Vulpine (pronounced vuhl-pahyn or vuhl-pin)
Etymology of words with examples of use illustrated by Lindsay Lohan, cars of the Cold War era, comrade Stalin, crooked Hillary Clinton et al.
Monday, August 11, 2025
Vulpine
Monday, June 23, 2025
Blowout
Blowout (pronounced bloh-out)
(1) A
sudden puncturing of a pneumatic tyre.
(2) A
sudden release of oil and gas from a well.
(3) In geology,
a sandy depression in a sand dune ecosystem caused by the removal of sediments
by wind.
(4) An
extreme and unexpected increase in costs, such as in government estimates for a
project (a popular Australian use although the budgetary outcomes are familiar
just about everywhere).
(5) In
medical slang, an act of defecation in which an incontinent person (usually an
infant or toddler) produces a large amount of excrement that causes their
diaper to overflow and leak (the companion slang the “poonami”).
(6) In
engineering, the cleaning of the flues of a boiler from scale etc by blasting
the surfaces with steam.
(7) In
body-piercing, an unsightly flap of skin caused by an ear piercing that is too
large.
(8) An
instance of having one's hair blow-dried and styled.
(9) In
tattooing, the blurring of a tattoo due to ink penetrating too far into the
skin and dispersing.
(10) In woodworking,
the damage done to the exit side of a drilled hole or sawn edge when no
sacrificial backer-board is used during the drilling or sawing: the drill bit's
or saw blade's exit on the far side causes chips of wood to be broken from the
edge (sometimes called a “tearout”).
(11) In slang,
a social function, especially one with extravagant catering.
(12) In slang,
a large or extravagant meal.
(13) In slang,
a sporting contest in which one side wins by an untypically wide margin; an overwhelming
victory.
(14) In slang,
an argument; an altercation.
(15) In
Filipino slang, a party or social gathering.
1825: A
creation of US colloquial English (the construct being blow + out) in the sense
of “outburst, brouhaha” (and in a subtle linguistic shift such events would
now, inter alia, be called a “blow-up”), from the verbal phrase, the reference
being to pressure in a steam engine. The
elements “blow” and “out” both have many senses and the compound blowout is
formed from the verb “blow” in the sense of “burst” or “explosion” plus the
verb “out” in the sense of “eject or expel; discharge; oust”. The verb blow was a pre-1000 form from the Middle
English verb blowen, from the Old
English blāwan (to blow, breathe,
make a current of air, inflate, sound), from the Proto-West Germanic blāan, from the Proto-Germanic blēaną (to blow), from primitive Indo-European
bhleh- (to swell, blow up) and may be compared with
the Old High German blāen, the Latin flō (to blow) and the Old Armenian բեղուն (bełun) (fertile). The verb
out was from the pre-900 Middle English adverb out, from the Old English ūt (out,
without, outside). It was cognate with the
Dutch uit, the German aus, the Old Norse & Gothic ūt and
was akin to the Sanskrit ud-. The Middle
English verb was outen, from the Old English ūtian (to put out) and cognate
with the Old Frisian ūtia. Blowout is a noun; the noun plural is blowouts
and the use as a verb non-standard.
Blowout is used as a modifier. In retail commerce, a “blowout sale” is an event advertised as offering greater than usual discounts, with a real or notional intent to deplete the inventory. Unlike the various uses in hairdressing, blowouts can be undesirable events and devices have been devised which prevent their unwanted occurrence: In electrical engineering a blowout coil (carrying an electric current) serves to deflect and thus extinguish an arc formed when the contacts of a switch part to turn off the current and in the messy business of drilling for oil, a “blowout preventer” is placed at the surface interface of an oil well to prevent blowouts by closing the orifice, allowing material to flow from the oil reservoir out through the shaft. By contrast, in hairdressing, variants of the blowout deliberately are part of the process and in one use blowout is a generic descriptor of the taper fade (of which there are several variants. There’s also the Brazilian blowout, a method temporarily to achieve straightening the hair by sealing a liquid keratin and preservative solution into the hair with a styling wand (hair iron).
1969 Ford Falcon GTHO #60 (Fred Gibson (b 1941) & Barry “Bo” Seton (b 1936)) on its roof after a blowout of the right-rear tyre, Mount Panorama, Bathurst, Australia.
In motorsport
there have been some famous tyre blowouts and in Australia, in 1969, it was
exactly that which doomed the first appearance at Bathurst of the Falcon
GTHO, a car purpose-built for the event with “a relief map of the Mount Panorama
circuit in one hand and a bucket of Ford’s money in the other”. As it would prove in subsequent years, the
GTHO was ideal for the purpose but in 1969 the choice of some then exotic
US-made Goodyear racing tyres proved an innovation too far, one of several blowouts resulting in a Ford works car ending on its roof. Being an anti-clockwise circuit, it was the
right-had tyres which were subject to the highest loads and, built for racing,
the Phase I GTHOs were set-up to oversteer, further increasing the wear. For next year, Ford doubled down, the Phase
II GTHOs famous for their prodigious oversteer but this time the suspension was
tuned to suit the tyres.
