Blowout

Blowout (pronounced bloh-out)

(1) A sudden puncturing of a pneumatic tyre.

(2) A sudden release of oil and gas from a well.

(3) In geology, a sandy depression in a sand dune ecosystem caused by the removal of sediments by wind.

(4) An extreme and unexpected increase in costs, such as in government estimates for a project (a popular Australian use although the budgetary outcomes are familiar just about everywhere).

(5) In medical slang, an act of defecation in which an incontinent person (usually an infant or toddler) produces a large amount of excrement that causes their diaper to overflow and leak (the companion slang the “poonami”).

(6) In engineering, the cleaning of the flues of a boiler from scale etc by blasting the surfaces with steam.

(7) In body-piercing, an unsightly flap of skin caused by an ear piercing that is too large.

(8) An instance of having one's hair blow-dried and styled.

(9) In tattooing, the blurring of a tattoo due to ink penetrating too far into the skin and dispersing.

(10) In woodworking, the damage done to the exit side of a drilled hole or sawn edge when no sacrificial backer-board is used during the drilling or sawing: the drill bit's or saw blade's exit on the far side causes chips of wood to be broken from the edge (sometimes called a “tearout”).

(11) In slang, a social function, especially one with extravagant catering.

(12) In slang, a large or extravagant meal.

(13) In slang, a sporting contest in which one side wins by an untypically wide margin; an overwhelming victory.

(14) In slang, an argument; an altercation.

(15) In Filipino slang, a party or social gathering.

1825: A creation of US colloquial English (the construct being blow + out) in the sense of “outburst, brouhaha” (and in a subtle linguistic shift such events would now, inter alia, be called a “blow-up”), from the verbal phrase, the reference being to pressure in a steam engine.  The elements “blow” and “out” both have many senses and the compound blowout is formed from the verb “blow” in the sense of “burst” or “explosion” plus the verb “out” in the sense of “eject or expel; discharge; oust”.  The verb blow was a pre-1000 form from the Middle English verb blowen, from the Old English blāwan (to blow, breathe, make a current of air, inflate, sound), from the Proto-West Germanic blāan, from the Proto-Germanic blēaną (to blow), from primitive Indo-European bhleh- (to swell, blow up) and may be compared with the Old High German blāen, the Latin flō (to blow) and the Old Armenian բեղուն (bełun) (fertile).  The verb out was from the pre-900 Middle English adverb out, from the Old English ūt (out, without, outside).  It was cognate with the Dutch uit, the German aus, the Old Norse & Gothic ūt and was akin to the Sanskrit ud-.  The Middle English verb was outen, from the Old English ūtian (to put out) and cognate with the Old Frisian ūtia.  Blowout is a noun; the noun plural is blowouts and the use as a verb non-standard.

The blowout as a source of irony.

Blowout is used as a modifier.  In retail commerce, a “blowout sale” is an event advertised as offering greater than usual discounts, with a real or notional intent to deplete the inventory.  Unlike the various uses in hairdressing, blowouts can be undesirable events and devices have been devised which prevent their unwanted occurrence: In electrical engineering a blowout coil (carrying an electric current) serves to deflect and thus extinguish an arc formed when the contacts of a switch part to turn off the current and in the messy business of drilling for oil, a “blowout preventer” is placed at the surface interface of an oil well to prevent blowouts by closing the orifice, allowing material to flow from the oil reservoir out through the shaft.  By contrast, in hairdressing, variants of the blowout deliberately are part of the process and in one use blowout is a generic descriptor of the taper fade (of which there are several variants.  There’s also the Brazilian blowout, a method temporarily to achieve straightening the hair by sealing a liquid keratin and preservative solution into the hair with a styling wand (hair iron).

1969 Ford Falcon GTHO #60 (Fred Gibson (b 1941) & Barry “Bo” Seton (b 1936)) on its roof after a blowout of the right-rear tyre, Mount Panorama, Bathurst, Australia. 

In motorsport there have been some famous tyre blowouts and in Australia, in 1969, it was exactly that which doomed the first appearance at Bathurst of the Falcon GTHO, a car purpose-built for the event with “a relief map of the Mount Panorama circuit in one hand and a bucket of Ford’s money in the other”.  As it would prove in subsequent years, the GTHO was ideal for the purpose but in 1969 the choice of some then exotic US-made Goodyear racing tyres proved an innovation too far, one of several blowouts resulting in a Ford works car ending on its roof.  Being an anti-clockwise circuit, it was the right-had tyres which were subject to the highest loads and, built for racing, the Phase I GTHOs were set-up to oversteer, further increasing the wear.  For next year, Ford doubled down, the Phase II GTHOs famous for their prodigious oversteer but this time the suspension was tuned to suit the tyres.

