Fuselage

Fuselage pronounced fyoo-suh-lahzh, fyoo-suh-lij, fyoo-zuh-lahzh or fyoo-suh-lahzh)

(1) In aeronautical design, the complete central structure of an airplane, to which are attached the wings (or rotors), tail and other stabilizing fins or surfaces (engines sometimes also directly attached or enclosed).  It is inside the fuselage where the crew, passengers, cargo and most internals systems are located.

(2) In design, a style which borrows from or alludes to the elements used in aircraft fuselages.

(3) By extension, the main body of an aerospace vehicle

1909 (In English): From the French fuselage, the construct being fusel(é) (spindle-shaped), from fuseler (to shape like a spindle), from the Old French fus or fuseau (spindle), from the Latin fusus (spindle) + -age.  The French suffix -age was from the Middle & Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum, (greatly) extended from words like rivage and voyage.  It was used usually to form nouns with the sense of (1) "action or result of Xing" or (more rarely), "action related to X" or (2) "state of being (a or an) X".  A less common use was the formation of collective nouns.  Historically, there were many applications (family relationships, locations et al) but use has long tended to be restricted to the sense of "action of Xing".  Many older terms now have little to no connection with their most common modern uses, something particularly notable of those descended from actual Latin words (fromage, voyage et al).  In English, the suffix -age was from the Middle English -age, from the Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum.  Cognates include the French -age, the Italian -aggio, the Portuguese -agem, the Spanish -aje & Romanian -aj.  It was used to form nouns (1) with the sense of collection or appurtenance, (2) indicating a process, action, or a result, (3) of a state or relationship, (4) indicating a place, (5) indicating a charge, toll, or fee, (6) indicating a rate & (7) of a unit of measure.  Fuselage is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is fuselages.

Many languages also borrowed fuselage but there were sometimes variations in spelling including in Catalan (fuselatge), Portuguese (fuselagem), Spanish (fuselaje), Russian (fjuzeljáž (фюзеля́ж)), Kazakh (füzeläj (фюзеляж)) and Ukrainian (fjuzeljáž (фюзеля́ж)).  It’s not clear when “fuselage” was first used in English, the earliest known reference dating from 1909 but it’s not improbable the word had earlier been in oral use.  The alternative was presumably “hull” (the body or frame of shop, boat or other such vessel).  Hull was from the Middle English hul, hulle & holle (seed covering, hull of a ship), from the Old English hulu (seed covering), from the Proto-Germanic hul- (and related to the Dutch hul (hood) and the German Hülle & Hülse (cover, veil)), and may have been from either the primitive Indo-European forms ḱel- (to cover, hide) or kal- (hard).  Hull came into wide use in aircraft design when “flying boats” were developed.

Flying boats: Short S.25 Sunderland (1938-1946) (left) and Dornier Do X (1929-1932) (right). 

Most aeroplanes have fuselages; flying boats have hulls, a tribute to the nautical part of their hybrid origin.  Commercially, flying boats were widely used during the inter-war years because of their range and, needing only a suitable body of water (sea, lake, river), their ability to operate in regions without suitable aerodromes.  A vital military machine during World War II (1939-1945), the advances in aircraft design during that conflict, coupled with the proliferation of airstrip construction able to be re-purposed for civil use doomed them for all but some specialist uses.  Quickly they almost vanished from European and (most) North American skies and waterways, enduring in the Far East only until infrastructure there too was improved.

The fuselage can be optional: Dunne D.5 (1908) (left), Northrop YB-49 prototype (1947) (centre) and Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit (1989) (right).

In the early days of aviation, before even an airplane had flown the English Channel, designers had been intrigued when their slide-rule calculations suggested the optimal shape of a flying machine was a "flying wing" with no conventional fuselage and certainly no tail-plane apparatus.  Tests of scale models in primitive wind tunnels proved the math was substantially correct and proof of concept tests using an unpowered glider proved inconclusive, it being clear only a powered flight would demonstrate if such a design could achieve stable flight.  When tested, the designer admitted an early, under-powered, version was "more a hopper than a flyer" but when fitted with more powerful engines, the "flying wings" proved remarkably stable.  However, more conventional designs proved more suitable for military use and that, increasingly was where the source of funding was to be found.  Despite that, the idea continued to fascinate designers and a flying wing was one of the extraordinary range of experimental aircraft under development in Nazi Germany during World War II, most of which never made any contribution to the Luftwaffe's war effort.  In the US, Northrop built both propeller and jet-powered prototypes in the 1940s and after early difficulties, a stable platform emerged although, like most designs, it both offered advantages and imposed restrictions but the whole project was cancelled; ever since some have argued this was due to political influence while others claim the flaws in the concept were so fundamental they couldn't be fixed.  The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit (in service with the US Air Force (USAF) until at least 2034) is a modified version of a flying wing in that its really a variation of a delta with an integrated fuselage.

Ascending the stairs: Lindsay Lohan entering a fuselage, Mykonos, Greece, August 2016.

In the early days of aviation during the twentieth century’s first decade, French engineers and inventors were the most innovative on the planet and this is reflected in the world-wide adoption of many French terms for some of the bits and pieces which continue to be used.  English, rarely inclined to create a new word if there was a manageable one in some other language which could be absorbed (“borrowed” still the term etymologists, strangely perhaps, prefer) and the French words which formed the basis of the early lexicon of aviation are a particular example of technological determinism in language.  Other orthodox terms in aviation include:

Aileron: A hinged flight-control surface usually attached to the trailing edge of each wing and used to change the roll (ie cause fuselage to begin rotation).  Although the word “flaps” is commonly used of ailerons, the flaps are usually positioned closer to the fuselage and are used to increase or reduce lift & drag.  The flap-like devices mounted on the trailing edges of the vertical stabilizers (somewhere in the tail-section) are properly called “elevators”.  Aileron was a diminutive of aile (wing) and before powered flight (flying machines) had been used in ornithology to refer to the extremities of a bird's wings used to control their flight.  There is an entry in a French-English dictionary dating from 1877 (with the lead meaning: “small wing”) and in the context of the language of aviation, the earliest known use in entry in French technical literature is from 1908.

Empennage: The tail assembly of an aircraft, including the horizontal and vertical stabilizers, elevators, and rudder. Empennage was from the French empenner (to feather an arrow).

