Trunk (pronounced truhngk)
(1) The main stem of a tree, as distinct from the
branches (limbs) and roots (also as bole; tree trunk).
(2) Of, relating to or noting a main channel or line, as
of a railroad, waterway or something which assumes a similar shape
(topographically).
(3) A large, sturdy box or chest for holding or
transporting clothes, personal effects or other articles. Such trunks usually have a hinged (sometimes
domed) lid and handles at each end, provided because such is the size &
weight, it takes at least two to carry one when loaded.
(4) A compartment, most often in the rear coachwork of an
automobile, in which luggage, a spare tire, and other articles may be kept (a “boot”
in the UK and certain other places in the English-speaking world and a “dicky”
in India and elsewhere in South Asia).
(5) A storage compartment fitted behind the seat of a
motorcycle and known also as a top-ox or top-case (as distinct from a “pannier”
or “saddlebag” which is fitted at the side (usually in pairs), below the level
of the seat).
(6) In anatomy, the body of a person or an animal
excluding the head and limbs (the torso).
(7) In pathology, the main body of an artery, nerve, or
the like, as distinct from its branches.
(8) In ichthyology, that part of a fish between the head
and anus.
(9) In engineering and architecture, a name for a conduit,
shaft, duct, channel or chute etc, used variously for airflow (thermal or
blown), water, coal, grain etc.
(10) In steam engines, a large pipe forming the piston
rod of a steam engine, of sufficient diameter to allow one end of the
connecting rod to be attached to the crank, and the other end to pass within
the pipe directly to the piston, thus making the engine more compact.
(11) In extractive mining, a flume or sluice in which
ores are separated from the slimes in which they are contained.
(12) In architecture, the dado or die of a pedestal.
(13) In architecture, the part of a pilaster between the
base and capital, corresponding to the shaft of a column.
(14) In hydrology, the main channel, artery or line in a
river, railroad, highway, canal or other tributary system.
(15) In telephony, a telephone line or channel between
two central offices or switching devices that is used in providing telephone
connections between subscribers generally (also called a “tie-line”).
(16) In telegraphy, a telegraph line or channel between
two main or central offices.
(17) In telecommunications, to provide simultaneous
network access to multiple clients by sharing a set of circuits, carriers,
channels or frequencies.
(18) In clothing, brief shorts (loose-fitting or tight)
worn by men chiefly for boxing, swimming and athletics (some historically known
as “trunk hose”.
(19) In zoology, the elongated prehensile, flexible, cylindrical nasal appendage of the elephant
and certain other creatures (the proboscis).
(20) In nautical use, a large enclosed passage through
the decks or bulkheads of a vessel, used as air ducting for purposes of
heating, cooling, ventilation and such.
(21) In shipbuilding, any of various watertight casings
in a vessel, as the vertical one above the slot for a centerboard in the bottom
of a boat.
(22) A long tube through which pellets of clay, peas etc
are driven by the force of the breath; a peashooter (archaic).
(23) In software engineering, the most current source
tree, from which the latest unstable builds (so-called “trunk builds”) are
compiled.
1400–1450: From the late Middle English tronke & trunke, from the Old French tronc (alms box, tree trunk,
headless body), from the Latin truncus (stem, a stock, lopped tree
trunk), a noun use of the adjective truncus
(lopped; cut off, maimed, mutilated), (the later related to the English truncated). Trunk & trunking are nouns & verbs, trunkful
is a noun, trunked is a verb & adjective and trunkless is an adjective; the
noun plural is trunks.
