Corinthian

Corinthian (kuh-rin-thee-uhn)

(1) Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Corinth, the ancient Greek city-state.

(2) One of the five styles of classical architecture in Ancient Greece (the others being Doric, Composite, Tuscan & Ionic).

(3) Something ornate and elaborate

(4) In literacy criticism, an ornate style.

(5) Something luxurious or licentious.

(6) A native or inhabitant of Corinth.

(7) Someone given to living luxuriously; dissolute.

(8) An amateur sportsman (archaic).

(9) A phony descriptor of a type of leather used by Chrysler Corporation in the US during the 1970s.

1350–1400: From the Middle English Corinthi(es) (the men of Corinth) from the Latin Corinthiī from the Greek Korínthioi.  The sense “of or pertaining to Corinth" the ancient Greek city-state is from the 1590s, gradually replacing the mid-fifteenth adjective Corynthoise.  The sense as a classification in what was becoming a formalised architectural order is from the 1650s.  The noun meaning literally "inhabitant of Corinth" dates from the 1520s; Corinthies was attested from the late fourteenth century.  During Antiquity, other Greek cities regarded the inhabitants of Corinth as a bit gauche, noting their preference for ornate, almost ostentatious architecture and their notorious fondness for luxury and licentiousness.  There was intellectual snobbery among the Athenians too, the Corinthians thought too interested in commerce and profit and not sufficiently devoted to thought and learning.  Corinthian the noun and adjective thus, in various slang or colloquial senses in English, came to be associated with extravagance, sin and conspicuous consumption, especially in the decades after the 1820s.

In scripture, the implications of that association were later reflected in the New Testament, most memorably in Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1).  The second letter is thought to have been written circa 56 AD, shortly after he penned the first and was addressed to the Christian community in city of Corinth, a major trading centre which, although by then noted for its rich artistic and philosophic traditions, was a place also of vice and depravity.  It was this last aspect that compelled Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church and in it he sharply rebuked them for permitting immoral practices in the community.  In response, the Corinthians had cracked-down on some of the worst excesses and Paul wrote his second letter to congratulate them on their reforms and even commended forgiving sinners and welcoming them back to the flock.  Harsh though his words could be, Paul’s preference is always restoration, not punishment.  The letter then discusses some sometimes neglected characteristics of the Christian church such as generosity to others and devotes some time to defending himself against attacks on his ministry, reminding the Corinthians both of his own poverty and the harsh reality of what it meant to be a minister of Christ in the Roman empire: beatings, imprisonment, hunger, and the constant threat of death.

The triangle tattoo Lindsay Lohan had inked in 2013 was inspired by 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.  In the King James Version (KJV; 1611) it read:

4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

Most quoted now are modern translations which are more accessible such as the International Bible Society's (now Biblica) New International Version (NIV; 1978):

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

In Paul’s prescriptive way, verses 4-7 details the workings of love in three steps.  There are firstly the positive aspects of love being patient and kind but then elaborated are the eight negatives love must never be: not jealous, boastful, arrogant, rude, irritable or resentful, nor does it insist upon its own way or glat at wrong.  Finally, Paul notes the five positive ways in which love reacts, joining in rejoicing at truth, supports, believes, hopes and endures all things.  Verse 8 returns to the theme of superiority of love but explicates the contrast between love and spiritual gifts as the contrast between permanence and transience; spiritual gifts which are incomplete will pass when wholeness comes whereas love will not.  The contrast is thus between the imperfect and the perfect.

United States Supreme Court, looking towards the West Pediment.

The Corinthian style of architecture was one of the five classical orders created in Ancient Greece.  Similar in many ways to the Ionic, the points of difference were (1) the unusually slender proportions, (2) the deep capital with its round bell, decorated with acanthus leaves and a square abacus with concave sides.  The Corinthian capital typically has two distinct rows of acanthus leaves above which appear eight fluted sheaths, from each of which spring two scrolls (helices), one of which curls beneath a corner of the abacus as half of a volute while the other curls beneath the centre of the abacus.  The marble pillars used on the east and west pediments of the United States Supreme Court building, constructed between 1932-1935, are a fine example of the Corinthian style.

United States Supreme Court, East Pediment.

Much less known than the more frequently photographed West Pediment, the East Pediment of the Supreme Court Building is at the rear of the structure and is much admired by architects because of the elegance of the thirteen symmetrically balanced allegorical figures in the sculptural group designed by Hermon A MacNeil (1866–1947).  The ornate details in the two rows of acanthus leaves are the defining characteristic of the Corinthian pillar.

Publicity shot for Chrysler Corporation's 1974 Imperial LeBaron four door hardtop finished in chestnut leather (right), the tufted “pillowed” upholstery a signature of the US luxury cars during an era in which they were forced to abandon high-performance.  Imperial's advertising copy noted of the brochure’s photograph: “...while the passenger restraint system with starter interlock is not shown, it is standard on all Imperials.” (the marketing types didn't like seat-belts cluttering up their carefully composed shots).  Although Chrysler mostly used the term “fine Corinthian leather” in the sales material for the Cordoba (1975-1983), it did appear is the brochures for the 1975 Imperial and later became common to refer thus to the leather in any of the corporation's cars of the era.  Some did with a sense of irony while some innocent souls actually believed it.

