulated so the vehicle could turn within its own length making parking easy, the thing barely 96 inches (2,440 mm) in length & 40 inches (1,020 mm) wide; weighing only some 442 lbs (200 kg), it was light enough for two strong men to pick it up and move it (a characteristic with both advantages and drawbacks).  Powered by either a single or twin-cylinder rear-mounted engine (both rated at a heady 10 HP (horsepower ), no gearbox was deemed necessary, thus no tiresome gear levers or clutch pedals intruded to confuse women drivers.   B&B claimed a fuel consumption up to 70 mpg (84 mpg in Imperial gallons) with a cruising speed of 45-50 mph (70-80 km/h).  All this for US$400 and remarkably, it seems it wasn’t until 1950 (after some 30 doodlebugs had been built over four years) the cost-accountants looked at the project and concluded B&B was losing about US$100 on each one sold.  A price-rise was ruled out so production ended and although B&B released the Broganette (an improved three-wheeler with the single wheel at the rear (a configuration offering much better stability); it was no more successful and the company turned to golf carts and scooters; that proved more lucrative.  B&B later earned a footnote in the history of motorsport as one of the pioneer go-kart manufacturers.

Annotated schematic of the V-1 (left) and a British Military Intelligence drawing (dated 16 June 1944, 3 days after the first V-1 attacks on London (right). 

First deployed in 1944 the German Vergeltungswaffen eins (“retaliatory weapon 1” or “reprisal weapon 1” and eventually known as the V-1) was the world’s first cruise missile.  One of the rare machines to use a pulse-jet, it emitted such a distinctive sound that those at whom it was aimed nicknamed it the “buzz-bomb” although it attracted other names including “flying bomb” and “doodlebug”.  In Germany, before Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda 1933-1945) decided it was the V-1 (understood as “vengeance weapon 1”), the official military code name was Fi 103 (The Fi stood for Fieseler, the original builder of the airframe and most famous for their classic Storch (Stork), short take-off & landing (STOL) aircraft) but there were also the code-names Maikäfer (maybug) & Kirschkern (cherry stone).  While the Allied defenses against the V-1 did improve over time, it was only the destruction of the launch sites and the occupation of territory within launch range that ceased the attacks.  Until then, the V-1 remained a highly effective terror weapon but, like the V-2 and so much of the German armaments effort, bureaucratic empire-building and political intrigue compromised the efficiency of the project.

V-1 falling on London, 13 June, 1944, the location identifiable by the roofline of the city’s courts of law.  Not until 29 March, 1945 did the UK suffer its last V-1 strike, that final doodlebug falling to ground in Datchworth, Hertfordshire.

Shot from a Fleet-Street roof-top air-raid warning observation post, the image captures a V-1 in profile during the final seconds of its descent.  Accurate enough only for the target to be “London”, this one fell on a side road off Drury Lane, the warhead’s explosion damaging several buildings including the offices of The Daily Herald newspaper.  Long associated with the British Labour Party (and the labor movement more generally) The Daily Herald was published between 1912-1964 (always as a daily except during World War I (1914-1918) when there was only a weekly edition) and for a time in the 1930s it was the newspaper with the world’s highest audited circulation, peaking at over two million with a readership several times that number.  Despite a number of changes in ownership and editorial focus, it was for all its existence very much an organ of the labour movement and broadly supportive (though not uncritical) of the Labour Party, something that didn’t change in 1964 when it was re-launched as The Sun.  The real change came in 1969 when the by then ailing title was bought by Rupert Murdoch (b 1931), after which it (and the tabloid market) was never quite the same.  The pre-internet state of the UK’s once vibrant newspaper business was summarised by an anonymous advertising copywriter whose thoughts appeared in the book Newspaper Money by economists Fred Hirsch (1931–1978) and David Gordon (b 1942):

The Times is read by the people who run the country.

The Guardian is read by the people who would like to run the country.

The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country.

The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who remember the country as it used to be.

The Daily Express is read by the people who think the country is still like that.

The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the men who run the country.

The Daily Mirror (which itself once tried to run the country) is read by the people who think they run the country.

The Morning Star is read by the people who would like another country to run the country.

The Sun-well, Murdoch has found a gap in the market - the oldest gap in the world.