There are a myriad of “truck” terms in human pathology
and other derived phrases include “elephant's
trunk” (rhyming slang for “drunk”), “hand
trunk” (a piece of luggage smaller than the traditional trunk and able to
be carried by one), “junk in one's trunk”
(corpulence of the buttocks, the alternative forms being “dump truck” or the vernacular “fat
ass”), “the apple does not fall far
from the trunk” (a variant of “the
apple/pear etc does not fall far from the tree”) (children tend in appearance
& characteristics to resemble their parents), “trunklid” (literally obviously “the lid of a trunk” and used of the
opening panel which provides access to a car’s trunk), “bootlid” the UK equivalent and confusingly in the US used also as “decklid” on the basis of the trunk being
a part of a car’s “rear deck”), “trunk
novel” (a novel abandoned by the author while still a project), “trunk or treat” (an organized
alternative to trick-or-treating where candy is handed out to children from
cars in a parking lot; it was introduced as a child safety measure), “trunk show” (an event in which vendors
present merchandise directly to store personnel or customers at a retail
location or other venue, based on the idea of selling “out of a trunk”), “trunk sale” (and event at which goods
are displayed for sale in the trunks of cars), “boot sale” the companion term)), “trunking” (travelling sitting in the trunk of a car”), and “trunk shot” (in film-making, a cinematic
shot from within a car trunk (although there was a case of a serial killer who
shot his victims while concealed in the trunk of a car.
Louis Vuitton Trunk #5 (left) and Louis Vuitton Trunk on Fire (right) by Tyler Shields (b 1982).
The original idea of a trunk being a “box; case etc” may lie
in the first such “trunks” being hollowed-out tree trunks although some suggest
the post-classical development of the meaning “box, case with a lid or top” was
based on the notion of human body’s trunk being a “case” in which the organs
were transported. The modern idea of a “luggage
compartment of a motor vehicle” dates from circa 1930, about the time trunks
cease to be something separately carried and replaced by and space for luggage integrated
into the bodywork. The use of trunk had long
been familiar in the medical literature (both of the torso and blood vessels
etc) and the idea was by 1843 extended to railroad trunk lines and telephone
networks by 1889. “Trunk-hose” were first sold in the 1630s and seems to have been a kind of thermal
underwear, the description a reference to them covering the whole torso (ie,
the trunk) as opposed to most “hose” which was for the lower limbs.
The use of trunk to describe the “long snout of an
elephant (or other beast with a similar appendage)” appeared first in the 1560s
but etymologists are divided on whether it was an allusion to a tree’s trunk or
has some connection with “trumpet”, based on the loud sound elephants are able
to generate although the evidence does suggest the early use may have been a reference to
the thing’s ability to hold water. Predictably,
by the early eighteenth century, it was a slang term for the human nose. The use in clothing (always in the plural as “trunks”)
emerged in the mid 1820s and initially described “short breeches of thin
material”; it was a use of trunk in the sense of “torso”. Use began in theatrical jargon but, as was
not uncommon, soon it was applied to breeches generally, especially in US
English and for the short, tight-fitting breeches worn by swimmers and other
sporting types, adoption was close to universal by the 1890s. “Swimming
trunks” has survived as a regionalism; even within the one country, there
are often several different names for what is one of humanity’s most simple
garments.
Trump Trunks: MAGA (Make America Great Again) swimming trunks. Trump trunks are made from a “silky, breathable, 4-way stretch mesh fabric” and features include (1) a small internal pocket, (2) a built-in anti-chafe liner. The country of manufacture is not disclosed. Clearly, the DNC (Democratic National Committee) in 2016 missed an opportunity by failing to release the "Crooked Hillary Clinton Bikini".
One linguistic curiosity was “subscriber trunk dialing” (later changed to “subscriber toll dialing” which later still switched to DDD (Direct Distance Dialing). The “other” use of STD was as “sexually transmitted disease”, previously known as VD (venereal disease) and it wasn’t until the 1970s the initialism VD began to be replaced by STD (VD thought to have to have gained too many specific associations) but fortunately for the US telecommunications carrier American Telephone and Telegraph Company (later AT&T), in 1951 they renamed their STD service (for long-distance phone calls) to DDD, apparently for no better reason than the alliterative appeal although it's possible they just wanted to avoid mentioning “toll” with all the potential market resistance the word imparts. Many countries in the English-speaking world continued to use STD for the phone calls, even after the public health specialists had re-purposed the initialization. In clinical use, STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection)seems now the preferred term.