Corinthian leather was a term coined by the Bozell advertising agency in 1974 to describe the tufted upholstery available as an alternative to the standard velour in the Imperial LeBaron.  Although merely a term of marketing, the Imperials trimmed with the same leather produced by the Radel Leather Manufacturing Company of New Jersey the corporation used in its other up-market offerings, the name successfully conveyed the association of something rich in quality, rare, luxurious and, doubtlessly, "European".  Religiosity in the US somewhat more entrenched than elsewhere in the West, it’s likely many were sufficiently well-acquainted with the New Testament to understand the reference but for those less pious, Corinthian was one of those words which somehow carried the desired connotations, even among those with no idea of its associations.  Perhaps it was because it sounded European that some assumed the leather came from Spain, Italy or some such place where lots of words end in vowels.  Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) noted that linguistic phenomenon when he discussed the circumstances in which Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US president 1953-1961) was compelled to dismiss his chief of staff (Sherman Adams (1899-1986)), who had accepted as a gift, inter alia, a vicuña coat.  Nixon observed that while there was no doubt most Americans had no idea whether vicuña was animal, vegetable or mineral, just the perceived mystique of the word was enough to convince them it was something expensive and therefore corrupting.

Ricardo Montalbán in 1975 Chrysler Cordoba advertisement.  The word "small" is relative, the significance being the departure from the corporation's long-standing policy of the Chrysler brand never appearing on anything but full-sized cars.

Whether the association with the Cordoba's “fine Corinthian leather” generated many sales in Chrysler's other divisions (Plymouth, Dodge & Imperial) isn’t known but the the phrase certainly gained a remarkable traction amid the cacophony of exaggeration and puffery which sustains modern capitalism.  The Cordoba was introduced in 1975 as a "down-sized" model for consumers suddenly interested in fuel economy in the post oil-crisis world and the manufacturers knew those who felt compelled to buy smaller cars didn’t necessarily want them to be any less luxurious and that became the theme for the promotional campaign, led this time on television and fronted by a celebrity spokesperson, the actor Ricardo Montalbán (1920-2009).  Born in Mexico of Spanish descent, Montalbán looked distinguished and spoke in cultivated English with just enough of a Spanish accent to make plausible the link of “fine Corinthian leather” with cattle on the plains of Spain.

1975 Imperial LeBaron four door hardtop.

In the advertising, Mr Montalbán spoke of “the thickly-cushioned luxury of seats, available even in fine Corinthian leather” and although sometimes he’d call it  “soft” instead, all people seemed to remember was the leather was Corinthian.  So successful was the campaign that Chrysler decided to make the Corinthian label exclusive to the Cordoba and when Mr Montalbán was later assigned to advertise other Chryslers, in the same mellifluous tone, he commended only the “rich leather".  Later, when interviewed on late night television, cheerfully he admitted that the term meant nothing but that wasn't quite true: it meant whatever people who heard it wanted it to mean and that made it a perfect word for advertising.

The Rolls-Royce Camargue

Although it’s never been confirmed by the factory, one source claims that a consequence of Chrysler in 1974 conjuring up “fine Corinthian leather” was that Rolls-Royce was forced to abandon the idea of calling their new model the Corinthian, adopting instead Camargue, (a region on the Mediterranean coast in the south of France).  For Rolls-Royce, Camargue was probably a better choice, tying in with their existing Corniche two-door saloon (which many might have called a coupé) and convertible (by the 1970s factory (mostly) had ceased to use the historic terms FHC (Fixed-Head coupé) and DHC (Drop-Head Coupé (DHC) although there was in 2007 a nostalgic, one-off revival for the Phantom Drophead Coupé).  The French word corniche has certain technical meanings in geology and architecture but Roll-Royce used it in the sense of “a coastal road, especially one cut into the face of a cliff”, specifically using the imagery of the Grande Corniche on the French Riviera, just north of the principality of Monaco.  The factory had first used the Corniche name in 1939 for a prototype light-weight, high-performance car which could match the pace of the big, supercharged, straight-eight Mercedes-Benz able to explore Germany’s newly built autobahns at sustained high speeds never before possible.  The car was damaged during testing in France and was abandoned there after the outbreak of hostilities, only to be destroyed in a bombing raid although whether the Luftwaffe (the German air force) or the RAF (the UK's Royal Air Force) was responsible isn’t known.

1968 Bentley T1 Coupe Speciale by Pininfarina (chassis CBH4033).  It wasn’t as if Rolls-Royce weren’t aware of how Italians thought a Rolls-Royce or Bentley coupé should look.  The Speciale should have been a warning heeded although, to be fair, it probably is better than the Camargue.

