Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Cimarron. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Cimarron. Sort by date Show all posts

Monday, October 18, 2021

Cimarron

Cimarron (pronounced sim-uh-ron, sim-uh-rohn or sim-er-uhn)

(1) A Maroon (an African or one of African descent who escaped slavery in the Americas, (or a descendant thereof, especially a member of the Cimarron people of Panama).

(2) In Latin America (1) feral animals or those which have returned to the wild, (2) rural areas (campestral) and the inhabitants there dwelling & (3) wild plants.

(3) A name used in the US for both rivers & as both a localities.

(4) A not fondly remembered small "Cadillac", built between 1981-1988.

1840–1850: From the Colonial Spanish cimarrón (a maroon (used also casually of feral animals, wild rams etc), from the Spanish and thought likely equivalent to the Old Spanish cimarra (brushwood, thicket), the construct being & cim(a) (peak, summit (from the Latin cȳma (spring shoots of a vegetable), from the Ancient Greek  + -arrón (the adjectival suffix).  Most etymologists appear to accept the Spanish cimarrón was a native Spanish formation from cima (summit, peak), referring to slaves who escaped to seek refuge in the mountains but the alternative theory is that it was a borrowing from Taíno símaran (wild (like a stray arrow)), from símara (arrow).  The feminine was cimarrona, the masculine plural cimarrones & the feminine plural cimarronas.  The verb maroon (put ashore on a desolate island or some isolate and remote coast by way of punishment) dates from 1724 and was from maroon (fugitive black slave living in the wilder parts of Dutch Guyana or Jamaica and other West Indies islands) which has always been assumed to be a corruption of the Spanish cimmaron & cimarrón.  Cimarron is a noun & proper noun (the adjective cimarific (based on Cimar(ron) + (horr)ific) was sardonic; a slur relating to the Cadillac); the noun plural is Cimarrons.

The Cadillac Cimarron, 1982-1988

For those who can remember the way things used to done: 1968 Cadillac Coupe DeVille convertible.

The path of the reputation of the unfortunate Cadillac Cimarron was unusual in the more it was upgraded and improved, the further it seemed to fall in the estimation of the motoring press.  Despite the impression which seems over the decades to have become embedded, the early critical reaction to the Cimarron was generally polite and even positive, while acknowledging the inadequacies of the original engine-transmission combinations.  The journalists may however have been in a mood to be unusually forgiving because in 1981, when the first examples were provided for press evaluation, that a Cadillac was for the first time since 1914 fitted with a four-cylinder engine and one with a displacement smaller than 2.0 litres (122 cubic inch) for the first time since 1908 was a sign how much the universe had shifted; not even ten years earlier every Cadillac on sale used an 8.2 litre (500 cubic inch) V8.  The ripples of the first oil shock would see the big-block V8 twice downsized but so much had rising cost (and the threatened scarcity) of gas scarred the consumer that even Cadillac owners wanted more efficient vehicles.  They still wanted to drive Cadillacs and while demand for the full-sized cars remained, it was obvious to General Motors (GM) that the segment was in decline and the alternatives proving popular were not the traditional Lincoln and Imperial but the premium brand Europeans, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and (as a niche player), Jaguar.

The cleverly engineered 1976 Cadillac Seville which hid its origins well.

The Europeans produced very different machines to the Cadillacs and it would have taken much time and money to match them in sophistication but what could be done quickly and at relatively low cost was to make a Cadillac out of a Chevrolet and that was the path chosen, the long-serving Chevrolet Nova re-styled, re-trimmed, re-engined (with the 5.7 litre (350 cubic inch) Oldsmobile V8) and re-badged as the Cadillac Seville.  On paper, it didn’t sound promising but on the road it actually worked rather well, essentially because Chevrolet had done a creditable job in making the Nova drive something like a Cadillac with some Mercedes-like characteristics.  So, the task for Cadillac’s engineers wasn’t that onerous but they did it well and the Seville was a great success, something especially pleasing to GM because the thing retailed at some four times what Chevrolet charged for Novas.  That made the Seville one of the most famously profitable lines ever to emerge from Detroit which was good but what was not was that most people who bought one weren’t conquests from Mercedes-Benz or BMW (and definitely not from Jaguar) but those who would otherwise have bought a Cadillac.  Still, the Seville did its bit and contributed to brief era of record sales and high profits for GM.