The evolution of the trunk: 1851 Concord stagecoach on display at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum, Washington DC (left) with truck strapped to the back, additional trunks carried on the roof; 1928 Mercedes-Benz Nürburg 460 K Pullman Limousine (W08, centre left) with separate trunk still carried on a rear frame; 1936 Studebaker Dictator 4-door sedan (centre right) with the trunk now an integrated part of the bodywork and from that modest appendage they would grow. The US full-sized cars of the 1960s & 1970s had most capacious trunks but few could match Leyland Australia's infamous P76 (1973-1975, right) which effortlessly could carry a 44 (imperial) gallon (53 US gallon; 205 litre) drum although the reputed ability to handle fours sets of golf clubs (including certain collapsible trolleys) was probably more of a selling point. Unfortunately, as the P76's rapid demise indicates, there just aren't that many golfers.
The compartment which is most located in the rear coachwork
of an automobile is used for luggage and historically also the spare tyre a toolkit
(neither now not always supplied). In
North American use, this is called a “trunk”, an inheritance from the time when
the passengers’ trunks (ie, in the sense of the box-like suitcases) were
strapped on to an extension at the back of horse-drawn carriages. In the early automobiles, the practice
continued (often with lined wicker baskets because they were of lightweight
construction) and when these were integrated into the bodywork, the space provided
continued to be called “the trunk”. The British
called the same thing a “boot”. In
horse-drawn carriages in the UK, a “boot” was a compartment used to store travel
essentials, among which (in an age of rutted, poorly maintained roads) included
boots, the male passengers sometimes required to push the coach when it became
stuck in mud, the frequent inclusion of a “boot box” or “boot locker”, made typically
of leather and attached at the rear. The
other suggested origin is the French boute
(compartment; box). The term “boot” thus
spread throughout the British Empire although, under the Raj, in India &
Ceylon (later Sri Lanka) it became the “dickie”. That was based on the dicky seat (also as “dickie
seat” & “dickey seat” and later more commonly known as the “rumble seat”),
an upholstered bench mounted at the rear of a coach, carriage or early motorcar
and as the car industry evolved and coachwork became more elaborate,
increasingly they folded into the body.
The size varied but generally they were designed to accommodate one or
two adults although the photographic evidence suggests they could be used also
to seat half-a-dozen or more children.
Why it was called a dicky seat is unknown (the word dates from 1801 and
most speculation is in some way related to the English class system) but when
fitted on horse-drawn carriages it was always understood to mean “a boot (box
or receptacle covered with leather at either end of a coach, the use based on
the footwear) with a seat above it for servants”. Under the Raj, “dickie” was preferred while
the colloquial “mother-in-law seat” was at least trans-Atlantic and probably
global.
Lindsay Lohan illustrates how there are frunks (left) and there are trunks (right).
The rear-engined Porsche 911 Carrera (997, 2004-2013) Cabriolet (Los Angeles, 2012, right) has a frunk while the front-engined Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG roadster (Los Angeles, 2005, right) has a trunk. Based on the R230 (2001-2011) platform, the SL 65 AMG was produced between 2004-2012 and Ms Lohan also later drove an SL 550 (2006-2011), a model which was a quirk in the naming system because the designation was exclusive to the the North American market, the RoW (rest of the world) cars retaining the SL 500 badge even though both used the 5.5 litre (333 cubic inch) V8 (M273). As the SL 65's open trunk lid reveals (right), because of the need to accommodate the bulky, folding aluminum hard-top, when lowered, it absorbed much of the trunk space so the design, like many, involved a trade-off between what was gained and what was lost. Ms Lohan had (relatively) minor accidents in both her SL 65 and later a 911 coupé so clearly should avoid driving black, German cars.