So whether as some minor ripple of chaos theory or the factory always intended to continue allusions to continental geography, in 1975 the Camargue was released with few technical innovations of interest other than the automatic split-level climate control system which was an industry first and said alone to cost about as much to produce as a middle-class buyer might spend on a whole vehicle.  Other footnotes included it being the first Rolls-Royce designed and produced (except for the odd carry-over component) using metric measurements and the first with the famous grill inclined at (for mid-century Rolls-Royce), a rakish 7^o rather than the perfectly vertical aspect always before used although the now noticeably lower grill was built still using the same technique the architects of Antiquity employed to create the clever optical illusion making the columns appear to the naked eye to be of identical dimensions although it wasn't the similar math of entasis, used for thousands of years to make slightly curved Corinthian pillars appear perfectly perpendicular.

The Pantheon Temple, Rome (left) and 1985 Rolls-Royce Camargue (right).

The Pantheon's Latin inscription M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT actually isn't all that poetic and reads like a note the draftsman might have put on the blueprint (had there then been blueprints): it translates as "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, made [this building] when consul for the third time.", crediting the Roman statesman & general, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (circa 63 BC–12 BC) who originally commissioned the construction during his third consulship in 27 BC.  The Pantheon that stands today was rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian (Publius Aelius Hadrianus, 76–138; Roman emperor 117-138) circa 126 AD after the original structure suffered severe damage in a blaze.  Hadrian chose to retain Agrippa's inscription as a tribute (not all the emperors were narcissists).  Since AD 609, the Pantheon has been a Roman-Catholic church and is known as the Basilica Santa Maria ad Martyres (Basilica of St. Mary and the Martyrs).

Despite the popular perception, what Rolls-Royce describes as their "Pantheon grill" doesn't feature a classic entasis (slight swelling in the middle of a column to counteract the illusion of concavity), the design does incorporate a similar visual effect: there is a (very) slight curvature which in the factory's vernacular is known as the "waftline".  Although there are, understandably, many references to the grill being the "Parthenon grill" (and there is a well-reviewed Greek restaurant in Murfreesboro, Tennessee called the Parthenon Grille), the factory has never used the term and say the designed was inspired by "Rome’s imposing Pantheon temple", a structure "...purposefully built with wider middle sections so the human eye perceives each long pillar to be completely straight."  What the architects of Antiquity did was use use an optical illusion as a "corrective" to achieve perfect visual symmetry and the Rolls-Royce engineers replicated the approach, the grill's columns wider towards the edges.  The waftline is used elsewhere, notably the gentle, upswept sweep along the sill-line which Rolls-Royce says "creates a powerful, poised stance and makes the car appear to be moving when stationary...", creating the impression of "calm perfect motion and accelerating quickly without fuss".  They clearly like the word "waft" because they coined the neologism "waftability" which is said to be "the essence of the brand".

1973 Rolls-Royce Corniche Saloon (left) and 1975 Rolls-Royce Camargue (right).

In 1975 however, it's wasn't the almost imperceptible rake of the grill or the adoption of metric measurements which attracted most comment when the Camargue made its debut.  What was most discussed was (1) it being the world’s most expensive production car and (2) the appearance.  At that end of the market, the 30%-odd cost premium against the mechanically similar Corniche wasn’t going to produce the same effects in the elasticity of demand as would be noted lower in automotive pecking order and indeed, the Veblen effect can operate to make the more expensive product more desirable.  The consensus was the Corniche, although by then a decade-old shape, was better balanced and more elegant so for success to ensue, Rolls-Royce really were counting on Veblen to exert its pull.

Lancia Florida II (1957, left), Fiat 130 Coupé (1971, centre) & Rolls-Royce Camargue (1975, right).  The origin of the shape is most discernible in Pininfarina’s Lancia Florida, a different approach to the big coupé than would be taken in the 1950s by the Americans.  The late Fiat 130 coupé was one of those aesthetic triumphs which proved a commercial failure while the Camargue is thought a failure on all grounds although, for those who prize some degree of exclusivity, it remains a genuine rarity.  As it was, between 1975-1986, only 531 Camargues were sold (including a one-off Bentley version which was a "special order") while the Corniche lasted from 1971 until 1995, 6,823 leaving the factory including 561 Bentleys, the latter now much sought.  In a sense, the Camargue was ahead of its time because Rolls-Royce in the twenty-first century began offering some quite ugly cars and they have sold well, the Veblen effect working well.  

Unfortunately, the Camargue, while it did what it did no worse than a Corniche saloon, while doing it, it looked ungainly.  Styled by the revered Italian studio Pinninfarina, the look was derided as dated, derivative and clumsy and it’s this which has usually been thought to account for production barely topping 500 over the decade-odd it remained available.  In the years since, some tried to improve things and a number have been made into convertibles, an expensive exercise which actually made it worse, the roof-line one of the few pleasing aspects.  One buyer though was sufficiently impressed to commission a one-off Bentley version, one of the few instances of a model which genuinely can be claimed to be unique. The same designer at Carrozzeria Pininfarina who signed off on the Camargue was also responsible for the earlier Fiat 130 coupé, something in the same vein but on a smaller scale and the Fiat is a rectilinear masterpiece.

Platform by Mercedes-Benz, coachwork by Pininfarina.  1956 300 SC (left), 1963 230 SL (centre) & 1969 300 SEL 6.3 (right).