Skeg

Skeg (pronounced skeg)

(1) In shipbuilding, a fin-like projection sometimes supporting a rudder and protecting the propeller(s) at its lower end, located abaft a sternpost or rudderpost.

(2) In the design of smaller boats, an extension of the keel, designed to improve steering.

(3) In the slang of naval architects (in certain contexts), a stump or branch (the after-part of a ship's keel).

(4) In the slang of the GM (General Motors) stylists, a “lower fin”, matching the, seen in embryonic form on the 1959 Pontiac and used on certain 1961 Oldsmobiles and the 1961-1962 Cadillacs.

(5) The fin which acts as a stabilizer on a surfboard.  To suffer some injury after being hit by one of these fins is to be “skegged”.

(6) In Australian slang, a surfer; a person who leads the lifestyle of a surfer (used also derisively in the form “fake skeg” of those who adopt the style an appearance without actually surfing.

(7) A type of wild plum (obsolete).

(8) A kind of oat (obsolete).

(9) In Northern English dialectal use, a look or glance.

(10) In some cultures, a slang term applied to youth suggesting slovenliness, a predilection to petty crime and other anti-social behavior; also used widely in Scottish slang for a surprising variety of purposes including legs, trousers, dirt, scotch eggs, sex and women of loose virtue.

1590–1600: From a dialectal term for a stump, branch, or wooden peg, from the Dutch scheg (cutwater), of Scandinavian origin and related to the Swedish skog and the Old Norse & Icelandic skegg (projection on the stern of a boat).  In some Nordic languages, skegg means “beard” and was from the Old Norse skegg, from the Proto-Germanic skaggiją, from the primitive Indo-European skek, kek-, skeg & keg- (to jump, skip, move, hurry).  In English slang, skeggy is (1) the coastal Lincolnshire town of Skegness or (2) an inhabitant of Skegness.  The name of the Skegness is though a construct of the Old Norse skegg (beard) + -nes (headland) and was thought a reference to the geography, the original settlement situated farther east at the mouth of The Wash (thus jutting out like a beard from a face).  A link with the Faroese skegg (to jump, skip, move, hurry (and source of the given name "Skeggi")) is thought unlikely.  Skeg is a noun and skegged is an adjective; the noun plural is skegs.

A gang of four Sceggs, Sydney, Australia.

The skegs of nautical architecture should not be confused with the homophone Sceggs, the acronym for students of S.C.E.G.G.S. (Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School), seen also in the adjectival forms sceggesque & sceggish (one whose style suggests something similar to the stereotypical student of the school); Those adjectives exist because Scegg is also "a look" and there are students from schools other than S.C.E.G.G.S so described, often in the form "she's such a scegg".  

Lindsay Lohan in wet suit, with surfboard, Malibu, 2011.  The stabilizing skeg is the black protrusion at the back of the board.

On nautical vessels, skegs where they exist fulfil a significant function but they are not an essential part of hull design.  A skeg is an external structural feature, a vertical tapering projection permanently fixed at the aft, usually close to the centre-line.  Most are located in front of the rudder and structurally can often be considered a sternward extension of the keel (the internal, longitudinal members which lend much strength of the hull).  Although in military vessels there are additional functions, the most significant contribution of a skeg is in hydrodynamics, a skeg designed to influence the flow patterns and thus affecting the dynamics of both the rudder (which is usually in line with the skeg) and propeller(s).  The design is thus a finely tuned equation because while a skeg inherently induces drag, the way it alters the flow pattern can reduces the drag and resistance suffered by the rudder and propeller(s), essentially by transforming the turbulent characteristics of the flow to laminar at the stern.  Historically, skegs were a vital component in maintaining a course and that’s still an important consideration in smaller vessels but in larger craft, improved rudder and advanced navigational as well as stabilization technologies like thrusters have meant skegs are no longer of the same significance in maintaining directionality.

An USN (US Navy) Iowa class battleship, showing the inner set of propeller shafts wholly enclosed in a pair of skegs.  On the big ships, the skegs were designed also to be load-bearing supports while in dry-dock.