The Fiat X1/9 (produced by Fiat 1972–1982 and Bertone from 1982–1989) featured both a frunk (left) and a trunk (right).
Most cars built have had the engine mounted in the front, thus most trunks appeared in the rear bodywork. There have however been cars with engines behind the driver (such things were quite numerous until well into the 1970s) and these usually had a storage compartment at the front (where the engine otherwise would sit, under the hood (bonnet)). Until the early years of the twentieth century, these seem just to have been called a “trunk” or “boot” but as electric vehicles began to appear in volume “frunk” (the construct being f(ront) + (t)runk) and the less popular “froot” (the construct being fr(ont) + (b)oot)) came into use. There have been mid-engined cars which have both a trunk and a frunk and those in the diminutive Fiat X1/9 were surprisingly large while others (such as Ferrari's Dino 308 GT4 (1973-1980) & 208 GT4 (1975-1980), both badged as Ferraris after 1976) were of a less generous capacity, the frunk in the Dinos best suited to storing something the size of a topless bikini but the GT4 was a genuine four-seater (in the sense of a 2+2), something not often attempted with the mid-engined configuration.
When there was no trunk lid, luggage racks were a popular fitting: 1959 "bug-eye" (or "frog-eye" depending on location) Austin-Healey Sprite (left) and 1971 Chevrolet Corvette Convertible LS5 454/365 (right).
There have been cars (and not all of them were sports cars) with no trunk lid. In the case of the Austin-Healey Sprite (1958-1971), the lack of the structure on the early versions (1958-1961) was a cost-saving measure (the same rationale that saw the planned retractable headlights replaced by the distinctive protuberances atop the hood (bonnet) which lent the cheerful little roadster its nickname (bug-eye in North American and frog-eye in the UK & most of the Commonwealth). It had additional benefits including weight reduction and improved structural rigidity but the obvious drawback was inconvenience: to use the trunk one had to reach through the gap behind the seats. It was easy to see why luggage racks proved a popular accessory, sales of which continued to be strong even when later versions of the Sprite (1961-1971) and the badge-engineered companion model (the MG Midget (1961-1980)) gained a trunk lid.
Have trunk, can travel: Nor Cal’s (of Stockton, California) trunk lid kit for Austin Healy Sprite, May 1961. Note the standard-sized registration (license) plate; the Sprite really was small.
However, noting Austin-Healey’s cost-cutting meant the Series 1 Sprite’s trunk came lidless, modern commerce quickly saw a gap (technically also a “lack of gap”) in the market and “lid kits” soon appeared. Advertised as meaning “no more acrobatic maneuvers when loading luggage”, mention was made also of an installation making the spare tyre easier to reach, a matter in the early 1960s of some significance because tyres then were not as durable and punctures more frequent. The advertising copy was selective in that it mentioned “no welding necessary” but neglected to point out an owner would need to cut the required hole but presumably, that would have been obvious. It was a proper trunk lid in that it was lockable and said also to be “waterproof”, the latter a quality owners of British sports cars really didn’t expect so that novelty would have been a selling point. For those Sprite owners whose family had gained a child, the improved accessibility to the trunk would have been most helpful because, as parents know, going anywhere with an infant requires carrying a large bag of stuff. They might also have been attracted to the "baby seat" available as an accessory from the Healey factory; it was a design which would now be thought extraordinary (other words also come to mind) but it was at the time just the way things were done.
When the updated Austin-Healey Sprite and the companion MG Midget were released in 1961, the re-design included a trunk-lid, making the little machines more practical although niceties like external door handles and side-windows were until 1964 thought unnecessary luxuries. With the addition of a trunk lid, the rear wheel arches were given a “flattened top”, the explanation being the additional metal was required to ensure structural rigidity because the large hole cut to allow a lid meant there would be too much “lateral flex” were the old round arches retained. It was thus a surprise when late in 1971 the round wheel arches re-appeared so either British Leyland used some body-engineering technique to achieve the required strength with less steel or it had been concluded the original conclusions were too conservative. The change was welcomed because not only did it improve the look but it made it easier to fit wider wheels and tyres, something of great interest to the many using their Midgets in competition.