Chassis: This was the original term used in English to describe the framework of an aircraft but soon was replaced by "frame, structure etc"), presumably because of the association with the heavy steel constructions used in cars and trucks, things far removed from the lightweight designs needed in the air.  Chassis was from the French chassis (frame, supporting structure), from châsse (reliquary; coffin), from the Latin capsa (case).

Concours d'Elegance: Not strictly an aviation term and most associated with affairs like those in Pebble Beach where rows of vintage Bentleys, Ferraris and such (the latter always in a much better state of finish than when they left the factory) are judged for their closeness to perfection.  Although not strictly a term from aviation, there are such events for old aircraft.  Concours d'Elegance was from the French concours d'élégance (competition of elegance).

Pilot: Pilot was from the Middle French pilot & pillot, from the Italian pilota & piloto, (pedotta, pedot & pedotto the older forms), the pil- element probably influenced by pileggiare (to sail, navigate), ultimately from the unattested Byzantine Greek *πηδώτης (pēdṓtēs) (helmsman), from the Ancient Greek πηδόν (pēdón) (blade of an oar, oar) (the the Ancient and Modern Greek πηδάλιον (pēdálion) (rudder).  Familiar from nautical use, pilot was a straight borrowing for the person fulfilling the same function in the air.  The construct of pilotage was pilot + -age.

Canard: A type of aircraft configuration where the tail-plane is ahead of the main lifting surfaces.  In aviation, a canard is either (1) a type of aircraft in which the primary horizontal control and stabilization surfaces are in front of the main wing or (2) a horizontal control and stabilization surface located in front of the main wing of an aircraft (a fore-plane).  In just about any form of engineering involving movement and fluid dynamics (air, plasma, water etc), a canard is a small, wing-like structure used usually as a stabilizing device.  Canard was from the French canard (duck, hoax) and in English as “a canard”, is still used in that sense to mean “a false or misleading report or story, especially if deliberately so”.

The Fuselage Chryslers, 1968-1973

1969 Imperial LeBaron, four-door hardtop.

The “fuselage” Chryslers were released late in 1968 for the 1969 model year and, as a class, remain the largest regular production cars ever made by the US industry.  In the catalogue between 1968-1973, by the end of their run the Imperial was built on a 127 inch (3226 mm) wheelbase, was 235 ½ (5981 mm) inches in length and almost 80 (2022 mm) inches in width.  Big cars from Detroit were not uncommon in the 1960s (Buick in 1959 even naming their top-of-the-range model the Electra 225, a tribute to its 225 inch (5715 mm) length) but even by those standards the fuselage cars not only were vast but the bulbous shape (source of the “fuselage” tag) made them appear more excessive still; it wasn’t only for the big Chryslers the derisive “land yacht” was coined but the line exemplified the idea.  In fairness, the trend generally was “longer, heavier & fatter”, even once compact (by US standards) and agile machines like Ford’s Mustang and Thunderbird bloating with each update although the manufacturers were aware there was considerable public demand for something smaller and by the late 1960s, those in the pipelines were well-advanced.  However, demand for the full-sized cars remained strong and Chrysler decided their lines should be more full-sized than ever, thus the fuselage design.  There was at the time a bit of an aeronautical influence about and that was nothing new, jet aircraft and space rockets during the previous two decades having contributed many of the motifs which appeared on US cars.  During the development cycle for the fuselage cars, Chrysler were well-acquainted with the appearance of the Boeing 747, sketches circulating for some three years before its first public appearance in September 1968, coincidently just days after the Chrysler’s debuted.  In its appearance, the bulging 747 was the same sort of departure from the earlier, slender 707 as the 1969 Chryslers were from their rectilinear predecessors.

1969 Chrysler 300 advertising.  In graphics & text, the "fuselage" motif was integral to the promotion; it was no mere nickname. 

In some ways the styling has aged surprisingly well because the basic lines are uncluttered and, particularly on the higher priced editions, there was some nice detailing but at the time, critics found the look peculiar and a deviance from the direction other manufacturers were travelling.  The sides were unusually deep and rounded (recalling, obviously, an airplane’s fuselage) with a beltline so high the glasshouse (the cabin area defined by the windows) was relatively shallow, something accentuated by the surrounding bulk.  The corporation’s full-sized platform (internally the “C-Body”), it was shared by the Plymouth, Dodge, Chrysler and Imperial lines, the latter a surprise to some because since 1955 when it had been established as a separate division, the Imperial had been built on a unique platform.  However, despite some encouraging results in the 1950s, Imperial never achieved the volume which would have justified another unique platform so the line was merged into mainstream development.

1969 Imperial LeBaron advertising.  The "messaging" in this advertisement remains obscure.

The debut season saw good sales for the fuselage cars (though still more than 10% down on the previous C-Body (1965-1968)) but demand dropped precipitously in the next three years although sales were in buoyant in 1973 when many manufacturers set records; it was the last good year for the “old” American economy and the swansong of the long post-war boom built on cheap, limitless energy and the uniquely advantageous position the country enjoyed after the war; something squandered by the mistakes of more than one administration.  It was certainly unfortunate timing for Chrysler that the first oil crisis should hit just weeks after they had replaced the fuselage cars with something mechanically similar but with clever styling tricks (even the engineers admitted it was “nips & tucks; smoke & mirrors”), something dimensionally similar appeared both smaller and more modern.  Underneath, as the fuselage line had been, was essentially a good product, Chrysler’s basic engineering always good and while the big machines would never behave like a Lotus Elan, on the road they were competent and in most aspects as good as or better than the competition.

The last of Harry S Truman's (1884–1972; US president 1945-1953) many cars was a 1972 Chrysler Newport, the entry-level model in Chrysler's Fuselage range (some Plymouth & Dodge models were cheaper still).  Purchased some six months before his death, the licence plate (5745) was a special request, a reference to 7 May, 1945 (VE Day (Victory in Europe).  Truman was in office on that day and the plate has since permanently been retired.