Cadillac’s new enemy: 1982 BMW 320i (E21).

By the early 1980s however, Cadillac decided it need to do the same thing again, this time on a smaller scale.  A second oil shock had struck in 1979 and this time the US economy wasn’t bouncing back as it had in the mid-1970s and the recession of the early 1980s was nasty indeed.  One market segment which was a bright spot however was what was called the “small executive sedan” dominated then by the BMW 3-Series, soon to be joined by what would become known as the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, compact, high-quality and high-priced cars being bought by what to Cadillac would be a most attractive demographic: the then newly defined YUPIEs (young upwardly-mobile professionals).  Cadillac had nothing which appealed to this market and their plans for an entry were years sway even from the initial design phases.  The economic situation of the time however had made the matter urgent and so, at a very late stage, Cadillac was appended to GM’s ambitious programme to use the one “world car” platform to be used in the divisions which produced cars in the planet’s major markets (the US, UK, Europe, Japan & Australasia).  This one front-wheel drive platform would provide a family sized car in Japan, the UK and Europe, a medium-sized entrant in Australasia and a small car in the US with the highest possible degree of component interchangeability and a consequent reduction in the time and cost to bring the lines to production.

1982 Holden Camira SL/E (1982-1989), the Australian version of the “World Car”.

The longevity of the GM “World Car" (the J-Car (J-Body the US nomenclature)), the last produced in 2005, attests to the quality of GM’s fundamental engineering and over the decades, over 10 million would be sold as Vauxhalls (UK), Opels (Europe), Holdens (Australia & New Zealand), Isuzus and even Toyotas (Japan) and Chevrolets, Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs & Cadillacs (US).  By the standards of the time they were good cars (although they did prove less suited to Australian driving conditions) but they could not, and certainly not in the eleven months available, be made into what would be thought of as “a Cadillac”.  To do that, given the technology available at the time, ideally the platform would have been widened, a small version of one of the corporate V8s (perhaps as small as 3.5 litres (215 cubic inch) fitted and the configuration changed to accommodate rear-wheel drive (RWD) and independent rear suspension (IRS).  The J-Body could have accommodated all this and, thus configured, coupled with the lashings of leather expected in the interior, GM would have had an appropriately sized small executive sedan, executed in an uniquely American way.  Like the Seville, it may not have made much of a dent in the business Mercedes-Benz and BMW were doing but it would have had real appeal and it’s doubtful it would have cannibalized the sales of the bigger Cadillacs.  Additionally, it would have been ideally place to take advantage of the rapid fall in gas prices which came with the 1980s “oil glut”.  Alas, such a thing would have taken too long to develop and it would have been such an expensive programme Cadillac would have convinced the GM board they may as well accelerate the development of their own small car.  So, needing something small to put in the showrooms because that’s what Cadillac dealers were clamouring for, the decision was taken to tart up the J-Body.

1982 Cadillac Cimarron (1982-1988), the origins of which were obvious.

That, for the 1982 model year, was exactly what was done.  The Cadillac Cimarron was nothing more than a Chevrolet Cavalier with a lot of extra stuff bolted or glued on.  Apparently, the name “Cimarron” was chosen because it had in the US been used to refer to the wild and untamed horses which once roamed freely in the American West, the company hoping to add the idea of an “untamed spirit” to the (even if by then slightly tarnished) reputation for luxury and elegance once associated with Cadillac.  Whether much thought was given to the name’s association with slavery isn’t known.  That aside, the spirit wasn’t exactly untamed because the already anaemic performance of the Chevrolet was hampered further by all the extra weight of the luxury fittings which adorned the Cimarron, something which was tolerated (indeed probably expected) in what Chevrolet was selling as an “economy car” but luxury buyers had higher expectations.

Cadillac found that bigger was better: Yuppie Lindsay Lohan entering Cadillac Escalade, May 2012.