Whether the knife-edged severity of the 130 coupé could successfully have been up-scaled to the dimensions Rolls-Royce required is debatable but Pininfarina had lying around a styling exercise done years earlier, based on a Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3 and it was this which seems to have inspired the Camargue.  The Italian studio’s interest in Mercedes-Benz had in preceding decades produced some admired designs although the occasional plans for limited production runs were never realized.  In 1955, a coupé based on the 300b saloon had been shown, followed a year later by a 300 SC which most thought better executed, and certainly more contemporary, than the Germans' own effort.  The best though was probably the 1963 230 SL which lost both the distinctive pagoda roof and some of leanness for which the delicate lines are most remembered but it was thought a successful interpretation.  Mercedes-Benz should of course have produced a two-door 300 SE 6.3 because the W111/W112 two door body (1961-1971) was their finest achievement but the planet lost nothing by Pininfarina's take on the idea being rightly ignored.  In retrospect Rolls-Royce probably wished they too had "failed to proceed" and when the time came to do another big coupé, the job was done in-house, the Bentley Continental (1991-2003) an outstanding design and neither Rolls-Royce nor Bentley have since matched the timeless lines.

Boulevard

Boulevard (pronounced bool-uh-vahrd or boo-luh-vahrd)

(1) A broad avenue in a city, usually with areas at the sides or in the center planted with trees, grass, or flowers, often used as a promenade.

(2) A strip of lawn between a sidewalk (footpath) and the curb (a regionalism from the upper Midwest US & Canada, also called a boulevard strip).

(3) As loosely applied in street names in many cities, usually for wide thoroughfares.

(4) The centre strip of a road dividing traffic travelling in different directions (rare and sometimes applied also to the landscaped sides).

1769: From the French boulevard (broad street or promenade planted with rows of trees), from the Middle French boulevard, bollevart, boulevars, bolevers & bollewerc (promenade, avenue, rampart), either from the Middle High German bolewerc & bolwerc (which endures in modern German as Bollwerk) or the Middle Dutch bolwerc & bollewerc (“bulwark, bastion”), the latter from the Picard, Walloon in the sense of “rampart, avenue built on the site of a razed rampart”, so called because the structures were originally often built on the ruins of old ramparts.  The apparently strange transition from the Middle Dutch bolwerc (wall of a fortification) to the French boulevard, originally (top surface of a military rampart, used as a thoroughfare) is explained by the linguistic tangle of translation, the French language at the time having no “w”, hence the early attempts including boloart, boulever, boloirque & bollvercq.

Lindsay Lohan leaving Boulevard3 nightclub, Los Angeles, 2009.

Although there’s now usually no direct relationship, the idea of boulevards being wider than most streets and with associated landscaping dates from the early promenades being laid out atop demolished city walls, structures which were much wider than the usually narrow urban streets.  The word was adopted in English because there was a frank admiration of the layout of Paris and the Americans picked it up as an obvious differentiation for some of the widest streets of their newer cities although there was sometimes also an element of a wish to emulate European style.  The word is used in many countries with the same French spelling adopted in English although there are variants including the Spanish bulevar and the Turkish bulvar and in Italian the word is sometimes used in the otherwise archaic sense of embankment (a direct inheritance of the sense of “rampart”).  The noun boulevardier dates from 1856 and deconstructed literally means “one who frequents the boulevard”, the implication being ”man-about-town, a city dweller, part of café society”.  Boulevardier was later adopted (also as boulevard cruiser & boulevard car) to describe cars which ape the style of high-speed machines but sacrifice performance for comfort and ease of operation.  In urban cartography & town planning the most common abbreviation is blvd. but bd. & bl. are also used.  Boulevard is a noun and boulevardier is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is boulevards.

The Boulevardier cocktail

Erskine Gwynne (1898-1948) between 1927-1932 was the publisher of Paris Boulevardier, an English-language magazine in the vein of the New Yorker, its market the then quite large colony of Anglo-American expats living in Paris.  While in Paris, Gwynne created a cocktail called the Boulevardier which he suggested was the ideal drink for his readership but it was after it was included in Harry MacElhone’s (1890-1958) book Barflies and Cocktails (1927), that it became popular on both sides of the Atlantic.

Made with whiskey, sweet vermouth and Campari, the Boulevardier is a variation of the classic Negroni, renowned when properly mixed for its deft balance of bitter, boozy and sweet (although some anthologies of cocktails asterisk a proviso that women often prefer them with more vermouth and thus sweeter).  However, while the gin-based Negroni is crisp and refreshing, the whiskey-rich Boulevardier is rich and warming, very much a drink for dark evenings.  Traditionally, it was made with bourbon but there are recipes which use the spicier rye whiskey and, unlike a Negroini where classically the ingredients are in equal parts, a Boulevardier mixes the whiskey in a slightly higher proportion.  It’s served on ice, stirred and garnished with an orange twist.