As a routine procedure, a “steam blowout” is carried out to remove the debris from superheaters and re-heaters that accumulate during manufacturing and installation, the purpose being to prevent damage to turbine blades and valves.  In the usual course of operation, a “blowout” is the release of excessive steam (ie pressure) via a “blow-off valve”.  The meaning “abundant feast” dates from 1824 while that of “the bursting of an automobile tire” was in use by at least 1908.  The alternative forms blow-out & blow out are also in use, especially when applied to tyres and the un-hyphenated from was chosen for the title of Blow Out (1981), a movie by US director Brian De Palma (b 1940)in which the plot hinged on whether it was a gunshot which caused a tyre to blow out.

Manfred von Brauchitsch in Mercedes-Benz W25B (#7) in front of the pits at the end of 1935 German Grand Prix, Nürbugring, 28 July 1935.  The left-rear tyre which suffered a last-lap blowout has disintegrated, the car driven to fourth place on the rim for the final 7 km (4.4 miles).

The most famous blowout however was that which happened on the last lap of the 1935 German Grand Prix, run before 220,000 spectators in treacherously wet conditions on the Nürbugring circuit in the Eifel mountains, then in its classic and challenging pre-war configuration of 22.7 km (14.1 miles).  The pre-race favourites were the then dominant straight-8 Mercedes-Benz W25s and V16 Auto Union Type Bs (both generously subsidized by the Nazi state) but, powerful, heavy and difficult to handle in wet conditions, their advantages substantially were negated, allowing what should have been the delicate but out-classed straight-8 Alfa Romeo P3s to be competitive and in the gifted hands of the Italian Tazio Nuvolari (1892–1953), one won the race.  The last lap was among the most dramatic in grand prix history, the Mercedes-Benz W25B of Manfred von Brauchitsch (1905–2003) holding a winning lead until a rear-tyre blowout, the car limping to the finish-line on a bare rim to secure fourth place.  Von Brauchitsch was the nephew of Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Brauchitsch (1881–1948), the imposing but ineffectual Oberbefehlshaber (Commander-in-Chief) of OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres (the German army's high command)) between 1938-1941.

Lindsay Lohan on the cover of Vogue Czechoslovakia, May 2025, photographed by the Morelli Brothers.

That there should be a Vogue Czechoslovakia despite the state of Czechoslovakia ceasing to be after 31 December 1992 may seem strange but the publication does exist and is sold in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia.  Launched in 2018, it was the first edition of Vogue published in either country and the title was an obvious choice for Condé Nast because in addition to the shared cultural heritage, there were no negative associations with the name “Czechoslovakia”; so amicable was the 1992 separation of the two states it was styled the “Velvet Divorce”.  Other attractions included branding & recognition (“Czechoslovakia” still enjoying strong international recognition because the component elements of the name have been retained by the new states so it has not passed into history like “Yugoslavia” when it broke up amidst war and slaughter) and the economies of scale gained by producing a single edition for two markets.  That reflects a general industry trend, the Czech Republic & Slovakia often treated as a single media market because of their (1) linguistic similarity, (2) cultural overlap and shared (though often troubled) history.  It worked out well for Conde Nast because they got a retro-modern identity evocative of a culturally rich past with a contemporary twist.

Lindsay Lohan’s Almond Milk Upper East Blowout hairstyle, Vogue Czechoslovakia, May 2025.

Czechoslovakia was created in 1918 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburgs was dissolved and in this form it existed until dismembered progressively, beginning with the well-intentioned but shameful Munich Agreement in 1938.  After World War II (1939-1945), Czechoslovakia was re-established under its pre-1938 borders (with the exception of Carpathian Ruthenia, which became part of Soviet Union) but its fate was sealed when in 1948 the Communist Party (approved by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) staged a coup and seized power, integrating the country behind the Iron Curtain into the Moscow-centric Eastern Bloc joining Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, a kind of “Marshall Plan by rubles”) in 1955 and the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet’s counterpoint to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in 1955.  An uprising in 1968 (the so called “Prague Spring”) seeking political & economic liberalization ruthlessly was crushed by Russian tank formations sent by Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982; Soviet leader 1964-1982) and it wasn’t until 1989, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the people peacefully overthrew Communist Party rule in what was labelled the “Velvet Revolution”, thus the adoption of “Velvet Divorce” to describe the unusually quiet (and not at all bloody) constitutional separation of the two sovereign states.

Lindsay Lohan in halter neck black dress with white bodice and stylized bow, her Upper East Blowout under an outrageously extravagant tulle hat, Vogue Czechoslovakia, May, 2025.