The first oil shock hit demand for the 1974 cars and the timing was bad for all points in the production and distribution chain.  Noting the favourable reviews, dealers had ordered large stocks to meet the expected demand but the Arab Oil Embargo meant sales of big cars collapsed and the Chryslers, with V8 engines between 318-440 cubic inches (5.2-7.2 litres) were as thirsty as any of their ilk and supplies of cars expected to be sold in days languished on dealer’s lots for months.  In response, Chrysler shut down two manufacturing plants while trying to increase production or imports of small, fuel-efficient vehicles.  Sales of the big cars in 1974 were barely half those of the previous year and the breakdown of those was a harbinger for the whole industry, the numbers disproportionately slanted towards the higher-priced lines, the entry-level models attracting interest mostly from fleet operators and law enforcement.  The days of the low-cost big sedans which appealed to those like Harry Truman who liked the virtues without the ostentation, were over.

1978 Chrysler New Yorker advertising.  Still obviously bulky, the 1974-1978 re-style toned down the fuselage look although the interiors in tufted leather or velor became increasingly baroque.  Publications like Road & Track (R&T) where the writers disapproved of anything so big (they thought everyone should drive a Lancia) sneered at the extravagant fit-out, dismissing it as "gingerbread" but it was a luxurious and isolating environment.  There were still many who liked that sort of thing, none of whom maintained subscriptions to R&T.

So the writing was on the wall and even by 1977 when the oil crisis faded from memory and it seemed buyers were ready again to buy big, Chrysler was left with its now 1974 range while press and public fawned over General Motors’ (GM) newly slimmed-down, taut looking, full-size cars, the style and dimensions of which were so obviously the future.  Tellingly, while radically reduced in weight and external measurements, on the inside, they were in most places as capacious as both their predecessors and the now antique Chryslers which were still just an update of the 1969 fuselage range.  With the coming of 1976, the corporation had accepted the inevitable and axed the Imperial brand, Chrysler's top-of-the-range New Yorker tarted-up with left-over Imperial trim to become the new flagship.  The end was close and in 1978 it came, that the last year of the big Chryslers released with such high expectations a decade before and when the line was retired, it took with it the once popular four-door hardtop body-style, other manufacturers having already retired their models.  Shockingly inefficient though they are, the few surviving land yachts have a small but devoted following who appreciate what remains a unique driving experience (one as enjoyable as a passenger) and it's unlikely anything like them will ever be built again.

Roadster

Roadster (pronounced rohd-ster)

(1) An early automobile having an open body, a single seat for two or three persons, and a large trunk or a rumble seat.

(2) A horse for riding or driving on the road (archaic).

(3) A two-seater, convertible sports car.

(4) A sea-going vessel riding at anchor in a road or bay.

(5) In coastal navigation, a clumsy vessel that works its way from one anchorage to another by means of the tides.

(6) A bicycle, or tricycle, adapted for common roads, rather than for the racing track, usually of classic style and steel-framed construction (archaic).

(7) Slang for one who drives much or one who lives along the road (UK (8) archaic).

(8) Slang for a hunter who keeps to the roads instead of following the hounds across country (archaic).

(9) The pre-modern class of racing car most associated with the classic era of the Indianapolis 500 (1952-1964).

1735–1745: A compound word, road + -ster.  Road was from the Middle English rode & rade (ride, journey) from the Old English rād (riding, hostile incursion) from the Proto-Germanic raidō (a ride), from the primitive Indo-European reydh (to ride). It was cognate with raid, a doublet acquired from the Scots, and the West Frisian reed (paved trail/road, driveway).  The –ster suffix is applied to someone (or something) associated with an act or characteristic, or does something specified.  It’s from the Middle English –ster & -estere from the Old English -estre (-ster, the feminine agent suffix), from the Proto-Germanic –istrijǭ &, -astrijǭ from the primitive Indo-European -is-ter- (suffix).  It was cognate with the Old High German -astria, the Middle Low German –ester and the Dutch -ster.  Roadster is a noun; the noun plural is roadsters.

Roadsters, gullwings and courtesans

1920 Stutz Bearcat, the classic American roadster of the early inter-war years.  Such was its allure, it was (apocryphally) claimed that should anyone die at the wheel of a Stutz Bearcat, they were granted an obituary in the New York Times (NYT).

In the United States of the mid-nineteenth century, a roadster was a horse suitable for travelling and by the early 1900s, the definition had expanded to include bicycles and tricycles.  In 1916, the US Society of Automobile Engineers (SAE) defined a roadster as "an open car seating two or three”, a meaning which endures to this day.  Despite the origins, use was patchy in the US with the word applied to vehicles as diverse as the front-engined USAC (Indy) racing cars of the 1950s, a variety of 1930s convertibles and the custom post-war creations otherwise known as hot-rods.

Two of the 1963 Kurtis Kraft Roadsters which ran at the 1963 Indianapolis 500.  Car 56 (Jim Hurtubise (1932–1989)) qualified 3^rd (150.257 mph (241.815 km/h)) but retired on lap 102 after suffering an oil leak.  Car 75 (Art Malone (1936–2013)) qualified 25^th (148.343 (238.735 km/h)) but retired on lap 18 with clutch failure.

Both Kurtis Kraft Roadsters used the supercharged, double overhead camshaft (DOHC) Novi V8 (167–183 cubic inch (2.7–3.0 litres)) which appeared on the Indy 500 grid between 1941-1966.  The Novi was famous for the howl it produced at full cry but it never achieved its potential because chassis and tyre technology didn’t advance to the point its prodigious power could successfully be handled, the adoption of an all-wheel-drive (AWD) platform (then still referred to as four-wheel-drive (4WD) which now is usually reserved for vehicles which claim some off-road capability) coming too late.  The Novi V8 and is sometimes compared to the 1.5 litre (91 cubic inch) BRM V16, another charismatic, supercharged, small displacement engine with a narrow power band.  The unusual fin on car 75 was an attempt to improve straight-line stability, an approach often used in the era before the implications of down-force fully were understood.

The Indy folklore is the adoption of the term “roadster” to describe the final era of the front-engined cars was the result of an act of subterfuge.  What defined the “Indy Roadster” was the engine and drive shaft being offset from the center-line of the car, something which allowed the driver to sit lower in the chassis thereby optimizing the weight distribution for use on (anti-clockwise) oval tracks.  It was in 1952 quite an innovation and the legend is that whenever there were visitors in their workshop, the Kurtis team covered the chassis with a tarpaulin and if asked, casually dismissed what lay beneath as “just our roadster” (then a common term for a “hot rod”, a hobby which became popular in the post-war years).  The name stuck when the car appeared, the design for a decade the dominant configuration in open-wheel oval racing although the writing was on the wall in 1961 when Jack Brabham (1926–2014) appeared at the brickyard in an under-powered mid-engined Cooper Climax which, although out-paced by the roadsters on the straights, posted competitive times because of its superior speed in the curves.  After that, the end of the roadster era came quickly and by 1965 one could manage to finish only as high as fifth, the last appearance at Indianapolis coming in 1968 when Jim Hurtubise’s Mallard retired after nine laps with a dropped piston (something as serious as it sounds).