Most would conclude it made things worse.  Had it been sold as the Chevrolet Caprice II (a la Ford’s approach with the LTD II), the Cimarron would probably have been a hit and while there would have been the same criticisms, in a car costing so much less, they would have been less pointed.  However, that would have meant the Cadillac dealers not having product to put in their showrooms which was of course the point of the whole Cimarron venture.  As it was, sales never came close to Cadillac’s optimistic projections, numbers influenced presumably by the Seville’s stellar performance a few years earlier and this time the mark-up was less, a Cimarron only twice the cost of a Cavalier.  That wasn’t enough however and nor were the constant upgrades, the most notable of which was the introduction of the Chevrolet’s 2.8 litre (173 cubic inch) V6 in 1985 and that did induce a surge in sales (though still to nothing like the once hoped for levels) but it was short lived and after production ended in 1988, Cadillac offered no replacement and they’ve not since attempted to build anything on this scale.

Thursday, May 7, 2020

Gate

Gate (pronunced geyt)

(1) A movable barrier, usually on hinges, closing an opening in a fence, wall, or other enclosure.

(2) An opening permitting passage through an enclosure.

(3) A tower, architectural setting, etc., for defending or adorning such an opening or for providing a monumental entrance to a street, park etc.

(4) Any means of access or entrance.

(5) A mountain pass.

(6) Any movable barrier, as at a tollbooth or a road or railroad crossing.

(7) A sliding barrier for regulating the passage of water, steam, or the like, as in a dam or pipe; valve.

(8) In skiing, an obstacle in a slalom race, consisting of two upright poles anchored in the snow a certain distance apart.

(9) The total number of persons who pay for admission to an athletic contest, a performance, an exhibition or the total revenue from such admissions.

(10) In cell biology, a temporary channel in a cell membrane through which substances diffuse into or out of a cell; in flow cytometry, a line separating particle type-clusters on two-dimensional dot plots.

(11) A sash or frame for a saw or gang of saws.

(12) In metallurgy, (1) a channel or opening in a mold through which molten metal is poured into the mold cavity (also called ingate) or (2), the waste metal left in such a channel after hardening; (written also as geat and git).

(13) In electronics, a signal that makes an electronic circuit operative or inoperative either for a certain time interval or until another signal is received, also called logic gate; a circuit with one output that is activated only by certain combinations of two or more inputs.

(14) In historic British university use, to punish by confining to the college grounds (largely archaic).

(15) In Scots and northern English use, a habitual manner or way of acting (largely archaic).

(16) A path (largely archaic but endures in historic references).

(17) As a suffix (-gate), a combining form extracted from Watergate, occurring as the final element in journalistic coinages, usually nonce words, that name scandals resulting from concealed crime or other alleged improprieties in government or business.

(18) In cricket, the gap between a batsman's bat and pad, used usually as “bowled through the gate”.

(19) In computing and electronics, a logical pathway made up of switches which turn on or off; the controlling terminal of a field effect transistor (FET).

(20) In airport or seaport design, a (usually numerically differentiated) passageway or assembly point with a physical door or gate through which passengers embark or disembark.

(21) In a lock tumbler, the opening for the stump of the bolt to pass through or into.

(22) In pre-digital cinematography, a mechanism, in a film camera and projector, that holds each frame momentarily stationary behind the aperture.

(23) A tally mark consisting of four vertical bars crossed by a diagonal, representing a count of five.

Pre 900:  From the Middle English gate, gat, ȝate & ȝeat, from the Old English gæt, gat & ġeat (a gate, door), from the Proto-Germanic gatą (hole, opening).  It was cognate with the Low German and Dutch gat (hole or breach), the Low German Gatt, gat & Gööt, the Old Norse gata (path) and was related to the Old High German gazza (road, street).  Yate was a dialectical form which was an alternative spelling until the seventeenth century; the plural is gates.  Many European languages picked up variations of the Old Norse to describe both paths and what is now understood as a gate.  The Old English geat (plural geatu) was used to mean "gate, door, opening, passage, hinged framework barrier", as was Proto-Germanic gatan, and the Dutch gat; in Modern German, it emerged as gasse meaning “street”; the Finnish katu, and the Lettish gatua (street) are Germanic loan-words.  Interestingly, scholars trace the ultimate source as the Primitive European ǵed (to defecate).

