Martini (pronounced mahr-tee-nee)
(1) A surname of Italian origin.
(2) A
breech mechanism for a rifle (a clipping of “Martini-Henry”, a lever action, breech-loading
single-shot rifle in service with the British Army 1871-1918).
(3) A rifle using similar features.
(4) A cocktail made with a mix of gin (or vodka) & dry
vermouth, served usually with a green olive (the twist of lemon a more recent
alternative and a dozen or more variations like peppermintini,
chocolatini dirty martini and pornstar martini(!) have proliferated).
1885-1890:
Origin disputed; it may be an alteration of Martinez (an earlier
alternate name of the drink) but is probably by association with the vermouth
manufacturer Martini, Sola & Co. (later Martini & Rossi). Another
theory holds it’s a corruption of Martinez, California, town where the drink
was said to have originated. Others
claim it was first mixed in New York but then NYC claims lots of things
happened there first. Martini is a noun; the noun plural is martinis.
CCTV image capture, New York City, 24 July 2012. Noted one-time (and since reformed) martini aficionado Lindsay Lohan enjoys a vodka martini.
By 1922 the martini had assumed its modern,
recognizable form: London dry gin and dry vermouth in a ratio 2:1, stirred in a
mixing glass with ice cubes, sometimes with addition aromatic bitters, then
strained into a chilled cocktail glass.
Green olives were the expected garnish by the onset of World War II (1939-1945) with
a twist of lemon peel often seen by the 1950s and from the 1930s, the amount of vermouth tended steadily to drop as the cult
of the dry martini prevailed. Today, a typical
dry martini is made with a ration between 6:1 and 12:1. Some were more extreme, the playwright Noël Coward (1899–1973) suggesting
filling a glass with gin, then lifting it in the general direction of the
vermouth factories in Italy. The author Ian Fleming (1908–1964) had James Bond follow Harry Craddock's (1876–1963; long-time barman (now bar attendant) at London's Savoy Hotel) shaken, not stirred directive from The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) but contemporaries, the author Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
and Franklin Roosevelt (1882–1945; US president 1933-1945), neither a stranger to a Martini, both recommended
stirring although chemists observe the concept of “bruising the gin” has no
basis in chemistry or any other branch of science. The vodka martini came later. It was first noted in the 1950s when known as the kangaroo cocktail, a hint at its disreputable colonial origins but normally reliable sources commend the blueberry vodka martini and purists concede this is the only martini to benefit from using sweet vermouth. In 1966, the American Standards Association
(ASA) released K100.1-1966, "Safety
Code and Requirements for Dry Martinis," a humorous account of how to
make a "standard" dry martini. The latest revision of this document,
K100.1-1974, was published by American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Flippant they may have been but they’re good
guides to the classic method.
Compare & contrast: A classic gin martini (left) and a Stoli blueberry vodka martini (right)
Stoli Blueberry Vodka Martini Recipe
Ingredients
60 ml (2 oz) Stoli Blueberi Vodka
60 ml (2 oz) sweet vermouth
15 ml (½ oz) lemon Juice
3-5 fresh blueberries
Ice Cubes
Instructions
(1) Pour Stioli Blueberi Vodka, sweet vermouth
and lemon juice into cocktail shaker and middle blueberries.
(2) Add ice cubes until shaker is two-thirds
full.
(3) Shake thoroughly until mixture is icy.
(4) Strain and pour into chilled martini glasses.
(5) Skew blueberries with cocktail pick, garnish
martini and serve.
(6) Add a little blueberry juice to lend
a bluish tincture (optional).
Cocktail Party by Laurence Fellows (1885-1964), Esquire magazine, September 1937.
Unfairly or not, cocktail parties in drawing rooms at which Martinis were served gain a reputation as sometimes louche affairs. Note the elegantly sceptical expressions on the faces of the women, all of whom have become immured to the tricks of “charming men in suits”. For women, sherry parties were more welcoming places.
Martini Racing, the Porsche 917 and the Pink Pig
Porsche 917LH, Le Mans, 1970.
Unlike some teams which
maintained a standard livery, Martini Racing sometimes fielded other designs. One noted departure was the “hippie” or “psychedelic”
color scheme applied to the Porsche 917LH (Langheck (Longtail)) which placed second at Le Mans in 1970 and
proved so popular that the factory received requests from race organizers requesting
it be entered. Weeks later, across the
Atlantic, the organizers of the Watkins Glen Six Hours wanted their own
‘hippie’ 917 but with the car in Stuttgart, Martini Racing took over another
team’s car and raced in ‘hippie’ colors to ninth place on one day and sixth
the next.
Porsche 917K, 1970.
Subsequently the scheme was reprised in another,
even more lurid combination of yellow & red in another psychedelic design,
this time to match the corporate colors of Shell, the teams sponsor. This remains the only surviving psychedelic
car, the factory’s Langheck 917 being converted to 1971 specifications and
painted in Gulf Oil’s livery for Le Mans.