Desirable 1973 "RWA" MG Midget (left) and 1976 "Rubber Bumper" MG Midget (right); the rubber bumpers at the front looked even worse.
The change however didn’t last; in 1974 the previously used wheel arches were back, the engineers at the time citing the need for additional body strength because US impact regulations had forced them to fit heavy (and ugly) rubber-fronted bumper bars. That may have been true but the speculation has long been it was done also to disguise the way the body had been raised on its suspension, that unfortunate change made to ensure the low-slung roadster could comply with US minimum headlight height rules. So, like the MGB, the Midget after 1974 was heavier, less powerful and slower than before, added to which the increased ride-height raised the centre of gravity so anti-roll bars had to be fitted to disguise the effect on the handling. Despite that, both would remain in production until the end of the decade and demand was strong even when the ranges were terminated, the modest machines having much charm. In the MG community, the Midgets with the round wheel arches are known as “RWAs” and they were never fitted to the last of the Sprites although at least one exists and it’s presumed that was a private conversion rather than something done by the factory.
Curiously, between 1953-1962, the Chevrolet Corvette (C1) did have a trunk lid but when the second generation (C2, 1962-1967) was released for the 1963 season, it had been removed and not until the fifth generation (C5) in 1998 did one again appear. By then, the Corvette's luggage rack moment mostly had passed but into the twenty-first century they were still being fitted. In the modern collector market, it’s one of those accessories, the very sight of which seems to upset some.
Trunks: The long and short of it.
1968 Holden HK Brougham (left) and 1970 Holden Premier (right).
The Holden Brougham (1968-1971) was not so much a landmark of the era as a cul-de-sac but it did indicate how quickly the “brougham” label had come to be associated with prestige and like Chevrolet’s Caprice, the Brougham was a response to a Ford. In Australia, Ford had been locally assembling the full-sized Galaxies for the government and executive markets but tariffs and the maintenance of the Australian currency peg at US$1.12 meant profitability was marginal, so the engineers (with a budget said to be: "three-quarters of four-fifths of fuck all") took the modest, locally manufactured Falcon, stretched the wheelbase by five inches (125 mm), tweaked the front and rear styling (which although hardly radical resulted in a remarkably different look), added some gorp (the term bling not yet in use) and named it Fairlane.
The Fairlane name was chosen because of the success the company had had in selling first the full-sized US Fairlanes (nicknamed by locals as the “tank Fairlane”) between 1959-1962 and later the smaller version (1962-1965) which Robert McNamara (1916–2009 and briefly the president of Ford Motor Company before serving as US secretary of defense (1961-1968) under John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) & Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969)) described as "the size of car Americans should be driving". In that at least McNamara was right and what came in the 1960s to be called the "intermediates" (ie between the "compact" & "full-size" lines) proved a sweet spot in the market and that was because they were essentially the size of the "standard" US automobile before the breed became oversized in the mid-late 1950s. The Australia Fairlane was for decades a successful and profitable product and eventually Holden (General Motors's (GM) local outpost) followed the formula but not before the curious diversion which was the Brougham. For 1968, Holden chose what even at the time was thought a bizarre approach in trying to match the Fairlane; instead of a longer wheelbase (and thus more interior space), the Brougham was conjured up by extending the tail of the less exalted Premier by 8 inches (200 mm), the strange elongation a hurried and less than successful response. Unwanted for decades when the could be bought for Aus$250, the handful of surviving Broughams became twenty-first century collectables, advertised for sale at as much as $Aus$90,000, some Holden connoisseurs (as one-eyed a crew as any) even finding a previously undetected elegance in the lines.