As a
routine procedure, a “steam blowout” is carried out to remove the debris from superheaters
and re-heaters that accumulate during manufacturing and installation, the
purpose being to prevent damage to turbine blades and valves. In the usual course of operation, a “blowout”
is the release of excessive steam (ie pressure) via a “blow-off valve”. The meaning “abundant feast” dates from 1824
while that of “the bursting of an automobile tire” was in use by at least 1908. The alternative forms blow-out & blow out
are also in use, especially when applied to tyres and the un-hyphenated from
was chosen for the title of Blow Out (1981), a movie by US director Brian De
Palma (b 1940)in which the plot hinged on whether it was a gunshot which caused
a tyre to blow out.
Manfred von Brauchitsch in Mercedes-Benz W25B (#7) in front of the pits at the end of 1935 German Grand Prix, Nürbugring, 28 July 1935. The left-rear tyre which suffered a last-lap blowout has disintegrated, the car driven to fourth place on the rim for the final 7 km (4.4 miles).
The most
famous blowout however was that which happened on the last lap of the 1935 German
Grand Prix, run before 220,000 spectators in treacherously wet conditions on
the Nürbugring circuit in the Eifel mountains, then in its classic and
challenging pre-war configuration of 22.7 km (14.1 miles). The pre-race favourites were the then
dominant straight-8 Mercedes-Benz W25s and V16 Auto Union Type Bs (both generously
subsidized by the Nazi state) but, powerful, heavy and difficult to handle in
wet conditions, their advantages substantially were negated, allowing what
should have been the delicate but out-classed straight-8 Alfa Romeo P3s to be competitive and in the
gifted hands of the Italian Tazio Nuvolari (1892–1953), one won the race. The last lap was among the most dramatic in
grand prix history, the Mercedes-Benz W25B of Manfred von Brauchitsch
(1905–2003) holding a winning lead until a rear-tyre blowout, the car limping
to the finish-line on a bare rim to secure fourth place. Von Brauchitsch was the nephew of Generalfeldmarschall Walther von
Brauchitsch (1881–1948), the imposing but ineffectual Oberbefehlshaber (Commander-in-Chief) of OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres (the German army's high command)) between
1938-1941.
That there
should be a Vogue Czechoslovakia despite the state of Czechoslovakia ceasing to
be after 31 December 1992 may seem strange but the publication does exist and is
sold in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Launched in 2018, it was the first edition of Vogue published in either
country and the title was an obvious choice for Condé Nast because in addition
to the shared cultural heritage, there were no negative associations with the
name “Czechoslovakia”; so amicable was the 1992 separation of the two states it
was styled the “Velvet Divorce”. Other
attractions included branding & recognition (“Czechoslovakia” still enjoying
strong international recognition because the component elements of the name
have been retained by the new states so it has not passed into history like
“Yugoslavia” when it broke up amidst war and slaughter) and the economies of scale gained by producing a
single edition for two markets. That
reflects a general industry trend, the Czech Republic & Slovakia often
treated as a single media market because of their (1) linguistic similarity,
(2) cultural overlap and shared (though often troubled) history. It worked out well for Conde Nast because
they got a retro-modern identity evocative of a culturally rich past with a
contemporary twist.
Czechoslovakia
was created in 1918 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburgs was
dissolved and in this form it existed until dismembered progressively,
beginning with the well-intentioned but shameful Munich Agreement in 1938. After World War II (1939-1945), Czechoslovakia
was re-established under its pre-1938 borders (with the exception of Carpathian
Ruthenia, which became part of Soviet Union) but its fate was sealed when in
1948 the Communist Party (approved by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader
1924-1953) staged a coup and seized power, integrating the country behind the Iron Curtain into the
Moscow-centric Eastern Bloc joining Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic
Assistance, a kind of “Marshall Plan by rubles”) in 1955 and the Warsaw Pact (the
Soviet’s counterpoint to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in 1955. An uprising in 1968 (the so called “Prague Spring”)
seeking political & economic liberalization ruthlessly was crushed
by Russian tank formations sent by Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982; Soviet leader
1964-1982) and it wasn’t until 1989, following the fall of the Berlin Wall,
the people peacefully overthrew Communist Party rule in what was
labelled the “Velvet Revolution”, thus the adoption of “Velvet Divorce” to
describe the unusually quiet (and not at all bloody) constitutional separation of
the two sovereign states.