1954 Jaguar XK120s: Roadster (open two-seater (OTS) in the UK and certain export markets; left) and Drop Head Coupé (DHC; right).  The roadsters were lighter and intended as dual-purpose vehicles which could be road-registered, driven to circuits and with relatively few changes be immediately competitive in racing.  The DHCs were based on the heavier, more luxuriously trimmed Fixed Head Coupé (FHC) coachwork while the roadsters featured cutaway doors without external handles or side windows and a removable windscreen.  Variations on this pre-war pattern was common in the British and parts of the European industry; even the early Chevrolet Corvettes were true roadsters.  

In pre-war Europe (though less so in the UK where “sports-car” or “open two seater” tended to be preferred), roadsters were often those with most rakish or flamboyant bodies, offered either by the factory or outside coachbuilders.  After the war, the term came to be restricted to what were once known as sports cars, the smaller, lighter and most overtly sporty of the line.  British manufacturers also distinguished, within a line of convertible two-seaters between lightweight roadsters and the more lavishly equipped drop-head coupés (DHC) which had features such a full-doors and side windows, neither always fitted to roadsters.  Interestingly, the early Jaguar XK120s and 140s (1949-1957) were marketed as open two-seaters (OTS) in UK and roadsters in the US, the home market not adopting the export nomenclature until the XK150 in 1958.

300 SL gullwing (1954-1957)

Although the public found them glamorous, the engineers at Mercedes-Benz had never been enamored by the 300 SL’s gullwing doors, regarding them a necessary compromise imposed by the high side-structure of the spaceframe which supported the body.  Indeed, the doors had never been intended for use on road-cars, appearing first on the original (W194) 300SL, ten of which were built to contest sports-car racing in 1952.  The W194 had a good season, the most famous victory a 1-2 finish in the 24 Heures du Mans (24 Hours of Le Mans) and this success, along with the exotic lines, attracted the interest of the factory’s US importer who guaranteed the sale of a thousand coupés, essentially underwriting the profitability of full-scale road-car production.  The sales predictions proved accurate and between 1954-1957, 1400 (W198) 300 SL gullwings were built, some eighty percent of which were delivered to North American buyers.  Curiously, at the time, Mercedes-Benz never publicly disclosed what the abbreviation "SL" stood for.  The assumption had long been it meant Sport Light (Sport Leicht), based presumably on the SSKL of 1929-1931 (Super Sport Kurz (short) Leicht) but the factory documentation for decades used both Sport Leicht and Super Leicht.  It was only in 2017 it published a 1952 paper discovered in the corporate archive confirming the correct name is Super Leicht.

300 SL Roadster (1957-1963)

 

That the sales reached the numbers hoped was good because the gullwing was expensive to produce and a certain volume was required to achieve profitability but by 1956, sales were falling.  At that time the US distributer was suggesting there was greater demand for a convertible so the decision was taken to replace the gullwing with a roadster, production of which began in 1957, lasting until 1963 by which time 1858 had been built.  Now with conventional front-hinged doors made possible by a re-design of the tubular frame, the opportunity was taken also to include some improvements, most notably a more powerful engine and the incorporation of low-pivot swing axles in the rear suspension.  The rear axle changes, lowering the pivot-point to 87mm (3.4 inches) below the differential centre-line did reduce the camber changes which could be extreme if cornering was undertaken in an inexpert manner but the tendency was never entirely overcome.  The swing axles, much criticized in later years, need to be understood in the context of their times, the tyres of the 1950s offering nothing like the grip of more modern rubber although it is remains regrettable the factory didn't, for its high-performance road cars, adopt the de Dion rear suspension it used on both road and competition cars during the 1930s.  Although manageable in expert hands, as the Mercedes-Benz Formula One drivers in 1954-1955 proved, the more predictable de Dion would likely have been better suited to most drivers on the roads.  In fairness, the gullwing’s rear suspension did behave better than many of the more primitive swing-axle systems used by other manufacturers but it needed to given that in any given situation, the Mercedes would likely be travelling a deal faster.  Remarkably, the Mercedes-Benz swing-axle arrangement lasted well into the age of the radial-ply tyre, in volume production until 1972 and used until 1981 on the handful of 600 Grossers built every year.

300 SLS (1957)

Less costly to build than the gullwing, a few hundred 300 SL roadsters were sold annually, the price tag reaching even higher in the stratospheric realm.  Unlike the lighter gullwing, the emphasis shifted from a dual-purpose vehicle suited to both road and track to one that was more of a grand-tourer.  The factory however managed to give the car one last fling at competition.  The SCCA (Sports Car Club of America), tired of the gullwing’s domination in the production sports car category, changed the rules to render it uncompetitive and, as the new roadster hadn’t yet achieved the volume needed to qualify for homologation, Mercedes-Benz built a new model: called the 300 SLS (Super Light Sport), two built to contest the SCCA’s modified production class.  Much lighter, slightly more powerful and with a few aerodynamic tweaks, the SLS won the trophy.

As a footnote (one to be noted only by the subset of word nerds who delight in the details of nomenclature), for decades, it was said by many, even normally reliable sources, that SL stood for sports Sports Leicht (sports light) and the history of the Mercedes-Benz alphabet soup was such that it could have gone either way (the SSKL (1929) was the Super Sports Kurz (short) Leicht (light) and from the 1950s on, for the SL, even the factory variously used Sports Leicht and Super Leicht.  It was only in 2017 it published a 1952 paper (unearthed from the corporate archive) confirming the correct abbreviation is Super Leicht.  Sports Leicht Rennsport (Sport Light Racing) seems to be used for the the SLRs because they were built as pure race cars, the W198 and later SLs being road cars but there are references also to Super Leicht Rennsport.  By implication, that would suggest the original 300SL (the 1951 W194) should have been a Sport Leicht because it was built only for competition but given the relevant document dates from 1952, it must have been a reference to the W194 which is thus also a Sport Leicht.  Further to muddy the waters, in 1957 the two lightweight cars based on the new 300 SL Roadster (1957-1963) for use in US road racing were (at the time) designated 300 SLS (Sports Leicht Sport), the occasional reference (in translation) as "Sports Light Special" not supported by any evidence.  The best quirk of the SLS tale however is the machine which inspired the model was a one-off race-car built by Californian coachbuilder ("body-man" in the vernacular of the West Coast hot rod community) Chuck Porter (1915-1982).  Porter's SLS was built on the space-fame of a wrecked 300 SL gullwing (purchased for a reputed US$500) and followed the lines of the 300 SLR roadsters as closely as the W198 frame (taller than that of the W196S) allowed.  Although it was never an "official" designation, Porter referred to his creation as SL-S, the appended "S" standing for "scrap". 