Like many other used 917s, subsequently it was scrapped by an
unsentimental Porsche management.
Pink Pig Porsche 917-20, 1971.
Although it raced only once, the “Pink Pig” (917-20) remains one of the best remembered 917s. In the never-ending quest to find the optimal compromise between the down-force needed to adhere to the road and a low-drag profile to increase speed, a collaboration between Porsche and France's Société d’Etudes et de Réalisations Automobiles (SERA, the Society for the Study of Automotive Achievement) was formed to explore a design combine the slipperiness of the 917-LH with the stability of the 917-K. Porsche actually had their internal styling staff work on the concept at the same time, the project being something of a Franco-German contest. The German work produced something streamlined & futuristic with fully enclosed wheels and a split rear wing but despite the promise, the French design was preferred. The reasons for this have never been clarified but there may have been concerns the in-house effort was too radical a departure from what had been homologated on the basis of an earlier inspection and that getting such a different shape through scrutineering, claiming it still an “evolution” of the original 917, might have been a stretch. No such problems confronted the French design; SERA's Monsieur Charles Deutsch (1911-1980) was Le Mans race director. On the day, the SERA 917 passed inspection without comment.
Der Trüffeljäger von
Zuffenhausen
(The Trufflehunter from Zuffenhausen), a fibreglass display (some 45 inches
(1150 mm) in length) finished in the Pink Pig’s livery. It includes battery-operated LED (light emitting
diode) fixtures within the nostrils, activated by a toggle switch under an
access panel on the neck. Weighing some
50 lb (23 kg), it measures (length x width x height) 45 inches x 20 x 32 (1140
x 510 x 810 mm). In an on-line auction
in 2024, it sold for US$3800.
Pink Pig Porsche 917-20, Le Mans, 1971.
At 87 vs 78 inches (2200 mm vs 2000 mm), the SERA car was much wider than a standard 917K, the additional width shaped to minimize air flow disruption across the wheel openings. The nose was shorter, as was the tail which used a deeper concave than the “fin” tail the factory had added in 1971. Whatever the aerodynamic gains, compared to the lean, purposeful 917-K, it looked fat, stubby and vaguely porcine; back in Stuttgart, the Germans, never happy about losing to the French, dubbed it Das Schwein (the pig). Initially unconvincing in testing, the design responded to a few tweaks, the factory content to enter it in a three hour event where it dominated until sidelined by electrical gremlins. Returned to the wind tunnel, the results were inconclusive although suggesting it wasn't significantly different from a 917K and suffered from a higher drag than the 917-LH. It was an indication of what the engineers had long suspected: the 917K's shape was about ideal.
Pink Pig Porsche 917-20, Le Mans, 1971.
For the 1971 Le Mans race, the artist responsible for the psychedelia of 1970 applied the butcher’s chart lines to the body which had been painted pink. In the practice and qualifying sessions, the Pig ran in pink with the dotted lines but not yet the decals naming the cuts; those (in the Pretoria typeface), being applied just before the race and atop each front fender was a white pig-shaped decal announcing: Trüfel Jäger von Zuffenhausen (the truffel hunter from Zuffenhausen); the Pink Pig had arrived. Corpulent or not, in practice, it qualified a creditable seventh, two seconds slower than the 917-K that ultimately won and, in the race, ran well, running as high as third but a crash ended things. Still in the butcher's shop livery, it's now on display in the Porsche museum.
Pink Pig Porsche 917-20, 1971.
Scuttlebutt has always surrounded the Pink Pig. It's said the decals with the names of the cuts of pork and bacon were applied furtively were applied, just to avoid anyone demanding their removal. Unlike the two other factory Porsches entered under the Martini banner, the Pink Pig carried no Martini decals, the rumor being the Martini & Rossi board, their aesthetic sensibilities appalled by the porcine lines, refused to associate the brand with the thing. Finally, although never confirmed by anyone, it's long been assumed the livery was created, not with any sense of levity but as a spiteful swipe at SERA although it may have been something light-hearted, nobody ever having proved Germans have no sense of humor.
A coffee
table in Pink Pig livery built on a M28 Porsche V8 engine (introduced in 1977 for use in the new 928 and, much updated, still in production).
Coffee tables in this form are not uncommon as display or promotional
pieces and are sometimes advertised as “the gift for the man who has everything”;
whether the pink paint will extend the attraction to many women seems improbable
but, despite the perceptions, there are women who share the stereotypically
male attachment to cars and their components.
Almost all coffee tables built around engine blocks use a glass top so
the interesting bits are visible; if there’s thus a flat surface they are as
functional as any of the same dimensions.