The Hairstyle used for Lindsay Lohan’s Vogue cover shoot is known as the “Upper East Blowout”, designed deliberately to evoke the glamour of the stars from the golden age of Hollywood (essentially the 1930s-1950s) and the particular one worn by Ms Lohan specifically was called an “Almond Milk Upper East Blowout”, a construct which seems an intriguing piece of subliminal marketing. “Almond Milk” was a obviously an allusion to the color but the fluid is also a pleasingly expensive (an important association in product-positioning) and trendy alternative to the mainstream dairy offerings with obvious appeal to vegetarians, vegans and animal rights activists. For some it can be a wise choice, nutritionists noting (unsweetened) almond milk is a good source of vitamin-E and is lower in calories, protein, sugar and saturated fat while cow’s milk is more nutrient-dense and higher in protein, naturally containing lactose and saturated fats. Because of that, fortification is essential for almond milk to match dairy milk’s micro-nutrient content but for those choosing on the basis of their dietary regime (vegans, the lactose intolerant etc), unsweetened, fortified almond can be a healthy option. The “Upper East Side” element is a reference to the neighborhood in the borough of New York City’s (NYC) Manhattan. Because of the vagueness in NYC’s neighborhood boundaries (they’re not officially gazetted), opinions vary as to where the place begins and ends but in the popular (and certainly the international) imagination, “Upper East Side” is most associated with places such as Fifth Avenue and Central Park which lie to the west. While New Yorkers may not always know exactly what the Upper East Side is, they have no doubts about which parts definitely are NOT UES. Long regarded as the richest and thus most prestigious of the New York boroughs, by the late nineteenth century informally it was known as the “silk stocking district”, the idea reflected still in the desirable real estate, expensive shops along Madison Avenue and its cluster of cultural institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection and the Guggenheim Museum.
Jessica Rabbit in characteristic pose (left) and Lindsay Lohan with "almond milk Upper East Blowout" hairstyle in black leather corset with silk laces and stainless steel eyelets.
Technically,
the hairstyle is a “blowout” because historically the look was achieved with a combination of product & blow dryer; that’s still how
most are done. Because the really dramatic
blowouts demand significant volume (ideally of “thick” hair), it can’t be
achieved by everyone in their natural state and for Ms Lohan’s cover shot celebrity
hairstylist Dimitris Giannetos (b 1983, Instagram: @dimitrishair) engineered
things using a wig by Noah Scott (b 1998, Instagram: @whatwigs) of What Wigs, the industry’s go-to source for extravagant hair-pieces. The use of “almond milk” to describe a shade
of blonde was a bit opportunistic and would seem very similar to hues known
variously as “light cool”, “light golden”, “champagne”, “golden honey” & “light
ombre” but product differentiation is there to be grabbed and it seems to have
caught on so it’ll be interesting to see if it gains industry support and
endures to become one of the “standard blondes”. So the linguistic effect is intended to be
accumulative, Mr Giannetos calling his “Upper East blowout” “an homage” to the New
York of the popular imagination and some of the hairstyles which appeared in
the publicity shots of golden age Hollywood stars, memorably captured by the
depiction of Jessica Rabbit in Robert Zemeckis’s (b 1952) live/animated toon hybrid
movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). Think luxuriant waves meet old money.
However, a Vogue
cover shot in a well-lit studio and created using a custom-made wig, styled by an expert
hairdresser is one thing but to replicate the look IRL (in real life) is
another because, despite what shampoo advertisements would have us believe, “high-gloss”
rarely just happens and even with a wig, to achieve the required fullness and
visual volume usually demands what needs to be understood as structural engineering. Usually, this will necessitate “…extensions
set in pin curls, then brushed out meticulously…” before being shaped with the appropriate
product as a device. Expectations need
to be realistic because with each change in camera angle, it can be necessary
to “re-blow and re-style”; while it’s not quite that each strand needs to be massages into place for each shot, that can be true of each wave and just because the hair
looks soft and bouncy in the images on a magazine’s glossy pages, the use of
fudge or moose to achieve the look can render locks IRL remarkable rigid.
Saturday, May 17, 2025
Combat
Combat (pronounced kuhm-bat or kom-bat (verb); kom-bat (noun))
(1) To fight or contend against; vigorously to oppose.
(2) In military matters, certain parts of branches of the services which engage in armed conflict with enemy forces.
(3) An action fought between two military forces.
(4) As a descriptor (in the military and of weapos and weapons systems), a means to distinguish between an item design specifically for use in combat as oppose to one intended for other purpose.
1535-1540: From the Middle English intransitive verb combat (to fight, struggle, contend), from the sixteenth century French combat, from the twelfth century Old French combattre, from the Late Latin combattere, the construct being com (with (each other) (an an archaic form of cum)) + battuere (to beat, fight) (source of the modern English verb "batter"). The transitive sense dates from the 1580s; the figurative use from the 1620s. The noun combat (a fight (originally especially "a fight between two armed persons" and later distinguished as single combat in the 1620s)), emerged in the 1560s and soon was applied in a general sense to "any struggle or fight between opposing forces". Combat is a noun, verb & adjective, combater & combatant are nouns, combatted & combatting are verbs and combative is an adjective; the noun plural is combats.
Combative and dressed for combat: Lindsay Lohan in boxing gloves.