Job done, the factory withdrew from circuit racing although private teams would continue to campaign 300 SLs into the 1970s.  The road-going version continued with little visual change until 1963 although the engineering refinements continued as running changes, disk brakes adopted in 1961, the last few dozen built with a lighter aluminum engine block replacing the cast-iron casting.  When retired, it wasn’t replaced, the W113 (pagoda) and their successors (R107) roadsters a different interpretation of the genre.  It would be decades before Mercedes-Benz would again offer anything like the 300 SL.

190 SL (1955-1963)

The reception afforded the 300 SL prompted the US distributor to suggest a lower cost sports car would also be well-received.  The economics of that dictated the exotic features of the gullwing (dry-sump lubrication, the doors, fuel-injection) couldn’t be used so the factory instead grafted attractive roadster coachwork atop a shortened saloon car platform, the pedestrian four-cylinder engine barely more powerful than when found in its prosaic donor.  Still, the 190 SL (W121) looked the part and could be sold for well under half the price of a gullwing though even then it was hardly cheap, costing a third more than a Chevrolet Corvette and by then the Corvette had been transformed into a most estimable roadster with the addition of the new Chevrolet 265 cubic inch (4.3 litre) small-block V8.  Pleasingly profitable, nearly twenty-six thousand 190 SLs were built over an eight-year run beginning in 1955 and there were even plans for a 220 SL, using the 2.2 litre (134 cubic inch) straight-six from the “pontoon” saloon range (W120-121-105-128-180; 1953-1963) which had provided the roadster's platform.  Prototypes were built and testing confirmed they were production-ready but the continuing success of the 190 SL and capacity constraints first postponed and finally doomed the project.  After production ceased in 1962 (none were built in 1963 but the factory listed the final 104 cars as 1963 models), it wouldn’t be until the 1990s that the concept of a smaller roadster (the R170 SLK) to run alongside the (R129) SL was revived although, since the early 1970s, the SL (R107) had simultaneously been available with engines of different sizes and accordingly placed price-points.

190 SL Rennsport, Macau Grand Prix, 1957.

Though never designed with competition in mind, the factory did construct half a dozen higher-performance Rennsport (motor-racing) packages (referred to internally as the 190 SLR), the most important aspect of which was diet, the weight-reduction achieved with aluminium doors, a smaller Perspex windscreen and the deletion of non-essential items such as the soft top, sound insulation, the heater (they're surprisingly weighty devices) and bumpers.  Although never part of a major racing campaign, it did enjoy success including a class win in a sports car event at Morocco and victory in the 1957 Macau Grand Prix.

Last of the Adenauers: 300d (W189, 1957-1962) Cabriolet D (upper) & the "standard" 300d saloon (four-door hardtop).

Although some of its customers during the mid-twentieth-century (notably between 1933-1945) are understandably neglected in their otherwise comprehensive attention to history, Mercedes-Benz has always acknowledged and publicized the drivers and clients of the 1950s.  Their Formula One drivers (especially Juan Manuel Fangio (1911–1995) & Stirling Moss (1929–2020) were honored for decades after their retirements and Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the Federal Republic, was even afforded the unique distinction of being the nickname for the 300 (W186 & W189, 1951-1962), the big limousine of the era which used a substantially similar engine to the 300 SL's unit.  Note that although the top image is of a convertible, it's a "cabriolet" and not a roadster.  According to Mercedes-Benz, a roadster is a two door, two seater convertible although, since the 1960s, the factory has sometimes offered the option of single (transverse) or conventional rear seat for occasional (and sometimes uncomfortable) use.  Small, these seats were really suitable only for very young children and no pretence was made that they make a roadster into a true four-seater, 2+2 the usual (generous) description.  Being Germans, during the 1930s, Daimler-Benz decided there were sufficient detail differences between the coachwork and hood (in the sense of folding roof) assemblies offered and formalized definitions of five distinct flavors of Mercedes-Benz cabriolets.

Fraulein Rosemarie Nitribitt with 190 SL and Joe der Hund.

However, in a fate shared with some of the most valued clients of the three-pointed star between 1933-1945, nor does the factory’s historic literature dwell on someone perhaps the 190SL’s best known owners, Rosemarie Nitribitt (1933-1957).  Fraulein Nitribitt was, by 1957, Frankfurt’s most illustrious (and reputedly most expensive) prostitute, a profession to which she seems to have been drawn by necessity but at which she proved more than proficient and, as the reports of the time attest, there was nothing furtive in the way she practiced her trade.  Something of a celebrity in Frankfurt, the republic’s financial centre, her black roadster became so associated with her business model that the 190SL was at the time often referred to as the “Nitribitt-Mercedes”, her car seen frequently, if briefly, parked in the forecourts of the city’s better hotels.  Unlike the contemporary connection with Herr Adenauer, the factory never acknowledged this nickname.

190 SL sales breakdown

The lives of prostitutes, even the more highly priced, can descend to their conclusion along a Hobbesian path and in 1957, aged twenty-four, she was murdered in her smart apartment, strangled with a silk stocking, the body not found for several days.  Given Fraulein Nitribitt operated at the upper end of the market, her clients tended variously to be rich, famous & powerful and that attracted the raft of inevitable conspiracy theories there had been a cover-up to protect their interests, a rather botched police investigation encouraging such rumors.  The murder remains unsolved.  It has been suggested sales of the 190 SL suffered because of the connection, the little roadster briefly attracting the moniker “whore’s taxi” and indeed, there was a decline in the period.  However, 1956 was the first year of full-production and a second-year drop-off in sales is not unknown, gullwing production for example dropped to 308 in 1956, quite a fall from the 855 achieved the previous year and while, at least in Germany, the association with the dead courtesan may have been off-putting for the bourgeoise, without qualitative data, one really can’t say.  There was a precipitous decline in 1958 but that was the year of the worst US recession of the post-war boom and it was in the US most of the drop was booked; sales anyway quickly recovered on both sides of the Atlantic.