The meaning "money from selling tickets" dates from 1896, a contraction of 1820’s gate-money.  The first reference to uninvited gate-crashers is from 1927 and gated community appears in 1989; that was Emerald Bay, Laguna Beach, California although conceptually similar defensive structures had for millennia been built in many places.

G Gordon Liddy (1930–2021) was the CREEP lawyer convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping for his role in the Watergate Affair.  Receiving a twenty-year sentence, he served over four, paroled after Jimmy Carter (b 1924; US President 1977-1981) commuted the term to eight years.  He was one of the great characters of the affair.

The practice of using -gate as a suffix appended to a word to indicate a "scandal involving," is a use abstracted from Watergate, the building complex in Washington DC, which, in 1972, housed the national headquarters of the Democratic Party.  On 17 June, it was burgled by operatives found later to be associated with Richard Nixon's (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) Campaign to Re-elect the President committee (CREEP).  Since Watergate, there have been at least dozens of –gates.

Notable Post-Watergate Gates

Billygate: In 1980, US President Jimmy Carter's brother, Billy (1937-1988), was found to have represented the Libyan government as a foreign agent.  Cynics noted that, unlike his brother, Billy at least had a foreign policy.  Crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) has provided the lexicon many "-gates".

A marvelous linguistic coincidence gave us Whitewatergate, a confusing package of real estate deals later found technically to be lawful and Futuregate was a reference to some still inexplicable (and profitable) dabbles in her name in the futures markets.  Servergate was the mail server affair which featured mutually contradictory defenses to various allegations, the Benghazi affair and more.  There was also a minor matter but one which remains emblematic of character.  Crooked Hillary Clinton, after years of fudging, was forced to admit she “misspoke” when claiming that to avoid sniper-fire, she and her entourage “…just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base” when landing at a Bosnian airport in 1996.  She admitted she “misspoke” only after a video was released of her walking down the airplane’s stairs to be greeted by a little girl who presented her with a bouquet of flowers.  Even her admission was constructed with weasel words: “…if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement”.  That seemed to clear things up and the matter is now recorded in the long history of crooked Hillary Clinton's untruthfulness as Snipergate.  Most bizarre was Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory that circulated during the 2016 US presidential campaign, sparked by WikiLeaks publishing a tranche of emails from within the Democrat Party machine.  According to some, encoded in the text of the emails was a series of messages between highly-placed members of the party who were involved in a pedophile ring, even detailing crooked Hillary Clinton’s part in the ritualistic sexual abuse of children in the basement of a certain pizzeria in Washington DC.  Among the Hillarygates, pizzagate was unusual in that she was innocent of every allegation made; not even the pizzeria's basement existed.

Closetgate: References the controversy following the 2005 South Park episode "Trapped in the Closet", a parody of the Church of Scientology in which the Scientologist film star Tom Cruise (b 1962) refuses to come out of a closet.  Not discouraged by the threat of writs, South Park later featured an episode in which the actor worked in a confectionery factory packing fudge. 

Grangegate: In Australia in 2014, while giving evidence to the state's Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC), Barry O'Farrell (b 1959; Premier of New South Wales 2011-2014) forget he’d been given a Aus$3,000 bottle of Penfolds Grange (which he drank without disclosing the gift as the rules required).  He felt compelled to resign.

Perhaps counterintuitively, there seems never to have been a Lindsaygate or LohangateIn that sense, Lindsay Lohan may be said to have lived a scandal-free life.

Irangate: Sometimes called contragate, this was the big scandal of Ronald Reagan's (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) second term.  As a back channel operation, the administration had sold weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran and diverted the profits to fund the Contra rebels opposing the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.  Congress had earlier cut the funding.

Nipplegate: Sometimes called boobgate, this was a reaction to singer Janet Jackson’s (b 1966) description of what happened at the conclusion of her 2004 Superbowl performance as a “wardrobe malfunction”.  In Europe, they just didn't get what all the fuss was about.

Monicagate: The most celebrated scandal of President Bill Clinton’s (b 1946; US President 1993-2001) second term.  Named after White House intern Monica Lewinsky (b 1973), with whom the president “…did not have sexual relations…”.