The phrase hors de combat (out of action; disabled; no longer able to fight (literally "out of combat")) was constructed from hors (out, beyond), from the Latin foris (outside (literally "out of doors")) + de (of) + combat. It dates from 1757 and was related originally to battlefield conduct (the principle of which which would later be interpolated into the the rules of war) and is now a literary and rhetorical device. It shouldn't be confused with the French expression hors concours (out of competition) which, dating from 1884, is applied to works of art in an exhibition but not eligible to be awarded a prize. Given the sometimes nasty battles waged in galleries, perhaps hors de combat might sometimes be as appropriate but in exhibitions it's most often used of works which have either already won a prize or have been awarded the maximum number provided for in the competition rules. Other sporting competitions sometimes use hors concours to describe entries which don't conform with the rules of the event but are for a variety of reasons permitted to run (notably in motorsport). The adjective combative (pugnacious, disposed to fight) is from 1819 and by the mid nineteenth century had become much associated with the long discredited pseudo-science of phrenology, the related forms being combatively and the earlier (1815) combativeness. Combatant (contending, disposed to combat) was an adjective by the mid fifteenth century and a noun (one who engages in battle) by circa 1855, both from the Old French combatant (which survives in Modern French as combattant) (skilled at fighting, warlike) where it had also been a noun. The adjective combative (pugnacious, aggressive; disposed to engage in conflict (though not necessarily violence)) seems not pleasing to some because the incorrect spelling combatative is not uncommon.
The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished, oil on canvas by William Etty (1787-1849), National Gallery of Scotland.
Unusually for works in this tradition, The Combat is not a depiction of a historical or mythological event but a kind of morality tale exploring “the beauty and quality of mercy”. Structurally, the picture is of a woman clutching a warrior who, with sword raised, seems poised to inflict a fatal strike on his fallen foe whose own blade lies shattered on the ground, the woman begging he be spared. Praised for its technical accomplishment The Combat also attracted the criticism the ahistorical piece seemed just another of the artist’s opportunistic pretexts for painting more nude figures, long his favourite motif, but the painter dismissed the carping, reminding critics such imaginative works had a tradition dating from Antiquity, the Romans calling that school of composition “the Roman Visions, works not having their origin in history or poetry”. Mr Etty certainly made a seminal contribution to the genre and he’s regarded as the first English painter of any skill to produce a substantial number of nudes, something which, predictably, has overshadowed his catalogue of estimable still lifes. His life was solitary and in some ways strange and in much of the popular press his output was damned as “indecent” but when in 1828 proposed for membership of the Royal Academy, he was elected, defeating no less than John Constable 1776–1837) by 18 votes to five so his fellow artists rated him highly.
The Norton Commando 750 Combat
1968 Kawasaki 500 Mach III (H1).
British manufacturers once regarded competition from the far-east with little concern but by the late 1960s, Japanese motorcycles had become serious machines enjoying commercial success. Kawasaki’s 500cm3 (H1, Mach III) two-stroke triple debuted in 1968 while Honda’s 750-Four was released a year later, the former fast but lethally unstable, the latter more refined. Three years on, the release of Kawasaki’s 900 cm3 Z1 confirmed the maturity of the Japanese product and the era of British complacency was over though the realization was too late to save the industry.
Nothing ever quite matched the rawness of the original Kawasaki Mach III. Riders of high performance machines had for decades distinguished between fast, well-balanced motorcycles and those which, while rapid, needed to be handled with caution if used in anything but a straight line and on a billiard table smooth surface but even in those circumstances the Mach III could be a handful, the engine's power band narrow and the entry to it sudden and explosive. Probably the best comparison was something like the BRM grand prix car (1947-1955) which used a supercharged 1.5 litre (91 cubic inch) V16; it was only marginally responsive under 8000 rpm but at that point suddenly delivered its extraordinary power which could be as much as 500-600 horsepower. Many Mach III owners were soon noting while rear tyre life was short, the front lasted well because it spent so little time in contact with the road. Adding to the trickiness, lacking the rigidity needed to cope with such stresses, the frame design meant there was something of a gyroscopic tendency under hard acceleration which could be at least disquieting and the consequences were often worse. Still, nobody denied they were quick. Clearly, only crazy people would buy such a thing but fortunately for Kawasaki (and presumably this was part of the product planning), by 1968 the Western world was populated as never before with males aged 17-25 (peak craziness years) with sufficient credit or disposable income to indulge the madness of youth. It helped that under the Bretton Woods system (1944) of fixed exchange rates, at ¥360 to the US$, the Mach III was quite a bargain; on cost breakdown, nothing on two wheels or four came close and even at the time it was acknowledged there really were two identifiable generations of Mach IIIs: the ones built between 1968-1972 and those from 1973 until 1975 when production ended. Not only was the power-band made a little wider (at the expense of the top-end) but a disk front brake was added, the swing-arm was extended and the frame geometry improved; while this didn’t wholly tame the challenging characteristics created by putting what was then the world’s most powerful two-stroke engine in what was essentially the light and not especially still frame used for their 350, it did mean the later Mach IIIs were a little more forgiving and not quite as quick.
1973 Kawasaki 750 Mach IV (H2).
As a design, the Mach III obviously had its flaws but as a piece of engineering, it exhibited typical Japanese soundness and attention to detail. They borrowed much and while little was genuinely innovative, they had started with a clean sheet of paper and buyers found, unlike the British bikes, electrics were reliable and mechanical parts were not subject to the oil-leaks which the British had for decades claimed were endemic to the breed; far-eastern engineering was now mass-producing bikes a generation or more advanced. However, the British industry was chronically under-capitalized so, lacking resources to develop new models, resorted to "improving" existing models. While they were doing that, the Japanese manufacturers moved on and Kawasaki were planning something which would match the Mach III for performance but deliver it in a more civilized (and safer) manner. This project was a four-stroke, four cylinder 750, developed while the Mach III was being toned down (a little) while the good idea of a broader power band and a (slightly) stiffer frame was used on the Mach IV (750 H2), the ultimate evolution of the two-stroke triple which delivered best of the the Mach III experience while (somewhat) taming the worst of its characteristics.