In the modern age, skegs became an unusual feature on warships, a relative few so equipped and the designs varied, some with only par of their shafts inside skegs while others encased all.  Although the traditional design imperatives were shared with other ships, for navies, they offered the advantage of affording some degree of protection for rudders and propellers against torpedo attack.  Historically, another important attribute of skegs was what they added to a hull’s structural strength, making the (inherently weaker) stern resistant to outside forces and all the last of the US Navy’s dreadnoughts (Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri & Wisconsin, launched 1943-1944 and in commission variously until in 1992 the last was struck the Naval Vessel Register) featured skegs.  Their hulls narrowed towards the stern and to save weight lacked the sternpost plates the British, German and Japanese navies always fitted to their battleships; the skegs compensated for this, offering a hull with similar rigidity.

The US Navy’s South Dakota class battleships (South Dakota, Indiana, Massachusetts & Alabama, launched 1941-1942 and in commission 1942-1947) were fitted with an unusual set of skegs, the design dictated by the relatively short hull, the large outboard skegs helping to reduce the adverse effects of fluid dynamics induced by the stern's abrupt end.

However, advantages in engineering and metallurgy meant much of the functionality afforded by skegs came to be achieved in other ways so skegs became unfashionable in naval architecture.  The modeling and simulations made possible by supercomputers meant hull designs could be rendered which mastered the turbulence caused by fluid dynamics so rudders and propellers were less affected, making skegs in many cases a source of performance-sapping skin-friction drag with little compensating benefit.  Indeed, not only did this hamper performance, in some cases excessive vibration was caused, something which could only to a degree be ameliorated by changes to the propellers’ configurations.

Cadillac’s Skegs, 1961-1962

Cadillac Coupe DeVille: 1959 convertible (left) & 1960 hardtop (right).

The 1959 Cadillac’s tail-fins are the best remembered and most emblematic of the brief, extraordinary era during which the absurdly macropterous flourished.  They’re rightly known as “peak-fin” but it’s a myth they were the tallest because, measured from the ground, those on the 1961 Imperial are about a half-inch (12 mm) more vertiginous.  The attractions of the style however were fading and from 1960, GM began to tone things down, Chrysler following the lead (Ford and AMC (American Motors Corporation) never really got involved in the big fin business).  Another cultural phenomenon is that because of the large number of pink 1959 Cadillacs which now exist, many assume they were a common sight when new, the things perhaps made memorable by the sight of the one owned by the admirable Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967).  However, the factory never made a pink 1959 Cadillac and in the era, it was only in 1956 such a color was on the option list and Ms Mansfield had one of those while her 1959 convertible received a custom re-paint.

An inspiration, a step in the evolution and the result: A captured German V2 rocket (1945, left), a full-size clay mock up of a design proposal for the 1961 Cadillac (1958, centre) and 1961 Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible (left).  The V2 is on display at the Australian War Museum, Canberra, Australia and the clay mock-up Cadillac was photographed at the General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan.

For the 1961 range, Cadillac further pruned the fins but as compensation, the design staff added a "lower fin" and these, informally, they called “skegs”.  While in a sense just another of the era's many extravagances, the outgrowths could have been part of something even stranger because among the design proposals which emerged from the GMADS (GM Advanced Design Studios) was one which clearly was the ultimate expression of the motif of the 1950s which borrowed so much from the aerospace industry.  The proposed fins essentially were those of ballistic missiles which for decades were an evolution from the German Vergeltungswaffen zwei (V-2), developed first by the German military with the code name Aggregat 4 (A4).  Vergeltungswaffen is translated variously as "retaliatory weapons" or "reprisal weapons" but in English use is often written as “vengeance weapons”.  Aerodynamically, what was proposed by the ADS may have had something to commend it and certainly, such was the placement and size of the fins they'd have in some way interacted with the air-flow.  Whether the design was ever subjected to wind-tunnel testing (this was years before computers could emulate such research) isn't know but the look was sufficiently favored for an expensive, full-sized clay model to be rendered.  Ultimately the longer, though perhaps more restrained, skegs seen on the 1961 & 1962 cars were preferred.

1959 Buick Invicta Concept.

Detroit's stylists in the 1950s not only sketched a car with a big dorsal fin but authorization was granted to build one to test public reaction.  There was a precedent for the "third fin" because the Czech manufacturer Tatra had for years used them (out of necessity) and they'd provided essential stability for many LSR (land speed record) vehicles.  The Invicta concept didn't proceed to production.