1958 Cadillac Series 62 Extended Length Sedan (Body Style 6239EDX, left) and 1958 Cadillac Series 62 Sedan (Body Style 6239, right).
In their defense, Holden could have pointed to a corporate precedent, the 1958 Cadillac range including the “Series 62 Extended Length Sedan”. The Series 62 Sedan was already an impressive 216.8 inches (5.5 m) long but the Extended Length version measured an even more imposing 225.3 (5.7), the additional 8.5 inches (216 mm) all in the rear deck, creating a more capacious trunk. There can’t have been many Cadillac buyers with that much luggage (although, impressionistically, golf club car parks did suggest there would be those for whom the ability to carry several sets of clubs might be compelling) but the new model did attract buyers, either despite or because of the healthy industry in jokes about Mafia functionaries and other figures in organized crime grateful finally to have more space to transport the bodies. Unfortunately for Cadillac, there were only so many golfers and Mafia hit-men and despite 20,952 of the 103,455 (excluding Eldorados and “chassis only” sales) Series 62s produced in 1958 being the Extended Length Sedan (some 20%), it proved a single-season one-off which perhaps should have been a warning to Holden.
Cadillac's other take on the “long & slightly less long” of it: 1963 Cadillac Four-Window Sedan De Ville (Body Style 6239, left) and 1963 Cadillac Sedan De Ville Park Avenue (Body Style 6389, right).
Strangely, Cadillac’s next venture in rear-deck management went the other way, “short deck” versions of certain models offered between 1961-1963, the things created by removing 7 inches (178 mm) of aft bodywork, the effect more noticeable for the final season when the truncation was 8 inches (203 mm). Demand, anyway muted, quickly declined and there ended Cadillac’s experiments with rear deck length. There was at the time much criticism that “full-size” US cars had become too big but the “short deck” venture was most un-Cadillac like and, by international standards, the truck capacity of even the abbreviated models was still quite generous, able effortlessly to accommodate two sets of gold clubs, something which later became a de-facto standard in assessing the practicality of sports cars. Jaguar used this feature as a selling point when the XK8 (1996-2006) was introduced because it wasn’t possible with all versions of the old E-Type (1961-1974). For a variety of reasons, by the 1970s, there would be a smaller Cadillac and the first generation Seville (1975-1979) was most accomplished but of the even smaller Cimarron (1982–1988) there are few fond memories. It wasn't that the Cimarron was, by the standards of its time, an especially bad car; it just wasn't "a Cadillac" as that construct was then understood.
1967 Ford GT40 Mark III (left) and 1967 Ford GT40 Mark I (road version, right).
From 1967 there was also a more contemporary example to inspire the antipodean engineers although it’s unlikely it much caught their eye; that was the Ford GT40 (1964-1969), one of the most successful machines in 1960s sports car racing which beat not only the competition but also the attempts by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the FIA; the International Automobile Federation) to legislate it into un-competitiveness, Then (as now), the FIA was international sport’s dopiest regulatory body. In the happy era when it was possible to make a few minor modifications and register a Le Mans race car for the road, 31 of the 105 GT40s were so configured (even a cigarette lighter was installed) but the driving experience was still very much that of a (slightly) quieter race car, the accommodation cramped, the ventilation marginal and the luggage space fit for little more than a proverbial topless bikini. But some hardly souls bought them because there were few things on the road faster so thoughts turned to making a “more civilized” version with the creature comforts now expected. Thus the 1967 GT40 Mark III with a slightly detuned engine, improved ventilation, a conventional, centrally mounted gear shift, sound deadening, more compliant suspension settings and even a reasonably sized ashtray to compliment the cigarette lighter. However, only seven were built because they cost as much as a middle-class house, were still cramped (with challenging ingress and egress for all but the young or athletic) and in appearance differed in several aspects from the cheaper (Mark I) GT40 road cars still available from John Wyer (1909–1989).