However, in 1969 Honda, the largest in the Japanese industry and the company which in 1964 had stunned Formula One community when their 1.5 litre V12 car won a Grand Prix, released the motorcycle which threatened the very existence of the new big Kawasaki and the four-stroke Honda 750-Four was for a generation to set the template for its genre, as influential for big motorcycles as the Boeing 707 had in 1957 been for commercial airliners. Kawasaki reviewed this disturbing intrusion on their planning, concluding the Honda was a touring machine and that the Mach III had proved there was demand machines orientated more to high-performance. The board looked at the demographic charts and decided to proceed, enlarging their project to 900cm3 which, with double overhead camshafts (DOHC) was tuned more for top-end power than the more relaxed, single cam (SOHC) Honda. Released in 1972, almost a year after the Mach IV, the Z1 attracted praise for its quality and performance, all delivered while offering a stability the charismatic but occasionally lethal triples never approached. Internally, Kawasaki did their bit to ensure a good reception for the Z1 by making sure it was just a bit quicker than the Mach IV over a quarter mile, the 750 never tuned to the extent possible although as some found, more horsepower quickly and cheaply was available.
The big Nortons, named Commando since 1967, had long been a benchmark for high-performance motorcycles and although the Mach III had (on paper) matched its speed, its handling characteristics were such that it could really be enjoyed only in a straight line and even then, was best handled by cautious experts. The Honda 750-Four and Kawasaki Z1 were both vastly better as road machines and clearly the future of the breed. The long-serving big British twins, while their handling was still impeccable, were now outdated, no longer offered a performance premium and still leaked oil. Norton’s response in 1972 was the hastily concocted Commando Combat, the engine tweaked in the usual British manner with a high compression ratio, bigger carburetors, larger ports and a high-lift, long-duration camshaft. These modifications, while the orthodox approach for racing engines, are not suitable for the road and the “peaky” Combat’s only advantage was great top-end power though it was noted the clever isolastic engine mounting did work well to limit the extent to which the greater vibration transmitted through the frame. Unfortunately, the gains high in the rev-range compromised the low and mid-range performance, just where a road-bike most often operates. Indeed, at points, the torque-curve actually went the wrong way and the only obvious way to disguise this was to lower the gearing which (1) restricted the top-speed to something embarrassing low and (2) meant even cruising speeds demanded high engine revolutions. Sadly, it wasn’t possible for all long to enjoy the pleasures of all that power because the Combat's specification exposed weaknesses in pistons, bearings and crankshafts. In some cases, main bearing life could be as little as 4000 miles (7000 km) but a small number of engines succumbed to other failures long before. As a consolation, even if the Combat wouldn’t keep going, it was easy to stop, the front disk brake (designed by Norton and built by Lockheed, it used a hard chrome-plated cast-iron rotor because the heat-dissipation qualities were superior to stainless steel) was among the best in the industry.
So the most of the things that were changed made things worse. Other things stayed the same including the oil leaks (the joke being seals existed to keep the dirt out, not the fluids in) and the absence of electric starting, the right legs of Norton owners reputedly more muscular than the left. For the engine's problems the solution lay in engineering and metallurgy, a combination of a self-aligning spherical roller bearing called a superblend and un-slotted pistons. But, by the time things were fixed, the fiasco had had triggered irreparable damage to market perceptions and Norton quietly dropped the Combat, applying the improvements to their mainstream engines without trying to match its top-end power. Despite the reputation, there are owners (many of whom with great success used their Combats in competition) who reported sterling reliability from their machines and the consensus is it was only a relatively small number of Combat engines which failed but in mass-production, a well-publicized consumer-level failure rate well under 5% is enough to create reputational damage. Norton went bankrupt within a few years but the name has been revived several times over the past decades.
For those who can remember how things used to be done: 1972 Norton Commando 750 Combat Roadster (left) and 1972 Norton Commando 750 Combat Interstate (with custom drilled disk brake, right).
Introduced in 1972, the Interstate model was a response (as the name suggests) to US demand and was distinguished by the larger fuel tank, some of the additional capacity gained by removing the scalloped knee indentations seen on the Roadsters (which used a 2.2 imperial gallon (10 litre, 2.6 US gallon) tank. The early Interstates were fitted with a 5.25 imperial gallon (23.9 litre, 6.30 US gallon) unit but in mid-year this was enlarged to a 5.5 imperial gallon (25 litre, 6.6 US gallon) device, the latter size carried-over as an option when in 1973 the Commando 850 was introduced and this remained available until production ended in 1977, by which time only a handful of Roadsters were leaving the line.