Those who think Detroit's cars of the late 1950s & early 1960s were sometimes bizarre should look at the design proposals that were rejected.  Despite the clear exuberance in the the imagination, there's never been anything to suggest the stylists were stimulated by anything stronger than an after work martini.  Compared with some of the clay mock-ups, what emerged from the production lines hinted at rather than emulated missiles but should it be thought what was rendered in clay was wild, the archives of the GMTC (GM Technical Center) contain a wealth of sketches of truly bizarre design studies which didn't make the cut to reach the hands of the modelers.  Presumably, those sketches which survive are those the stylists thought deserved to be remembered and there must of been those which even the designer concluded needed to be shredded.  As the archives also demonstrate, those who criticize the fins and "bullet" taillights on the 1959 Cadillac have reasons to be grateful even stranger things were rejected.

Cadillac’s “skeg years”: 1961 (left) and 1962 (right).  There was a time when this sort of thing was just a fork of Detroit's design orthodoxy. "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

It was an era of annual styling changes and switching the orientation of taillights from the horizontal to vertical was typical of what stylists each season did to “refresh” the line, a process which came to be known as “facelifting” (ie a figurative use from cosmetic plastic surgery: altering the appearance while retaining the underlying structure).  Although this basic body would have a four-year life (1961-1964), the abandonment of the skegs for its final two seasons was, by facelift standards, a quite major update, one prompted by a change at the top of GM’s design’s studios.  Also of note is the roofline on the 1961 Cadillac four-window Sedan DeVille ((Body Style 6239, top left) which used an implementation of GM’s so-called “flat-top”.

1959 Chevrolet Impala Sport Sedan (Flat Top).  This was the year of the "bat-wings" and "cats eyes" taillights.

Along with the contemporary “bubbletop”, in its pure form, GM’s flat-top lasted only two seasons (1959-1960) but the two are now Detroit’s most admired rooflines of the post-war years.  The “bubbletop” was a direct tribute to fighter aircraft but the flat-top (it was also dubbed “Flying Wing” but GM internally referred to the blade-like structure as the “cantilevered top configuration”) was mid-century modernism.  Available exclusively on the four-door hardtops, each GM division (Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac & Cadillac) offered the dramatic look (production-line rationalization made economically viable by all five sharing a single, core structure) although there were several designations.

1959 Cadillac Four Window Sedan (upper) and 1959 Pontiac Vista (lower).

Up-market Buick (Four-Door Hardtop), and Cadillac (Four Window Sedan) weren’t very imaginative while Chevrolet and Oldsmobile choose Sport Sedan; only Pontiac showed much imagination in picking Vista, an allusion to the unusually good 360^o visibility the style afforded (although the curves in the glass did produce some distortions).  Shamelessly, even after ceasing to offer flat-tops, Pontiac continued to use the Vista name.  Cadillac’s final flat-top fling came in 1961 with a modified version using less rear overhang but the market impact was muted, the more conventional six-window four-door outselling it by more than five-to-one margin as preferences shifted towards for formal lines.  However, the look didn’t at once die because it lingered on the four-door Chevrolet Corvair until 1965 and between 1962–1978 the motif appeared on the Alfa Romeo Giulia.

Cadillac’s take on the “long & slightly less long” of it: 1961 Cadillac Six Window Sedan de Ville (Body Style 6329L, left) and 1961 Cadillac Town Sedan (Body Style 6399C, right).  In the brochures, the terms “Town Sedan” and “Short Deck” both were used.

One quirk of Cadillac’s brief embrace of the skeg was there were two iterations: skeg long and skeg short.  Whether in response to dealer feedback or in anticipation of some owners preferring their Cadillac in a more conveniently sized package, between 1961-1963 a “short-deck” option was made available on certain body styles.  Offered first on the six-window Sedan de Ville (as the “Town Sedan”), an encouraging 3,756 were built so the option was in 1962 offered on the four-window de Ville Sedan (Body Style 6398 and now called “Park Avenue”) but sales dropped to 2600.  The coming of the 1963 models marked the retirement of the short-lived skegs which thus ended their brief moment as something decorative although they continued the functional role in marine architecture.

1963 Cadillac Four-Window Sedan de Ville (Body Style 6239, left) and 1963 Cadillac Sedan de Ville Park Avenue (Body Style 6398, right).