Ingredients

1 ¼ ounces bourbon whiskey

1 oz Campari

1 oz sweet vermouth

Garnish: orange twist

Instructions

Add bourbon, Campari and sweet vermouth into a mixing glass with ice and stir until well-chilled.  Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice.  Garnish with an orange twist.

Boulevard cars

1961 Chevrolet Impala SS.

The idea of the “boulevard car” was concocted to describe cars which ape the style of high-speed machines but sacrifice performance for comfort and ease of operation, usually at a lower price; for show rather than go as it were.  Chevrolet actually institutionalized the concept in 1962 with their popular SS (Super Sport) option pack.  The option had first appeared in 1961 and was available for any Impala and although much admired, that Chevrolet that year built close to half a million Impalas and only 453 buyers opted for what was (at US$53.80) the bargain-priced SS package was an indication the marketing needed to be tweaked.  The problem was that Chevrolet had intended the 1961 SS lived up to its name and it was available only with the 348 & 409 cubic inch (5.7 & 6.7 litre) V8s coupled with a robust four-speed manual transmission, combinations which could be quite raucous and were notably thirstier than many were prepared to tolerate.  The dealers noted how buyers were drawn to the style but were put off by the specification which demanded much more from the driver that the smaller-engined models which wafted effortlessly along, automatic transmissions by now the default choice for most Impala buyers.

1967 Chevrolet SS427

Chevrolet’s solution was to become a template for the whole industry which would spend the next decade making, advertising (and, in relatively small numbers, selling) the so-called "muscle cars" which would become so storied.  The muscle-car ecosystem of those years is better documented and more celebrated than any other phase through which Detroit passed yet the numbers of the genuine high performance machines produced was tiny compared to total production of the models upon which they were based.  The experience of 1961 convinced Chevrolet that what most people wanted was not a tyre-melting muscle car (which came with a thirsty, noisy and sometimes cantankerous engine along with what would become prohibitively expensive insurance rates) but one which looked like one.  Thus after 1962 the SS option became widely available and consisted mostly of fancy trim and sporty accessories, able to be ordered with even the most modest engines.  Splitting the market between drag-strip monsters and boulevard cruisers which could be made to look much the same proved a great success.  For some reason though, late in the decade Chevrolet briefly offered the stand-alone SS427 in an Impala body but without the Impala badge while, confusingly, the actual Impala could be ordered with both the SS package and the 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8.  Thus there was the SS427 and the Impala SS 427, the former rather more special and much sought after today.

1958 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster. 

Manufacturers had been pursuing the concept even before Chevrolet formalized it in the marketing manual.  Even in the interwar years the coincidently named SS cars (which after 1945 become Jaguar) offered essentially the same racy looking machines in a variety of configurations, some of which delivered the performance the lines promised and some did not, the former thought of as genuine sports cars, the latter we would now call boulevard cruisers.  Jaguar considered pursuing the strategy in the early post-war years before deciding sports cars really should all be sporty and although their saloons would come with engines small and large, the roadsters and coupés would be about both show and go.  Mercedes-Benz understood the attraction the 300SL gullwing (W198) had for buyers but knew also it, and the planned roadster version which would be its replacement, were always going to be too expensive for most and that few of them anyway needed a car which could hit what was in the 1950s a most impressive 150 mph (240 km/h).  What they wanted was a stylish machine which recalled the 300SL in which to cruise along wide boulevards.

1955 Mercedes Benz 190 SL.

Thus was crafted the 190 SL (W121; 1955-1963), built on the modest platform of the company’s small, four cylinder saloon rather than the exotic space-frame of the 300 SL.  Eschewed too were costly features like dry-sump lubrication and fuel-injection and the engine was barely more powerful than in the saloon but for a boulevard cruiser that was perfect and over an eight-year run, it out-sold the expensive 300 SL roadster a dozen-fold.  There were plans even for a 220 SL, using the 2.2 litre (134 cubic inch) six cylinder from the “pontoon” saloon and prototypes were built but the continuing success of the 190SL and capacity constraints first postponed and finally doomed the project.  Even this had been an attempt not to create a true sports car but instead make the little roadster cruise the boulevards more smoothly and, in the decades which followed, this indeed was the historic course subsequent generations of the SL would follow.  It would not be until the twenty-first century that the factory would again make an SL for which a racetrack would seem a native environment.

Hilt

Hilt (pronounced hilt)

(1) The handle of a sword or dagger.

(2) The handle of any weapon or tool.

(3) To furnish with a hilt.

(4) As the idiom “to the hilt”, to the maximum extent or degree; completely; fully.

Pre 900:  From the Middle English, from the Old English hilt & hilte (handle of a sword or dagger); cognate with the Middle Dutch hilt & hilte, the Old Norse hjalt, the Old Saxon helta (oar handle) and the Old High German helza (handle of a sword).  Source was the Proto-Germanic helt, heltą, heltǭ, heltō & hiltijō, probably from the primitive Indo-European kel- (to strike, cut).  One form of the idiom which died out was “up to the hilts”, the plural having exactly the same meaning as the still familiar singular; first noted in the 1670s, it was extinct by the mid-eighteenth century except in Scotland and the border regions of northern England where it survived another hundred-odd years.  The vivid imagery summoned by the expression “to the hilt” is of a dagger stabbed into someone’s heart, the blade buried all the way to the hilt.  The phrase is used to suggest one’s total commitment to something although those training British commandoes in such things during World War II did caution that a blade buried in a victim "to the hilt" could be "difficult to get it out", such were "the contractions of the sinews".