1973 Pontiac Trans-Am SD 455.

Dieselgate: In 2015, Volkswagen was caught cheating on emissions tests used to certify for sale some eleven-million VW diesel vehicles by programming them to enable emissions controls during testing, but not during real-world driving.  Manufacturers had been known to do this.  In 1973 Pontiac tried to certify their 455 Super Duty  engine with a not dissimilar trick but the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) weren’t fooled which is why the production 455SD was rated at 290 horsepower rather than 310.  Later, manufacturers in the Fourth Reich turned out to be just as guilty and, in that handy phrase from German historiography "they all knew".  Including the fines thus far levied, legal fees and the costs associated with product recalls, the affair is estimated so far to have cost VW some US$27 billion but the full accounting won't be complete for some time.  Other German manufacturers were also affected but Daimler (maker of Mercedes-Benz) avoided a penalty by snitching on the others. 

In Australia, Utegate was a 2009 campaign run by opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; prime-minister of Australia 2015-2018) and his then (they're no longer on speaking terms) henchman, Eric Abetz (b 1958, Liberal Party senator for Tasmania, Australia 1994-2022), which accused Dr Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & 2013) of receiving a backhander from a car dealer, the matters in question revolving around an old and battered ute (pick-up).  Based on documents forged by Treasury official Godwin Grech (b 1967), it led to the (first) downfall of Turnbull.  Abetz went on to bigger things but Turnbull neither forgot nor forgave, sacking Abetz during his second coming (which started well but ended badly).  Abetz however proved he still has the numbers which matter, gaining preselection and in 2024 winning a seat in the Tasmanian Legislative Assembly (the state's lower house).  He now serves as minister for business, industry & resources and minister for transport as well as leader of the house in the minority Liberal Party government.  

The first Nutellagate arose at Columbia University early in 2013 with allegations of organized, large-scale theft by students of the Nutella provided in the dining halls. Apparently students, unable to resist the temptation of the newly available nutty spread, were (1) consuming vast quantities, (2) pilfering it using containers secreted in back-packs and (3) actually purloining entire jars from the tables.

In the spirit of the investigative journalism which ultimately brought down President Nixon, the Columbia Daily Spectator, breaking the story, reported that, based on a leak from their deep throat in the catering department, the crime was costing some US$5,000 per week, the hungry students said ravenously to be munching their way through around 100 pounds (37 or 45 KG (deep throat not specific whether the losses were weighed on the avoirdupois or troy scale)) of Nutella every seven days.  The newspaper noted the heist was on such a scale that, unless addressed, the cost to the university would be US$250,000 a year, enough to buy seven jars for every undergraduate student.

The national media picked up the story noting, apart from the criminality, there were concerns about the relationship between the wastage of food, excessively expensive student services, the exorbitant cost of tuition fees and a rampant consumer culture.  It seemed a minor moral panic might ensue until the student newspaper (now a blog) deconstructed the Spectator’s numbers and worked out the caterers must be paying 70% more for Nutella than that quoted by local wholesalers, casting some doubt on the matter.  The university authorities responded within days, issuing a press release headed “Nutellagate Exposed: It's a Smear!"  Their audit revealed that the accounting system had booked US$2,500 against Nutella purchases in the first week of term but that was the usual practice when stocking inventory and that consumption was around the budgeted US$450 in subsequent weeks.  Deep throat (Nutella edition) lost face and was discredited.

Nutellagate II broke in 2017 when a consumer protection organization released a report noting the recipe had, without warning, been changed, the spread now having more sugar and milk powder but less cocoa and, as a result, was now of a lighter hue.  Ferrero’s crisis-management operative responded on twitter, tweeting “our recipe underwent a fine-tuning and continues to deliver the Nutella fans know and love with high quality ingredients,”… adding “…sugar, like other ingredients, can be enjoyed in moderation as part of a balanced diet.”

#Nutellagate soon trended and users expressed displeasure, many invoking the memory of New Coke or the IBM PS/2, two other products which appeared also to try to fix something not broken.  The twitterstorm soon subsided, the speculation being that, because it contained more sugar, consumers would become more addicted and soon forget the fuss.  So it proved, sales remaining strong.  Nutella though remains controversial because of the sugar content and the use of palm oil, a product harvested from vast monocultural plantations and associated with social and environmental damage.  Ferrero has now and again suggested they may be ceasing production but the user base has proved resistant although, recent movements in the hazelnut price may test the elasticity of demand.