Although smaller cars were selling well in other market sectors, among Cadillac buyers, the decline of interest in anything smaller was confirmed in 1963 when only 1575 of the Park Avenues were sold.  The 129.5 inch (3289 mm) wheelbase was common to the whole Sedan de Ville range but the “short deck” models were shorter by 7 inches (178 mm) for the first two seasons and an even more obvious 8 inches (203 mm) in 1963.  Space utilization was obviously a little better but the market had spoken; fewer than 8,000 of the short-deck models sold while the standard editions shipped in the tens of thousands, the flirtation with (slightly) more efficient packaging abandoned for 1964; in the course of the following decade, the Sedan de Ville would grow another seven inches (178 mm) and gain over 400 lb (181 kg).  It should be noted that by international standards, the truck capacity of even the abbreviated models was still quite generous, able effortlessly to accommodate two sets of golf clubs, something which later became something of a de-facto standard used in assessing the practicality of sports cars.  Jaguar used this feature as a selling point when the XK8 (1996-2006) was introduced because it wasn’t possible with all versions of the old E-Type (1961-1974).

1958 Cadillac Series 62 : Extended Length Sedan (Body Style 6239EDX, left) and the standard Sedan (Body Style 6239, right).

There was in the early 1960s much criticism that “full-size” US cars had become too big but the “short deck” venture was a departure for Cadillac which had for some years been making things bigger and in 1958 the company had even included the “Series 62 Extended Length Sedan”.  The Series 62 Sedan was already an impressive 216.8 inches (5.5 m) long but the Extended Length version measured an even more imposing 225.3 (5.7), the additional 8.5 inches (216 mm) all in the rear deck, creating a more capacious trunk (boot).  Whether buyers just liked the look or there really were a lot of them with much luggage, the elongated sedan sold well, some one in five of the sedans having the big trunk and there was of course a healthy industry in jokes about Mafia functionaries and other figures in organized crime grateful finally to have more space to transport the corpses.  Surprisingly perhaps, despite mafia hit men contributing to to sales numbers of 20,952 of the 103,455 (excluding Eldorados and “chassis only” sales) Series 62s produced in 1958 (some 20%), the Extended Length Sedan proved a single-season one-off.

For 1963, the short-deck models might have re-appeared for another dismal season but the skegs were abandoned, never to return.  The fins the design studio found harder to forsake, conscious perhaps it was on the 1948 Cadillac they’d first appeared.  Then, modestly sized, they’d been an allusion to the tail-planes used on the twin-boomed Lockheed P-38 Lightning (1939) but the fashion had passed and the fins had to go so, inch by inch, there was a retreat from the heights and exuberance of 1959 until in 1966 they were vestigial, a hint which for decades would be retained.

1961 Oldsmobile Super 88.  The rear skegs were thought necessary to offset the “pointed-look” of the fenders and the front ones (the closest equivalent in nautical use being hydrofoils) were there just so the front bumper matched the lines of the rear, emulating Pontiac’s approach in 1959.

Within GM, the skegs were not exclusive to Cadillac, appearing also on the 1961 full-sized Oldsmobile 88 & 98 although the motivation of the designers differed.  What Cadillac in 1961-1962 did was nothing more than a styling gimmick, concocted at a time when it was obvious the moment of the big fins was passing but the motif still exerted such a pull that they were re-interpreted on the path to extinction.  In the Oldsmobile design office, the skeg had a different purpose, the protrusions deemed necessary as a device to counterbalance the rearward point of the quarter panel that terminated in a “cigar-shape”.  Mercedes-Benz had used a (more conventional) variation of the idea of a “balancing appendage” when in 1957 the 300d (W189, 1957-1962) appeared with rear fenders enlarged and re-shaped to disguise the pre-war style of the coachwork used on the W186 (300, 300b & 300c; 1951-1957) which came to be referred to as the "Adenauer" because several were used as state cars by Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967; chancellor of the FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany, 1949-1990).

1969 Alfa Romeo Spider (Duetto).

Interesting, between 1966-1969, the Alfa Romeo Spider (Type 105/155 and known informally known as the Duetto) featured the memorable Osso di Seppia (round-tail, literally “cuttlefish”) coachwork which resembled what Oldsmobile did in 1961.  After 1970 and until the end of production in 1994, the Spider used variants of the Kamm tail which increased luggage capacity and presumably also conferred some aerodynamic advantage.  A professional designer could write a long, learned essay explaining why the later Kamm tail was a more accomplished achievement which avoided the Osso di Seppia's flaws but in the collector market it's the cigar-shaped original the purists covet.  Had the Italians added skegs as Oldsmobile did, they’d have had more about which to complain.