Hilt is a European swordsmith’s technical name for the handle of a knife, dagger, sword, or bayonet; the once used terms haft and shaft have long been obsolete.  The hilt consists of a pommel, grip and guard.

Lindsay Lohan with saw-tooth edged dagger held at the hilt; from a Tyler Shields (b 1982) photo session, 2013.

The pommel is the large fitting at the top of the handle, originally developed to prevent the weapon slipping from the grasp but during the late medieval period, swordsmiths began to add weight so they were sufficiently heavy to be a counterweight to the blade.  This had the effect of shifting the point of balance closer to the hilt, the physics of this assisting swordsmanship.  The pommel could also be used as a blunt instrument with which to strike an opponent, something from the German school of swordsmanship known as the Mordhau (or Mordstreich or Mordschlag (literally "murder-stroke" or "murder-strike" or "murder-blow") method, a half-sword technique of holding the sword inverted, with both hands gripping the blade while striking one's opponent with the pommel or crossguard.  The technique essentially makes as sword function as a mace or hammer and in military training was envisaged for use in armoured combat although in the hands of a skilled exponent it could be deadly in close combat.  Some hilts were explicitly designed for this purpose.  The word pommel is from the Middle English pommel (ornamental knob or ball, decorative boss), from the Old French pom (hilt of a sword) & pommel (knob) and the Medieval Latin pumellum & pōmellum (little apple), probably via the Vulgar Latin pomellum (ball, knob), diminutive of the Late Latin pōmum (apple).  The use in weaponry came first, the sense of "front peak of a saddle" dating from the mid 1400s and in fifteenth and sixteenth century poetry it also sometimes meant "a woman's breasts".  The gymnast's pommel horse (vaulting horse) is so called by 1908, named for the removable handles, which resemble pommels of a saddle, the use in saddlery noted first in 1887.

Grips are still made almost always of wood or metal and once were usually wrapped with shagreen (untanned tough leather or shark skin) but this proved less durable in climates with high-humidity and in these regions, rubber was increasingly used from the mid-nineteenth century.  Whatever the material, it’s almost always both glued to the grip and wrapped with wire in a helix.  The guard sits between grip and blade.  The guard was originally a simple stop (a straight crossbar perpendicular to the blade (later called a quillon)) to prevent the hand slipping up the blade but later evolved into an armoured gauntlet to protect the wielder's entire hand from an opponent’s sword.  By the sixteenth century, guards became elaborate, now often decorative as well as functional, the innovation of this time being a single curved piece alongside the fingers (parallel with the blade and perpendicular to any cross-guards); it became known as the knuckle-bow.

Pullman

Pullman (pronounced pool-muhn or pull-minn)

(1) A range of railroad sleeping cars produced by the Pullman Palace Car Company which operated in the US between 1867 and 1968.

(2) A generic term for up-market coaches and train carriages.

(3) A term used by certain automobile manufacturers to describe lengthened versions of their limousines; most associated with Humber in the UK and Daimler-Benz in Germany.

(4) A type of long, square bread developed to be baked in the small kitchens of rail cars.

(5) As Pullman case, a type of large suitcase.

(6) In architecture, a long, narrow room, a visual allusion to the interior of a railway carriage.

1867: From the name of Chicago-based US engineer and industrialist George Mortimer Pullman (1831–1897).  It was first applied to the luxury railway coaches the Pullman Palace Car Company introduced in 1867, first in Chicago, later used across the US.  The name became widely used in a number of countries, used to describe up-market coaches and train carriages.

Interiors of Pullman Train Carriages

Bristol Type 26 Pullman

The Bristol Pullman first flew in 1918, designated originally as the Type 24 Braemar Triplane, a four-engined heavy bomber.  Tests soon revealed performance deficiencies and, as the Type 25 Braemar II, a second prototype took to the air in 1919, now with four, more powerful straight-12 Liberty engines and though it proved satisfactory the end of hostilities meant the Air Ministry no longer required a long-range bomber so Bristol reconfigured the third prototype as the Type 26 Pullman, a fourteen-passenger transport.  The use of the Pullman name was an allusion to the luxury of trains although, weight of greater significance in airframes, the fittings were notably less extravagant.  Although exhibited to acclaim at the 1920 Olympia Air Show in 1920, the projected price was too high for the embryonic civilian airlines of the era and the Pullman never entered production, the sole prototype dismantled in 1921 but in a sense, it really was the first “modern” airliner.  The wildly ambitious Type 40 Pullman, an enlarged forty-passenger version, never advanced beyond the drawing board.  Whether the Type 25 it would have been an effective heavy bomber has been debated.  The top speed was claimed to be 122 mph (196 km/h) which was competitive with the fighters of the time and the service ceiling was said to 15,000 feet (4575 m), a height which even some of the early heavy bombers of World War II struggled to match but whether these numbers would have be matched when fully loaded, under combat conditions, isn’t known.

Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman & Pullman Landaulet

A symbol of the post-war Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) in West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), 1949-1990), Daimler-Benz first showed the Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100) in September 1963 at the Frankfurt Motor Show although deliveries didn’t begin until the following year.  Known as the Grosser (grand or greatest) Mercedes in the tradition of the 770K (W07; 1930-1938 & W150; 1938-1943)), it was what had by the 1960s become an automotive rarity, a genuinely new car with no carry-over components from previous vehicles and was a technological tour de force even eschewing (relatively) noisy electric motors for accessories like windows and sun roofs, instead controlling them via a swift and silent hydraulic system which extended even to automating the closing of doors and trunk (boot).  Powered by a 6.3 litre (386 cubic inch) single overhead camshaft (SOHC) V8, which powered it to a top speed of 128 mph (205 km/h) (124 (200) for the heavier Pullman), it rode on air suspension which, in addition to the expectedly cushion-like ride, permitted the 600 a competence in handling and roadholding exceeding many of the sports car of the era, some of which couldn’t match its straight-line speed.  Remarkably, this was achieved with the use of swing axles at the rear although years of refinement of the anti-squat, anti-dive geometry and a compensating device above the differential tamed the worst of the tendencies inherent in what was, even in the early sixties seen as an inherently flawed design.

600 SWB (left), 600 Pullman 4 door (centre) & 600 Pullman Landaulet with the "short" roof (right).  Although the factory would build the landaulets to the requested configuration, most of the 6 door cars used the "long" fabric roof which began above the front seats while on the 4 door cars, the metal roof extended mid-way into the rear-passenger compartment.  Although the long-roof cars are sometimes referred to as the "presidential", this was never an official designation.

With economies expanding on both sides of the Atlantic, Daimler-Benz had great expectations for the 600, predicting sales would soon exceed a thousand a year but, after an encouraging 345 were built in 1965 (the first full-year of production), demand waned and even that high-water mark was never again approached.  The increasingly onerous regulations being imposed in the United States meant that by 1972, the 600 had to be withdrawn from what had always been the most important market.  After that, although dictators in Africa and Asia remained fond of the things, there simply weren’t enough of them to sustain the line and the company concentrated on the UK, European and Middle Eastern markets and there were some encouraging signs until in something of an own goal, in 1972 Mercedes-Benz released the W116, the first model to be known as the “S Class” and, although in a different market segment to the grosser, it was so advanced and obviously modern that instantly it made the anyway rather baroque 600 look antiquated.  The final nail in the coffin was the first oil shock in 1973 and from then until the end of the line in 1981, production dwindled to a handful a year, availability maintained only because of the thing’s importance in the brand’s image and the lingering aura of having upon its release been lauded generally as “the best car in the world”, perhaps the last time about that there would be a consensus.

600 Pullman Landaulets: 4 doors with the short roof (left & centre) and 6 door with the long roof (right).  The factory built the Pullmans to order and there were many variations (one Pullman even built as a "family car" without the glass partition which normally separated the chauffeur from the passengers), most of the 4 door cars were fitted with "vis-a-vis" seating whereas the 6 door models usually had occasional "jump seats" which folded into the central partition.

The standard 600 was built on a wheelbase of 3200 mm (126”) while the Pullmans (and all but one of the landaulets) used a lengthened platform, extending this to 3900 mm (153 ½“).  Often (correctly but somewhat misleadingly) referred to as the SWB (short wheelbase), the standard car was 5540 mm (218 “) in length while the elongated Pullmans (LWB or long wheelbase) stretch this to 6240 mm (245¾”) and the weight varied, depending on configuration between 3000-3300 kg (6600-7275 lb).  Over the eighteen-odd years it was on the books, Mercedes built 2677 600s (including 45 “special protection” versions, a coupé and one SWB landaulet), the breakdown being:

6 door 600 Pullman Landaulet (left), 4 dr 600 Pullman Landaulet used by the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany) for Queen Elizabeth II's 1965 state visit (centre) and 4 door 600 Pullman.

Few cars have ever so encapsulated an association with wealth and power which is why Pullmans continue to be sought be film directors looking for a prop which at a glance delivers the desired verisimilitude.  Additionally, being long and low-slung, unlike the traditional, upright Rolls-Royce Phantom limousines, the Pullmans always managed to convey something slightly sinister, thus the appearance in films of a certain kind although the use in The Exorcist probably was about money.  If the look alone isn’t enough, the ownership list included: King Khalid Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, Park Chung-hee, Josip Broz Tito, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Pol Pot, Enver Hoxha, Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Emperor Hirohito, FW de Klerk, Leonid Brezhnev, Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi, Ferdinand Marcos (who owned four, including a Landaulet and a “special protection”, Kim Il-sung (the Great Leader passing his two landaulets (along with the rest of the DPRK (North Korea) to Kim Jong-il (the Dear Leader) and Kim Jong-un (the Supreme Leader), Saddam Hussein, the last Shah of Iran who had several, Chairman Mao Zedong, Chen Yi, Deng Xiaoping (wife of Zhou Enlai), Deng Yingchao, Norodom Sihanouk, Léopold Sédar, Nicolae Ceauşescu, Idi Amin Dada, Enver Hoxha, Papa Doc Duvalier, Josip Broz Tito & Mobutu Sese Seko.