Herbert von Karajan's 1967 Ford GT40 Mark III (Chassis M3/1105, left); of the seven produced, it was one of four LHD (left hand drive) versions and a GT40 Mark III "Luggage Box" (right).
By virtue of the long tail, the Mark III did though have more luggage space, the specially-fabricated "luggage box" behind the engine large enough to handle the luggage a couple would have packed for a dirty weekend while the frunk could have held little more than a conductor's baton though that may be unrelated to the Mark III's most famous owner being the Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908–1989). The Mark III was fitted with additional sound deadening and the exhaust system made the sometimes Wagnerian sound of the 289 cubic inch (4.7 litre) V8 less intrusive but inside it was no Rolls-Royce and certainly not a 1965 Ford Galaxie (which Ford paid acoustic engineers to prove was quieter than a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III) so those who fitted the optional radio and cassette tape player would have had to turn the volume high. Other options included tinted glass, air-conditioning and, remarkably, even a television. It would anyway have been better to focus on the road because even in its detuned form the GT40 Mark III could be a handful, especially to those unacquainted with the then still novel characteristics of mid-engined road cars although Karajan also for a while drove a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing (W198, 1954-1957) so he may have been not unfamiliar with quirky handling. Wisely, he never drove his GT40 on wet roads.
1935 MG NA Magnette Allingham 2/4-Seater by Whittingham & Mitchel (left) and a burl walnut storage box mounted in the frunk (right). The box was a custom fitting and most Magnettes were seen with the frunk simply carpeted. Sometimes described by auction houses as a DHC (drophead coupé), this body style (despite what would come to be called 2+2 seating) really is a true roadster. Note the six spare spark plugs in the engine bay; motoring used to be a much more maintenance-intensive business.
The combination of a frunk and a front-mounted engine is unusual but it has been done. What the coach-builder did with the MG Magnette was take advantage of what would otherwise be wasted space and the frunk typically was used as the place to store the car's tool-kit (sometimes an extensive inventory because such things often were needed, reliability then not what it became). Frunks as a thing long pre-dated use of the term which seems to have come into use only in the 1990s (apparently part of the jargon among the cult of of rear-engined Porsche owners) but it was Tesla "formalizing" the terminology in the 2010s which made it mainstream. The MG N-Type Magnette (1934-1936) used a 1271 cm3 (78 cubic inch) straight-six and while the combination of that many cylinders and a small displacement sounds curious, the configuration was something of an English tradition and a product of (1) a taxation system based on cylinder bore and (2) the attractive economies of scale and production line rationalization of “adding two cylinders” to existing four-cylinder units to achieve greater, smoother power with the additional benefit of retaining the same tax-rate. Even after the taxation system was changed, some small-capacity sixes were developed as out-growths of fours. Despite the additional length of the block, there remained between cowl (scuttle) and engine enough space to include a modest frunk.
1935 MG NA Magnette Allingham 2/4-Seater by Whittingham & Mitchel with dickie seat. Note the resemblance of the front bucket seats to those used in the early (S1 3.8; 1961-1964) Jaguar E-Type (1961-1974). While the scalloped shape was admired for its elegance they really weren't all that comfortable and there were few complaints when a pair with more prosaic lines was substituted.
The other unusual feature included by Whittingham & Mitchel in this Magnette was a dickie ("rumble" to the Americans) seat as part of the cockpit. Although most rumble seats were mounted in an aperture separated from the passenger compartment, in smaller vehicles the additional seat often was integrated but became usable (by people) only when the hinged cover was raised; otherwise, the rear-seat cushion was a nicely upholstered parcel shelf. Stylistically, what this afforded the designers was the scope to make a car appear a rakish two-seat roadster but one with the practicality of seating four when the panel was folded back. That's no longer done but the concept remains, some designers artfully now concealing rear-door handles to hint at the look of a two door coupé, something now made more plausible by the adoption of the "four-door coupé" motif for the few remaining sedans and (less successfully) many SUVs (sports utility vehicles).