1954 Norton Dominator 500 (left), 1967 Norton Atlas 750 (centre) and 1972 Norton Commando 750 Combat (right).
When introduced in 1949, the 497 cm3 (30.3 cubic inch) parallel twin was as good an engine as any then available on two wheels and a great success but that popularity was ultimately what doomed Norton in the 1970s. Over the years enlarged and tuned for more power, it proved adaptable to new frame designs and was an engine which kept Norton in the front rank of high-performance motorcycles but in not even half a decade between 1968-1972, the manufacturers in the Far East advanced further than the British industry had achieved in twenty years. In 1967, well aware of the antiquity of the machinery from which they were coaxing another generation, Norton's management had been surprised at both the positive critical reception to the Commando and the volume of orders being received and for a while the immediate feature looked bright. It perhaps could have been because the clever Isolastic engine mounting system had made it possible to absorb much of the big twin's chronically insoluble vibrations before they reached the rider and the Commando was a rewarding ride but what it should have been was a stop-gap while something better was developed. Instead, it proved but a stay of execution.
Isolastic-era advertising: The agencies never depicted women riding Norton Commandos but they were a fixture as adornments, usually with lots of blonde hair and a certain expression. One reason they may not have been suitable to use as riders was the phenomenon known as “helmet hair” (in idiomatic use, the effects of helmet wearing on those with “big hair”), which, upon removing helmet, manifested either as an unintended JBF or a bifurcated look in which the hair above the shoulders was flattened against the scalp while that beneath sat as the wind had determined. There was also the challenge of kick-starting the big twins, the long-overdue electric-start not installed until 1975.
Monday, May 12, 2025
Sunroof
Sunroof (pronounced suhn-roof)
(1) A section of
an automobile roof (sometimes translucent and historically called a moonroof)
which can be slid or lifted open.
(2) In
obstetrics, a slang term used by surgeons to describe the Caesarean section.
1952: A compound word, the construct being sun + roof. Sun was from the Middle English sonne & sunne, from the Old English sunne, from the Proto-West Germanic sunnā, from the Proto-Germanic sunnǭ, from the primitive Indo-European shwen-, oblique of sóhw (sun). The other forms from the Germanic included the Saterland Frisian Sunne, the West Frisian sinne, the German Low German Sünn, the Dutch zon, the German Sonne and the Icelandic sunna. The forms which emerged without Germanic influence included the Welsh huan, the Sanskrit स्वर् (svar) and the Avestan xᵛə̄ṇg. The related forms were sol, Sol, Surya and Helios. Roof was from the Middle English rof, from the Old English hrōf (roof, ceiling; top, summit; heaven, sky), from the Proto-Germanic hrōfą (roof). Throughout the English-speaking world, roofs is now the standard plural form of roof. Rooves does have some history but has long been thought archaic and the idea there would be something to be gained from maintaining rooves as the plural to avoid confusion with roof’s the possessive never received much support. Despite all that, rooves does seem to appear more than might be expected, presumably because there’s much more tolerance extended to the irregular plural hooves but the lexicographers are unimpressed and insist the model to follow is poof (an onomatopoeia describing a very small explosion, accompanied usually by a puff of smoke), more than one poof correctly being “poofs”. In use, a poof was understood as a small event but that's obviously a spectrum and some poofs would have been larger than others so it would have been a matter of judgement when something ceased to be a “big poof” and was classed an explosion proper. Sunroof is a noun (sometimes hyphenated); the noun plural is sunroofs.
Sunroofs existed long before 1952 but that was the year the word seems first to have been adopted by manufacturers in Detroit. The early sunroofs were folding fabric but metal units, increasingly electrically operated, were more prevalent by the early 1970s. Ford, in 1973, introduced the word moonroof (which was used also as moon roof & moon-roof) to describe the sliding pane of one-way glass mounted in the roof panel over the passenger compartment of the Lincoln Continental Mark IV (1972-1976). Moonroof soon came to describe any translucent roof panel, fixed or sliding though the term faded from use and all such things tend now to be thought sunroofs.
Open (left) and shut (centre) case: 1976 Lincoln Continental Mark IV (right) with Moonroof.
According to Ford in 1973, a “sunroof” was an opening in the roof with a sliding hatch made from a non-translucent material (metal or vinyl) while a “moonroof” included a hatch made from a transparent or semi-transparent substance (typically then glass). The advantage the moonroof offered was additional natural light could be enjoyed even if the weather (rain, temperature etc) precluded opening the hatch. A secondary, internal, sliding hatch (really an extension of the roof lining) enabled the sun to be blocked out if desired and in that configuration the cabin’s ambiance would be the same whether equipped with sunroof, moonroof or no sliding mechanism of any kind. Advances in materials mean many of what now commonly are called “sunroofs” are (by Ford’s 1973 definition) really moonroofs but use of the latter term is now rare.
Following Lindsay Lohan's example: President Xi standing through a sunroof, reviewing military parade in Hongqi L5 state limousine, Beijing, 2019.