SCV 1, the 600 Pullman used as the papal car by the Holy See, 1965-1986.

The 600 Pullman landaulet presented to Pope Paul VI (1897–1978; pope 1963-1978) and used by the Holy See between 1965-1986 was the latest in a line of papal Mercedes-Benz which had included a 1930 Nürburg 460 (W08) and a 1960 300d Cabriolet D (W189), both fitted with the throne-like, single rear seat, the same configuration used in “popemobiles” to this day.  It was one of the 45 “special build” 600s, using the long wheelbase platform but with the rear doors 256 millimeters longer and directly adjoining the front doors.  The roof of the Pullman landaulet was raised by 70 millimeters to provide adequate headroom, something necessitated by the floor being level in the rear, the transmission tunnel concealed underneath.  The car since 1986 has been on display in the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Untertürkheim, complete with the registration SCV 1 (Stato della Città del Vaticano 1 (Vatican City State No 1), the number one identifying the pope’s official car at any given time, much as the US Air Force call-sign Air Force 1 moves with the president).

Lindsay Lohan with 600 Pullman during the filming of Liz & Dick (2012).

A most unfortunate conjunction of imagery: Adolf Hitler on Berlin's newly opened East-West Axis in his 770K Grosser Cabriolet F open tourer (W150; 1939-1943) in a parade marking his fiftieth birthday, opposite the Technical High School, 20 April 1939 (left) and David Bowie in his 600 Pullman Landaulet, Victoria Station, London, 2 May 1976 (right).

The pop star David Bowie (1947-2016) understood he was an influential figure in music but on more than one occasion explained to interviewers: “I am not an original thinker”.  Trawling pop-culture for inspiration nevertheless served him well but he later came to regret dabbling with history slightly less recent.  Not impressed with the state of British society and its economy in the troubled mid-1970s, he was quoted variously as suggesting the country would benefit for “an ultra right-wing government” or “a fascist leader”.  Although he would later claim he was captivated more by the fashions than the policies of the Third Reich, the most celebrated event of this period came in 1976 in what remains known as the "Victoria Station incident".  Bowie staged a media event, arriving standing in an open 600 Pullman Landaulet, recalling for many the way in which Hitler so often appeared in his 770K.  Unfortunately, a photographer captured a shot in what the singer later claimed was “mid wave” and it certainly resembled as Nazi salute.  He later attributed all that happened during this stage of his career to too many hard drugs which had caused his interest in the aesthetics of inter-war Berlin to turn into an obsession with politics of the period.  All was however quickly forgiven and his audience awaited the next album which is an interesting contrast to the cancel culture created by the shark-feeding dynamic of the social media era.  Now, were a pop star to tell interviewers: “Britain could benefit from a fascist leader” and “I believe very strongly in fascism … Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars”, their future career prospects might be "nasty, solitary, brutish and short".

Cheque

Cheque (pronounced chek)

(1) A bill, debenture, coupon, IOU, receipt, warrant, order or bond (all now rare).

(2) A bill of exchange drawn on a bank by the holder of a current account; payable into a bank account, if crossed, or on demand, if uncrossed.

(3) In agricultural jargon (Australian and NZ), the total sum of money received for contract work or a crop; a slang term for wages.

1828: From the Middle English chek & chekke, borrowed from the Old French eschek, eschec & eschac, from the Medieval Latin scaccus, a borrowing from the Arabic شَاه‎ (šāh), from the Persian شاه‎ (šâh) (king) from the primitive-Indo-Iranian kšáyati (he rules, he has power over), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European tek- (to gain power over, gain control over).  The first cheque book was issued in England in 1872, the first checking account in the US offered in 1897.  The meaning as a negotiable instrument for the transfer of money comes from check in the sense of a means of verification (ie a check against forgery or fraud) and was influenced by exchequer, from Old French eschequier.  Chèque is the French spelling, chequé the Spanish.

Crooked Hillary Clinton summing up her campaign strategy.

Check is the original spelling, cheque coming into use in 1828 when James William Gilbart (1794-1863) published his Practical Treatise on Banking.  The spellings check, checque, and cheque were used interchangeably between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries but cheque became the standard form for the financial instrument in the Commonwealth and Ireland, while check is used only for other meanings, thus distinguishing the two definitions in writing.  The Americans, preferring the spelling check for all purposes lost this; one of the rare examples where the American spelling of English words incurs a disadvantage.

Lindsay Lohan with novelty check (cheque), part of a protest on Billy Eichner’s “Billy on the Street” piece about about a television show being cancelled, New York, 2014.  The piece didn't result in the show returning for another season but did succeed in the demolition of a Volvo so there's that.