Frankfurt police officers examining Helga Matura's 220 SE cabriolet.  Note the jackboots.

In a coincidence of circumstances, a decade later, Fraulein Helga Sofie Matura (1933-1966) was another high-end prostitute murdered in Frankfurt, the weapon this time a stiletto (the stylish shoe rather than the slender blade).  Never subject to the same rumors the Nitribtt case attracted, it too remains unsolved.  In another coincidence, Fraulein Matura’s car was a convertible Mercedes, a white (W111) 220 SE Cabriolet.  Despite the connection, the W111 never picked up any prurient nicknames and nor did its reputation suffer, the most valuable of the W111 cabriolets now attracting prices in excess of US$400,000 for original or fully-restored examples while German turning houses which update the drive-trains to modern standards list them at twice that.

Helga Matura (1966) by Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter (b 1932) is a German visual artist whose work encompasses glass as well as aspects of both photography and painting.  Although most noted for working in illusionistic space, some of his output has belonged to various schools of realism and he seems to place himself in many of the traditions of modernism, acknowledging surrealism, the primacy of the object and the purpose of art.  Of particular interest was his 1988 series of fifteen photo-paintings (18 October 1977) depicting four members of the Red Army Faction (RAF) (better, if a little misleadingly, known in the English-speaking world as the Baader-Meinhof Gang).  Created using monochrome photographs taken mostly before their deaths, the work was an interesting exploration of time, meaning and form.

His portrait of the late Helga Matura is representative of his technique in photo-paintings, applying the practices of the Fluxus movement to material not originally created as art.  Blurred and variously in and out of focus, it takes the entirely representational image of a photograph which is then disrupted; disruptions may be for the purposes of the artist, the subject or the viewer and indeed time, the nature of the work changing whether viewed with or without knowledge of her life and death.

Roadster off the road, California, 2005.

In 2005, Lindsay Lohan went for a drive in her Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG roadster.  It didn’t end well.  Based on the R230 (2001-2011) platform, the SL 65 AMG was produced between 2004-2012, all versions rated in excess of 600 horsepower, something perhaps not a wise choice for someone with no background handling such machinery though it could have been worse, the factory building 350 of the even more powerful SL 65 Black Series, the third occasion an SL was offered without a soft-top and the second time one had been configured with a permanent fixed-roof.

Roadster back on the road, Texas, 2007.

However, by 2007, the car (California registration 5LZF057), repaired, detailed & simonized, was being offered for sale in Texas, the mileage stated as 6207.  Bidding was said to be “healthy” so all's well that ends well.

Valentine

Valentine (pronounced val-uhn-tahyn)

(1) A card, message, token or gift sent by one person to another on Valentine's Day (14 February) as a mark of affection.  Historically they were usually amatory or sentimental but there are also commercially available versions (usually as cards or e-cards) which are satirical, comical or sardonic.  They were often (and perhaps still are) send anonymously but in an age when the awareness of stalking has become heightened, caution is now recommended.

(2) A sweetheart or object of desire chosen or greeted on this day.

(3) A written or other artistic work expressing affection for something or someone (the latter often a poetic or literary device).

(4) A surname and a given name, the latter variously feminine or masculine according to local convention.

(5) As Saint Valentine (circa 226-circa 269), a saint commemorated in both Western Christianity & Eastern Orthodoxy.

(6) A locality name in a number of places.

1400–1450 (in the sense of the adoption in English): From the late Middle English, from the ecclesiastical feast of Saint Valentine (14 February).  The derived forms are rarely used.  The adjective valentinesy (something characteristic of Saint Valentine's Day) can be used of some romantic act usually more associated with 14 February and does have the advantage of being a single word which does the job which would otherwise take a phrase but the only thing that can be said in favor of the noun valentining (the practice of giving and (presumably) receiving something on Saint Valentine's Day) is that it seems not yet to have become a verb.  The noun Valentinian was used to describe a member or adherent of the second century AD school of Judaizing Gnostics, founded by Valentinus (circa 100–circa 180).  Valentinus seems to have been among the most popular of the early Christian Gnostic theologians and the legend is he founded his school in Rome after being passed over for appointment to a bishopric.  The use as a name is derived ultimately from the Latin Valentinus, from valeō (I am strong, healthy) and by accepted reckoning, Valentinus (circa 780-827; pope 780) was the hundredth pope of the Roman Catholic Church ("Pontiff 100" the preferred designation among Vatican archivists); he sat on the throne of Saint Peter "for forty days and forty nights".  Valentine evolved as a unisex given name, in use for males since the late fifteenth century and it’s been given also to females although this has been rare except in France (and the Francophone parts of the old French Empire) where it’s treated as a feminine form of Valentin.  Elsewhere, the usual feminine form is Valentina.  Valentine & Valentinian are nouns & proper nouns, valentining is a noun and valentinesy is an adjective; the noun plural is valentines.

Lindsay Lohan with Saint Valentine's Day stuffed teddy bear.

The precise origins of Valentine's Day are murky.  All agree the church festivals, feasts and holidays were named after Saint Valentine but there were a number of them in early Christianity and despite much digging, no authenticated documentary evidence has emerged to confirm which one deserves credit.  Revisionist historians have linked the later tradition to the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, celebrated mid-February, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus (Roman god of agriculture) and the mythical founders of Rome, the brothers Romulus & Remus. A kind of pre-modern blind-date night, during the festival, young men would draw names of young women from a jar and with whomever emerged from this lucky dip they would be coupled for the duration of the festival (hopefully longer if the things worked out).  The revisionists like the idea of a link because it hints at another example of an event on the church list owing less to theology or uniquely Christian history than being a takeover of a pagan festival (a la Christmas).  On and off, for centuries, between 496 when Gelasius I (d 496; pope 492-November 496) dedicated 14 February as the feast day on which the Christian martyr Saint Valentine was to be celebrated, it remained on the list was in 1955 struck from the General Roman Calendar by Pius XII (1876-1958; pope 1939-1958), along with an array of other minor or obscure feasts which were relegated to mere “events” within the rituals of the formal ecclesiastical calendar.  However, in 2007 Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) issued the motu proprio (literally “on his own impulse”, a kind of executive decree) Summorum Pontificum (Of the Supreme Pontiffs) (described by some as “a shot across the bows of Vatican II” but really more a torpedo into the engine room) which was promulgated to permit the restoration of earlier forms of ritual (notably those conducted in Latin) but had the (perhaps unintended) effect of allowing feasts such as those of Saint Valentine to return as stand-alone events should that be the will of the local congregation.