The highlight of the ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was the military parade, held in Beijing on 1 October 2019. Claimed to be the largest military parade and mass pageant in China's 4,000-odd year history (and the last mass gathering in China prior to the outbreak in Wuhan of became the COVID-19 pandemic), the formations were reviewed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping (b 1953; paramount leader of the PRC since 2012). The assembled crowd was said without exception to be “enthusiastic and happy” and the general secretary's conspicuously well-cut Mao suit was a nice nostalgic touch.
The CCP
didn’t comment on the choice of a car with a sunroof and it may have been made on technical grounds,
the provision of a microphone array presumably easier with the roof
available as a mounting point and given the motorcade travelled a higher speed
than a traditional parade, it would also have provided a more stable platform for
the general secretary. It’s not thought
there was any concern about security, Xi Jinping (for a variety of reasons) safer
in his capital than many leaders although heads of state and government became
notably more reticent about travelling in open-topped vehicles after John
Kennedy (1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was assassinated in 1963. Some, perhaps encouraged by Richard Nixon being
greeted by cheering crowds in 1974 when driven through the streets of Alexandria (a
potent reminder of how things have changed) in a Cadillac convertible, persisted
but after the attempt on the life of John Paul II (1920–2005; pope 1978-2005) in
1981, there’s been a trend to roofs all the way, sometimes molded in
translucent materials of increasing chemical complexity to afford some protection from assassins.
Military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, Beijing, China, 1 October 2019. Great set-piece military parades like those conducted by the PRC and DPRK (recalling the spectacles staged by both Nazi Germany (1933-1945) and the Soviet Union (1922-1991) are now packaged for television and distribution on streaming platforms and it may be Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) was hoping the "Grand Military Parade" he scheduled in 2025 for his 79th birthday (ostensibly to celebrate 250 years since the formation of the US Army) would display the same impressive precision in chorography.
Renault over the decades made the occasional foray into the tempting US market but all ended badly in one way or another, their products, whatever their sometimes real virtues, tending not to be suited to US driving habits and conditions. Sunroofs had long been popular in Europe and, noting (1) what was assumed to be the demise of the convertible and (2) Lincoln's coining of "moon roof", Renault decided Americans deserved a sunroof, moonroof & starroof, all in one. Actually, they got even more because there was also a removable, fibreglass hardtop for the winter months, Renault correctly concluding there would be little demand for a rainroof. Physically large as it had to be, unlike a targa top, the 17's panel was intended (like other hardtops) to be stored in a garage until the warmer months. One quirk of the R17's nomenclature was in Italy, in deference to the national heptadecaphobia, the car was sold as the R177 but the Italians showed little more interest than the Americans.
Porsche, sunroofs, weight distribution and centres of gravity
Porsche in the early 1970s enjoyed great success in sports car racing with their extraordinary 917 but greatly innovation and speed disturb the clipboard-carriers at the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the FIA; the International Automobile Federation) which is international sport's dopiest regulatory body. Inclined instinctively to ban anything interesting, the FIA outlawed the 917 in sports car racing so Porsche turned its glance to the Can-Am (Canadian-American Challenge Cup) for unlimited displacement (Group 7) sports cars, then dominated by the McLarens powered by big-displacement Chevrolet V8s. Unable to enlarge the 917's Flat-12 to match the power of the V8s and finding their prototype Flat-16 too bulky, Porsche resorted to forced aspiration and created what came to be known as the "TurboPanzer", a 917 which in qualifying trim took to the tracks with some 1,500 horsepower (HP). There's since been nothing quite like it and for two years it dominated the Can-Am until the first oil shock in 1973 put an end to the fun. However, the lessons learned about turbocharging the factory would soon put to good use.
The widow-maker: 1979 Porsche 930 Turbo (RoW (rest of the world (ie Non-NA (North American) market) model) in the “so 1980s” Guards Red with “Sunroof Delete” option.
Although an RoW car, this one has been "federalized" for registration in the US including the then required sealed-beam headlights, fitted inside the "sugar-scoop" housings. Curiously, although the term “sunroof delete option” is often applied to the relative few 930s with solid metal roofs, there was at the time no such 930 option code and, the sunroof being listed as “standard equipment” on 930s, if a customer requested one not be fitted, what the factory did was not include option 9474 (electric sunroof) on the build sheet. Later the companion option codes 650 (Sunroof) and 652 (Delete Sunroof) became part of the list for all models. Rare though it may be in some Porsches, for some the “sunroof delete” thing is surprisingly desirable and in the aftermarket, it's possible to purchase “sunroof delete” panels which convert a sunroof-equipped car into one with a solid metal roof. They are bought usually by those converting road-going cars for track use, the removal of the 29 lb-odd (13 kg) assembly not only saving weight but also lowering the centre of gravity.