Some however have some of the mechanical bits protruding, usually just for visual
impact although there have been some V8s and V12s where the heads are
not installed, the open cylinders used as somewhere to place jars of
sauces, dressings and such. On this
table, the intake manifold extends above the table-top through a surface cut-out
so it reduces the usable area but the tubular intake rams are there to be admired. Although all-aluminium, the M28 was built for robustness and was no lightweight: the table weighs some 240 lb (110 kg) and measures
(length x width x height) 43 x 20 x 32 inches (1090 x 940 x 432 mm). In an on-line auction in 2024, it sold for
US$5300.
In the pink: 1983
Porsche 928S in a “rauchquarzmetallic” wrap. The 928 was the first Porsche to use the M28 V8.
In production between 1977-1995, with a front-mounted, water-cooled V8, the
928 was a radical departure from the configuration of their previous road cars,
all air-cooled flat fours or sixes and mostly with a true rear engine layout
(the power-plant installed aft of the rear axle). By the early 1970s the Porsche management team had come to believe (1) the
fundamental limitations and compromises physics imposed on cars with so much
weight at the rear extreme meant such engineering was a cul-de-sac, (2) demand
for the by then decade-old 911 would continue to decline and (3) US regulators (then
much in the mood to regulate) would soon outlaw rear engines and air-cooling,
along with convertibles. As things
turned out, the election of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989),
a one-time Hollywood film star with fond memories of convertibles and some distaste
for “excessive
and intrusive regulations” was elected with the (never explicitly
stated but well-understood) agenda to make America great again and a new mood
prevailed in Washington, convertibles and much else surviving the expected fall
of the axe. The 928 was well-received by
the press but like Toyota’s Lexus which never quite managed to achieve the
reputation it deserved because it was “not
a Mercedes-Benz” (actually perhaps “not
what a Mercedes-Benz used to be”), the 928 suffered from being “not a 911”. Although the 928 joined the list of machines out-lived by those which they were intended to replace, it was a success and in production for
some eighteen years although in the twenty-first century depressed values in
the after-market meant it became associated with drug dealers and people with
maxed-out credit cards (at some points, certain used 928s were the cheapest 160
mph (260 km/h) cars on the market). The
perception has now improved and around the planet there are solid 928
communities although the members have nothing like the devotional feelings of
the 911 congregation.
Porsche 917KH, 1971.
Using the 917KH (Kurz (Short)), the factory team in 1970 gained Porsche its first outright victory in the Le Mans twenty-four classic. In the following year's race, Martini Racing won using a 917KH with a similar specification, running this time in the standard corporate livery. The refinements to the 917K's aerodynamic properties had tamed whatever idiosyncrasies remained from the fast but unstable original and with still could have been extracted from the enlarged flat-12 but with the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (International Automobile Federation); international sport’s dopiest regulatory body), again changing the rules, the run in 1971 would be the 917’s last official appearance at Le Mans.
Porsche 917-10, 1972.
Although the bloodless bureaucrats at the FIA probably thought they'd killed off the 917, there was still much potential to be exploited and Porsche now devoted the programme to the Can-AM (Canadian-American Challenge Cup), conducted on North American circuits for unlimited displacement sports cars. Run under Group 7 regulations, what few rules existed mostly were easy simultaneously to conform with while ignoring which is why the Can-Am between 1966-1973 is remembered as one of the golden eras of the sport. Now turbocharged (as 917-10 & 917-30), in their ultimate form the cars were tuned in qualifying trim for some 1500 horsepower and raced usually with over 1000. So dominant were the 917s that the previously successful McLaren team (their cars powered by aluminium big-block Chevrolet V8s as large as 509 cubic inches (8.3 litres) withdrew to focus on Formula One and there were doubts about the future of the series but as it turned out, the interplay of geopolitics and economics that was the first oil crisis meant excesses such as unlimited displacement racing was soon sacrificed.
Porsche 917K-81 (Kremer).
However, the 917 was allowed one final fling as an unintended consequence of rule changes for the 1981 sports car season. It was a sort of revenge on the FIA because although never intended as a loophole through which the now ancient Porsche could pass, for one team the chance again to run the 917 at Le Mans proved irresistible. The factory had retired the 917 after its win in the 1973 Can-Am, moving to the 936 platform for 1975 and while aware of the implications of the rule changes, weren't tempted by what they regarded a nostalgic cul-de-sac but those at Kremer
Racing (founded in Cologne, FRG (Federal Republic of Germany, the old West
Germany) by brothers Erwin (1937-2006) and Manfred Kremer (1940-2021)) were intrigued and, with factory support, built a new 917 to Group 6 specifications (enclosed bodywork and a 5.0 litre flat-12), labeling it the 917K-81. Using Kremer own aluminium spaceframe, at the 1981 Le Mans 24 hour it was fast enough to qualify in the top ten and run with the leaders until a suspension failure forced retirement (the car eventually classified: 38th, DNF (did not finish). The pace displayed was sufficiently encouraging for the car to be entered in that year's 1000 km event at Brand Hatch where it proved fast but, lacking the factory support, also fragile and it again recorded a DNF. That was the end of the line for the 917 but, fast and loud, they remain a popular attraction whenever they appear.