1959 Pontiac Bonneville Convertible.  In 1959 Pontiac’s big news was the “split grill” which would for decades be a brand signature and the five inch (125 mm) increase in the track, lending the division that year’s most memorable slogan: “Year of the Wide Track”.  Given all that, the modest skegs weren’t much noticed, especially because, at the rear, eyes were drawn to the pair of small blades adorning the upper surface.  The idea was first seen on the 1953 Chevrolet Corvette (where they’d appeared on the taillight nacelles (pods)) and although often referred to as “finettes”, in the documents of the GM Design Studio they were “taillight bezels” or “ornamental finlets”.

1959 Pontiacs: Bonneville (left) and Catalina (right).

The skegs were less noticeably skeggish than the later implementations by Oldsmobile and Cadillac because they were smaller and, at the rear, installed in the horizontal rather than the acute angle which made them so obvious on Cadillacs.  At the front, the angle was less than adopted by Oldsmobile.  Pontiac also used the “long rear deck” as a marker of a model’s place in the hierarchy, the Bonneville at 220.7 in (5,606 mm) in length being seven inches longer than the lower-priced Catalina at 213.7 in (5,428 mm).  While two inches (25 mm) of the difference was absorbed by the Bonneville’s longer wheelbase (124 in (3,150 mm) vs 122 inches (3,099 mm), the remaining bulk was found in eth rear deck.  However, unlike the Cadillacs, there were no “short & long skegs”, the bumpers of both Pontiacs being identical although there were other markers of “pricetaggery”, the Bonneville’s elliptical taillights noticeably elongated.

1955 Ford La Tosca.

A half-decade before Cadillac decided their customers needed skegs, Detroit had pondered the idea.  Shown in 1955, Ford’s La Tosca (named apparently after Giacomo Puccini’s (1858–1924) three act opera Tosca (1900) although the intended connection seems to have been a general sense of the “emotional and dramatic” rather than the fate of the doomed protagonist) was unusual in that it appeared not as a full-scale “concept car” but in the form of a ⅜ scale model, used to demonstrate the possibilities offered by a remote-controlled chassis, directed through the medium of radio waves.  To achieve this, rather than build custom components (as the Pentagon would have done), Ford’s engineers dipped into the corporate parts bin and wired together the regulator and relay from a power window apparatus, the electric motor used to lower a convertible’s soft-top, a power seat mechanism and a standard, 12 volt car battery.  The system worked flawlessly and, depending on the topography, La Tosca could remotely be controlled at distances greater than a mile (1.6 km).  According to Ford records, the project began simply as an “…internal exercise to show students in the Advanced Studio how hard it was, even for professional designers, to design a car” but so long did the model take to complete (the complex curves and canted structures challenging to render in what was then the still novel fibreglass) that “mission creep” intruded, thus the radio-controlled chassis.

1954 Lincoln Futura (1954) and Ford Mystere (1955).  In Detroit, these were at the time typical of what was authorized to be built as "concept cars", machines destined for the show circuit to gauge public reaction.  If they now seem rather wild, much of what never left the stylists' (they weren't yet "designers") sketch pads and drawing boards truly was bizarre.  

Stylistically, La Tosca was in the vein of the corporation’s other concept vehicles of the era such as the Lincoln Futura (1954) and Ford Mystere (1955), the trio reflecting the way the industry was applying motifs from missiles and jet-propelled aircraft such as Perspex bubble-tops, tubes, fins and exhaust nacelles.  Most of these proved to be brief, though memorable, fads of jet-age aesthetics although elements were easily recognizable in the 1958 Lincoln and GM of course would later take up the skegs.  The remote-control concept was ahead of its time though it did find a niche in model cars and aircraft.  In the twenty-first century, new versions of the technology are now mainstream with cranes, trucks and trains routinely operated from sometimes thousands of miles away although usually on mine-sites and other remote locations (experiments with vehicles on public roads are being undertaken).  Despite these advances, the industry regards the technology as transitional and intends as soon as practicable to remove the human (and thus costly and unreliable) element completely, re-allocating control to an entirely autonomous AI (artificial intelligence) model which, without complaint or toilet breaks, can be worked 24/7/365.