The meme-makers feel Saint Valentine's pain.

By far the most popular version of the origin is that linked with Saint Valentine (circa 226-circa 269).  Valentine may have been the Bishop of Terni (in the modern day region of Umbria in Central Italy) but he was certainly a member of the Christian clergy and like many of them, he was persecuted by the authorities; even if not devoted pagans, many in authority did not much like trouble makers and alternative power structures (as members of the Falun Gong don’t need to be reminded).  There are different tales of just what were the activities which led eventually martyrdom including Valentine baptizing young men liable for military conscription (their status as Christians rendering them ineligible for service in the pagan army) but the preferred version is the one associated with young lovers.  It’s said Claudius II (214-270; Roman emperor 268-270) had banned marriage by young men, his rationale being single men made better soldiers, apparently because they were (1) less troubled by the thought of death and (2) more attracted to the prospect of the unlimited sexual license (rape (in the modern sense) & pillage) which was at the time one of the inducements to serve.  Valentine defied this imperial decree and in secret continued to conduct marriages for young lovers; when this was discovered, Claudius had the renegade priest arrested, brought to Rome and beheaded.  The act of execution seems sound historic fact although the circumstances, like much which appears in medieval texts, can’t be verified and while the tales of torture, prolonged beatings are plausible, it’s not certain the emperor’s displeasure was triggered by the priest joining the young in marriage; some histories suggest the execution was ordered merely because Valentine refused to deny Christ as his true savior.  Such deaths were far from uncommon.  God however may have been on the side of true love because shortly after, Claudius was struck down, killed by “a pestilence”, perhaps the Plague of Cyprian (250-270), one of the many epidemics that for centuries came and went, killing millions.

There seems not to have been any connection between Saint Valentine (or the celebrations in his name) and anything romantic until the notion appeared in the fourteenth century verse of Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400) but the idea caught on to the extent that by the mid-fifteenth century, it was well-known and the secular practices attached to 14 February appear to have been tolerated by the Church and survived even the later puritans who disapproved of just about everything.  The fifteenth century customs are said to have begun in the circles associated with the French & English royal courts but it may simply be that the records of that class have survived better and the tales of February being the month when birds find their mates became part of the folk etymology.  The earliest known use of a valentine being “a letter or card sent to a sweetheart” dates from 1824 and the custom of sending special cards or letters on this date flourished in England in the mid-nineteenth century, declining gradually until the early years of the 1900s.  In the 1920s, modern capitalism (led by card manufacturers) revived the idea and for those selling cards, chocolates and flowers, 14 February has since provided good business and the rise of the internet has done little to blunt demand, virtual roses and chocolates just not the same.

The universal language of love.

Flowers, chocolate and stylized red hearts being the universal lingua franca when seeking courtship with a young lady, even in the People's Republic of China (PRC), Valentine’s Day (情人节, qíngrén jié) has become a thing.  The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) approve not at all of decadent Western influence and Christian saints (the only "true" saints being venerable figures like the General Secretary of the CCP) but it's good for business and adds to GDP so, simultaneously the day is tolerated and ignored.  The idea though has spread, several other days to one degree or another also marked including (1) White Valentine’s Day (白色情人节, báisè qíngrén jié) on 14 March when the tradition is for women who have a month earlier received something to respond with a gift of chocolate, (2) 520 Day (wǔ’èr línga) on 20 May; it's pronounced as wǔ èr líng which sounds like “I love you” (wǒ ài nǐ) in Mandarin and it's said to be entirely the invention of Chinese business, (3) the Qi Xi Festival (七夕节, qīxì jié) celebrated on 7 July on the lunar calendar (which occurs usually in August) and based on the romantic tale of two lovers who can meet but once a year, (4) the Lantern Festival (元宵节, yuánxiāo jié) held on the 15^th day in the lunar calendar; it has ancient origins from the days when this was one of the few occasions young women left the home, going out to light a lantern which signified they were single and willing to meet a partner and (5) Single’s Day (双十一, shuāng shíyī) on 11 November, a recent invention said originally to have been a kind of dating society created by students at Nanjing university but which was quickly co-opted by rapacious Chinese commerce; even in the PRC it was criticized for blatant consumerism (it’s by value now one of the world’s biggest on-line shopping days although analysts are cautioning the downturn in the economy and rising youth unemployment may affect sales in 2024).  Still, even with all those options, with the recent awareness of the demographic problem created by all those “leftover women” choosing to remain single and not have babies, the CCP may decide to encourage Valentine's day.  Even those who marry often can't be induced to have more than one child so the most obvious catchment for increased procreation are the young singles: Valentine's Day target market.  The CCP is better at social engineering than many Western governments and may be tempted to make Valentine's Day compulsory, penalties imposed on eligible bachelors and spinsters "at risk" (the historic term for women deemed capable of falling pregnant) found to have neither sent nor received a box of chocolates.

Charrette

Charrette (pronounced shuh-ret)

A final, intensive effort to finish a project before a deadline (historically most associated with architecture & students of the subject); it’s applied particularly to group work and other collaborative efforts.

1400s: From the French charrette (small cart), from the Middle French charrete, from twelfth century Old French charrete (wagon, small cart), a diminutive of charre, from the Latin carrum & carrus (wagon), the construct being char (chariot; wagon) + -ete (the diminutive suffix).  The sense of “work to meet a deadline” came from French, the conventional explanation of the origin being the use by groups of students of architecture who, after working all night, loaded their drawings, plans and sketches into a cart (pulled the legend suggests by the youngest member) into a small cart (pulled by the youngest member) on the day of the presentation of their work to the professor.  The alternative spellings are charette & charret.  Charrette is a noun; the noun plural is charrettes.