Introduced in 1975, the 911 Turbo (930 the internal designation) had been intended purely as a homologation exercise (al la the earlier 911 RS Carrera) so the engine could be used in competition but so popular did it prove it was added to the list as a regular production model and one has been a permanent part of the catalogue almost continuously since. The additional power and its sometimes sudden arrival meant the early versions were famously twitchy at the limit (and such was the power those limits were easily reached if not long explored), gaining the machine the nickname “widow-maker”. There was plenty of advice available for drivers, the most useful probably the instruction not to use the same technique when cornering as one might in a front-engined car and a caution that even if one had had a Volkswagen Beetle while a student, that experience might not be enough to prepare one for a Porsche Turbo. When stresses are extreme, the physics mean the location of small amounts of weight become subject to a multiplier-effect and the advice was those wishing to explore a 930's limits of adhesion should get one with the rare “sunroof delete” option, the lack of the additional weight up there slightly lowering the centre of gravity. However, even that precaution may only have delayed the inevitable and possibly made the consequences worse, one travelling a little faster before the tail-heavy beast misbehaved.
Although it seems improbable, when in 2012 Lindsay Lohan crashed a sunroof-equipped Porsche 911 Carrera, it's not impossible the unfortunate event may have been related to the slight change in the car's centre of gravity when fitted with a sunroof. She anyway had some bad luck when driving black German cars but clearly Ms Lohan should avoid Porsches with sunroofs.
The interaction of the weight of a 911’s roof (and thus the centre of gravity) and the rearward bias of the weight distribution was not a thing of urban myth or computer simulations. In the February 1972 edition of the US magazine Car and Driver (C&D), a comparison test was run of the three flavours of the revised 911 (911T, 911E & 911S), using one of each of the available bodies: coupé, targa & sunroof coupé, the latter with the most additional weight in the roof. What the testers noted in the targa & sunroof-equipped 911s was a greater tendency to twitchiness in corners, something no doubt exacerbated in the sunroof coupé because the sliding panel’s electric motor was installed in the engine bay. C&D’s conclusion was: “If handling is your goal, it's best to stick with the plain coupe.”
The Porsche 911 E series and the Ölklappe affair
Although in C&D's 1972 comparison test there was much focus on the rearward weight bias, the three 911s supplied actually had a slightly less tail-heavy weight distribution than either that season's predecessor or successor. Porsche in 1971 began the build of its E series update (produced between July 1971-July 1972 and generally known as the “1972 models”) of the then almost decade-old 911 and in addition to the increase in the flat-six’s displacement from 2.2 litres (134 cubic inch) to 2.3 (143) (although always referred to as the “2.4”), there were a myriad of changes, some in response to US safety & emissions legislation while others were part of normal product development. One of latter was the placing of the hinged-flap over the oil filler cap behind the right side door, something necessitated by the dry sump oil tank having been re-located from behind the right rear wheel to in front, one of a number of design changes undertaken to shift the weight distribution forward and improve the handling of the rear-engined machine’s inherently tail-heavy configuration. In Germany, the addition was known variously as Ölklappe, Oil Klapper or Vierte Tür (fourth door, the fuel filler flap being the third). Weight reduction (then becoming difficult in the increasingly strict regulatory environment), especially at the rear, was also a design imperative and the early-build E series cars were fitted with an aluminum engine lid and license-plate panel although these components were soon switched to steel because of production difficulties and durability concerns.
Where the troubles began: The fuel filler flap on the left-front fender (left) and the oil filler flap on the right-rear fender (right). Apparently, not even the “◀ Oil” sticker in red was sufficient warning.
For the E series 911s, Porsche recommended the use of a multigrade mineral oil (SAE 20W-50 or SAE 15W-40, depending on climate) but were aware those using their vehicles in competition sometimes used a high-viscosity SAE 50 monograde. With the car’s 10 litre (10.6 US quarts, 8.8 Imperial quarts) oil tank, the fluid’s weight would be between 8.5-9.1 kg (18.7-20.0 lb) and the physics of motion meant that the more rearward the placement of that mass, the greater the effect on the 911’s handling characteristics. It was thus a useful contribution to what would prove a decades-long quest to tame the behaviour of what, in the early versions, was a car regarded (not wholly unfairly) as handling like “a very fast Volkswagen Beetle” and ultimately the engineers succeeded, it being only at the speeds which should be restricted to race tracks the 911s of the 2020s sometimes reveal the implications of being rear-engined.
VDO instruments in 1971 Porsche 911S. In home market cars, the oil pressure gauge (to the left of the centrally mounted tachometer) was labelled DRUCK.
However, when in August 1972 the revised F series entered production, the oil tank was back behind the rear wheel and the filler under the engine lid, the retrogressive move taken because there had been instances of gas (petrol) station attendants (they really used to exist) assuming the oil filler flap was the access point for the gas cap and, to be fair, it was in a location used for gas on many front-engined cars (a majority of the passenger-car fleet in most markets where Porsche had a presence). Quite how often this happened isn’t known but it must have been frequent enough for the story to become part of the 911 legend and the consequences could have been severe and rectification expensive. The factory paid much attention to oil and also ensured drivers could monitor the status of the critical fluid; all air-cooled 911s ran hot and the more highly tuned the model (in 1971-1972 the 911T, E & S in increasing potency), the hotter they got. As well as being a lubricant, engine oil functions also as a coolant and the VDO instrumentation included gauges for oil level, oil temperature, and oil pressure; for all three to appear in a road car was unusual but being air-cooled and thus with no conventional fluid coolant, the oil's dynamics were most important.