Open-Gate Ferraris

The much admired but now almost extinct open-gate shifters were originally purely functional before becoming fetishized.  At a time when more primitive transmissions and shifter assemblies were built with linkages and cables which operated with much less precision than would come later, the open-gates served as a guidance mechanism, making the throws more uniform and ensuring the correct movement of the controlling lever.  Improvements in design actually made open-gates redundant decades ago but they'd become so associated with cars such as Ferraris and Lamborghinis that they'd become part of the expectations of many buyers and it wasn't hard to persuade the engineers to persist, even though the things had descended to be matters purely of style.  A gimmick they may have become but, cut from stainless steel and often secured with exposed screw-heads, they were among the coolest of nostalgia pieces.  

Reality eventually bit when modern, fast electronics meant automatic transmissions both shifted faster and were programmed always to change ratios at the optimal point and no driver however skilled could match that combination.  Once essential to quick, clear shifts, by the late 1990s, the open-gate had actually become a hindrance to the process and while there were a few who still relished the clicky, tactile experience, such folk were slowly dying off and with sales in rapid decline, manufacturers became increasingly unwilling to indulge them with what had become a low-volume, unprofitable option.  

Not all the Ferraris with manual gearboxes used the open-gate fitting, some of the grand-touring cars using concealing leather boots but both are now relics, the factory recently retiring the manual gearbox because of a lack of demand.  The 599 GTB Fiorano was made between 2006-2012 and included the option but of the 3200-odd made, only 30 buyers specified the manual.  That run of 30 was however mass-production compared with the California (2009-2014) which was both the first Ferrari equipped with a dual-clutch transmission and the last to offer a manual, ending the tradition of open gate-shifters which stretched back 65 years.  Testing the market, a six-speed manual option had been added to the hard-top convertible in 2010 and the market spoke, the factory dropping it from the order sheet in 2012 after selling just three cars in three years.  The rarity has however created collectables; on the rare occasions an open gate 599 or California is offered at auction, they attract quite a premium and there's now an after-market converting Ferraris to open gate manuals.  It's said to cost up to US$40,000 depending on the model and, predictably, the most highly regarded are those converted using "verified factory parts".

2012 Ferrari California (top) and 2012 Cadillac CTS-V sedan.

So the last decade at Maranello has been automatic (technically “automated manual transmission”) all the way and although a consequence of the quest for ultimate performance, it wasn’t anything dictatorial and had customer demand existed at a sustainable level, the factory would have continued to supply manual transmissions.  There is however an alternative, Cadillac since 2004 offering some models with manual transmission for the first time since the 1953 Series 75 (among the Cadillac crowd the Cimarron (1982-1988) is never spoken of except in the phrase "the unpleasantness of 1982" ) and by 2013, while one could buy a Cadillac with a clutch pedal, one could not buy such a Ferrari.  For most of the second half of the twentieth century, few would have thought that anything but improbable or unthinkable.

Ferrari open-gate shifter porn 

1965 250 LM

1967 330 GTC

1968 275 GTS/4 NART Spyder

1969 365 GTC

1972 365 GTB/4

1988 Testarossa

1991 Mondial-T Cabriolet

1994 348 Spider

2011 599 GTB Fiorano

2012 California


Saturday, October 26, 2024

Trunk

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 (200 litre) drum although the reputed ability to handle fours sets of golf clubs (including 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.  

1963 Corvette (C2) Coupe. This was one of GM's official publicity stills and one can see why the decision was taken not to include a trunk lid but the absence enhanced structural integrity and it was this Chevrolet chose to emphasize.

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; of the seven produced, it was one of four LHD (left hand drive) versions.  The trunk would have be large enough for his conductor's baton and maybe a little more.

By virtue of the long tail, the Mark III did though have more luggage space (for soft baggage rather than suitcases) and it appealed to some, the most famous purchaser 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 LTD (which Ford paid acoustic engineers to prove was quieter than a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III) so whether Karajan ever tried to fit a radio or tape deck ("sound-systems would come later) is unlikely.  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).