In the late nineteenth century, just before the deadline, the authorities of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris would send to a designated place on campus a charrette (a small cart) into which students of architecture would deposit their final drawings and models.  As every student and ex-student knows, it’s the final few hours before the deadline during which much of the work is done and the young Parisian scholars so associated the impending arrival of the little cart with this frenzied activity that the term “charrette” came to signify this burst of sudden enthusiasm.  .  Most sources suggest the use of charrette & charette (in this context) appeared in English only in either (1) the mid-1960s when adopted by university students as a verb meaning “an intense effort to compete a project before the deadline expires” or (2) sometime in the next decade when architects in Chicago added it to their project planning timelines; it’s now also used of any activity which is increased to meet a deadline.  Inevitably, charrette (used as noun & verb) has entered the jargon of management-speak to describe “intensive workshops”, “brainstorming sessions” and such where people gather to solve problems (which the management gurus often insist should be called “challenges” or “opportunities”), develop concepts and such.  The essence of the corporate charrette is said to be collaboration, creativity and a rapid arrival at decisions.

In French, the noun charrette was coined simply to describe “any cart smaller that that usually deployed for whatever purpose” and specific terms evolved to refer to devices of a certain design or function.  A charrette à bras was “a hand cart” (the French bras meaning “arm”) and described a cart propelled by a person rather than pulled by some beast of burden.  The best known of the variants was the charrette des condamnés (the cart of the doomed (ie those condemned to die) and it was in these those convicted of this and that were taken to their execution.

Execution of Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen Consort of France 1774-1792), 16 October 1793 (unknown artist).

The charrette des condamnés famously used to take victims to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror (the period in the mid-1790s after the declaration of the First Republic, marked by massacres, public executions, anti-clericalism and internecine political struggle) were properly called tumbrels although many illustrations of scenes at the guillotine depict the use of four-wheeled carts rather than tumbrels.  Presumably both types were used but historians generally believe it was usually the tumbrel because the revolutionaries preferred the symbolism of something usually used for moving dung or rubbish while artists choose the four-wheelers for compositional reasons.  The noun tumbrel (two-wheeled cart for hauling dung, stones etc) was from mid-fifteenth century French, a name, curiously perhaps, used in the early thirteenth century to describe what some eighteenth century dictionaries described as a mysterious “instrument of punishment of uncertain type” but which turned out to be (1) a name for the cucking stool used, inter alia, to conduct the dunking in water of women suspected of this and that and (2) was a type of medieval balancing scale used to weigh coins.  It was from the Old French tomberel (dump cart) (which exists in Modern French as tombereau), from tomber ((let) fall or tumble), possibly from a Germanic source, perhaps the Old Norse tumba (to tumble), the Old High German tumon (to turn, reel).

In English the charrette des condamnés was called the tumbril (the alternative spellings tumbrel & tumbrill), the English as content to pilfer other languages for words as their Empire builders would be to steal the lands of others (the Anglo-Latin was tumberellus), from tomber & tumber (to fall).  As well as being (1) the cart used to carry prisoners to the gallows, the tumbril was also (2) a cucking stool (actually based on a medieval torture device used, inter alia, to “detect” witches), used as a tool of punishment and humiliation (miscreants (usually women) accused of “social” offences such as “gossiping” or “trouble-making” strapped to the stool which was by some sort of mechanical apparatus “dunked” into a pond or river), (3) a cart designed for “dumping” its load, with a single axle and sometimes with a hinged tray or tailboard (ie the antecedent of the modern dump-truck), (4) a type of balancing scale used in medieval times to check the weight of coins and (5) a basket or cage of osiers, willows, or the like, to hold hay and other food for sheep (long extinct).

In a transition which would please historians and social theorists, the tumbrel began life as two-wheeled cart or wagon hauled usually by a single horse or ox and their most common use was the carrying of manure (horse shit, cow shit etc) and later was re-purposed to carry the “excrement” of society (criminal condemned to death).  The use of the word to describe the dunking stool is also indicative of the attitude of the establishment to another undesirable class: talkative women.  The point of the cucking stool was not to drown but simply publically to humiliate offenders and hopefully change their behavior.  It can be thought a kind of pre-modern community service order.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

La Charrette Anglaise (The English Dog Cart (1897)) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), lithograph on wove paper.

A genre scene in the tradition of post-impressionism, the original title was La Partie de Canpagne and is an example of works of Toulouse-Lautrec which would be influential in the development of art nouveau (modern).  The dog cart (also as dogcart & dog-cart) was a style of coach-building popular in England and described both (1) a small cart drawn by a dog and (2) A larger two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage with two transverse seats back to back (an outgrowth of the original design in which the rear compartment was an enclosed (usually caged) box for carrying dogs used for hunting or other sports.  It’s not clear if the phrase “in the dogbox” was an allusion to this design.  The French phrase La Partie de Campagne translates to “A Day in the Country” and both titles continue to be used of the work.  So evocative was La Partie de Campagne of the outdoors, nature, fresh air (no small thing for those accustomed to the pollution and filth of the cities of the age) and the charming simplicity of rural life that the phrase appears often in French art and literature.  The idea appealed even to modernists, so often associated with things urban.

La Partie de Campagne (The Outing (1951)), lithograph on Arches paper by Fernand Léger (1881-1955).

Léger’s art wasn’t always political but it became so (“the century made me so” he claimed) and the stilted, robotic figures in this 1951 work represent his take on man’s place in capitalist society and a rural environment ravaged and debased.  A sculptor and filmmaker as well as a painter, he was a significant (if rather neglected in the English-speaking world) figure and his creation of a style of painting he called “tubism” was the basis of much of his later, figurative works and there are critics who maintain tubism was a seminal influence on both agitprop and pop art.

1897 Panhard & Levassor with charrette anglaise coachwork.

Powered by a 1648 cm³ (101 cubic inch) two-cylinder gas (petrol) engine rated at 6 (taxable), the car is a typical example of the automobile at the dawn of the twentieth century when new innovations in engineering were beginning to be added to what had for the first decade-odd of the new type been literally “horseless carriages” in that the technique had usually been to take existing coach or cat designs and add an engine.  The example on the left was built in 1897 and fitted originally with a tiller-steering mechanism (right) but steering wheels (still in use today) were even then becoming the new standard and this restored example was fitted with one in 1898.