The Hairstyle used for Lindsay Lohan’s Vogue cover shoot is known as the “Upper East Blowout”, designed deliberately to evoke the glamour of the stars from the golden age of Hollywood (essentially the 1930s-1950s) and the particular one worn by Ms Lohan specifically was called an “Almond Milk Upper East Blowout”, a construct which seems an intriguing piece of subliminal marketing.  “Almond Milk” was a obviously an allusion to the color but the fluid is also a pleasingly expensive (an important association in product-positioning) and trendy alternative to the mainstream dairy offerings with obvious appeal to vegetarians, vegans and animal rights activists.  For some it can be a wise choice, nutritionists noting (unsweetened) almond milk is a good source of vitamin-E and is lower in calories, protein, sugar and saturated fat while cow’s milk is more nutrient-dense and higher in protein, naturally containing lactose and saturated fats.  Because of that, fortification is essential for almond milk to match dairy milk’s micro-nutrient content but for those choosing on the basis of their dietary regime (vegans, the lactose intolerance et al), unsweetened, fortified almond can be a healthy option.  The “Upper East Side” element is a reference to the neighborhood in the borough of New York City’s (NYC) Manhattan.  Because of the vagueness in NYC’s neighborhood boundaries (they’re not officially gazetted), opinions vary as to where the place begins and ends but in the popular (and certainly the international) imagination, “Upper East Side” is most associated with places such as Fifth Avenue and Central Park which lie to the west.  While New Yorkers may not always know exactly what the Upper East Side is, they have no doubts about which parts definitely are NOT UES.  Long regarded as the richest and thus most prestigious of the New York boroughs, by the late nineteenth century informally it was known as the “silk stocking district”, the idea reflected still in the desirable real estate, expensive shops along Madison Avenue and its cluster of cultural institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection and the Guggenheim Museum.

Jessica Rabbit in characteristic pose (left) and Lindsay Lohan with "almond milk Upper East Blowout" hairstyle in black leather corset with silk laces and stainless steel eyelets.

Technically, the hairstyle is a “blowout” because historically the look was achieved with a combination of product & blow dryer; that’s still how most are done.  Because the really dramatic blowouts demand significant volume (ideally of “thick” hair), it can’t be achieved by everyone in their natural state and for Ms Lohan’s cover shot celebrity hairstylist Dimitris Giannetos (b 1983, Instagram: @dimitrishair) engineered things using a wig by Noah Scott (b 1998, Instagram: @whatwigs) of What Wigs, the industry’s go-to source for extravagant hair-pieces.  The use of “almond milk” to describe a shade of blonde was a bit opportunistic and would seem very similar to hues known variously as “light cool”, “light golden”, “champagne”, “golden honey” & “light ombre” but product differentiation is there to be grabbed and it seems to have caught on so it’ll be interesting to see if it gains industry support and endures to become one of the “standard blondes”.  So the linguistic effect is intended to be accumulative, Mr Giannetos calling his “Upper East blowout” “an homage” to the New York of the popular imagination and some of the hairstyles which appeared in the publicity shots of golden age Hollywood stars, memorably captured by the depiction of Jessica Rabbit in Robert Zemeckis’s (b 1952) live/animated toon hybrid movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).  Think luxuriant waves meet old money.

However, a Vogue cover shot in a well-lit studio and created using a custom-made wig, styled by an expert hairdresser is one thing but to replicate the look IRL (in real life) is another because, despite what shampoo advertisements would have us believe, “high-gloss” rarely just happens and even with a wig, to achieve the required fullness and visual volume usually demands what needs to be understood as structural engineering.  Usually, this will necessitate “…extensions set in pin curls, then brushed out meticulously…” before being shaped with the appropriate product as a device.  Expectations need to be realistic because with each change in camera angle, it can be necessary to “re-blow and re-style”; while it’s not quite that each strand needs to be massages into place for each shot, that can be true of each wave and just because the hair looks soft and bouncy in the images on a magazine’s glossy pages, the use of fudge or moose to achieve the look can render locks IRL remarkable rigid.

Blip

Blip (pronounced blip)

(1) A spot of light on a radar screen indicating the position of a plane, submarine, or other object (also as pip); any similar use on other electronic equipment such as an oscilloscope.

(2) By adoption from the use in radar (and applied very loosely), any small spot of light on a display screen.

(3) In any tracked metric (typically revenue, sales etc), a brief and usually unexpected.

(4) In general use, an aberration, something unexpected and (usually) fleeting (often in the expression “blip on the radar”).

(5) In electronic transmissions (audible signals), a pip or bleep (also both onomatopoeic of short, single-pitch sounds).

(6) By extension, any low level, repetitive sound (rare).

(7) In the slang of software developers, a minor bug or glitch (retrospectively dubbed blips if promptly fixed (or re-labeled as “a feature”)).

(8) A specific data object (individual message or document) in the now defunct Google Wave software framework.

(9) In informal use, to move or proceed in short, irregular movements.

(10) In automotive use, briefly to apply the throttle when downshifting, to permit smoother gear-changing (the origin in the days of pre-synchromesh gearboxes, especially when straight-cut gears were used) and still used in competition to optimize performance but most instances by drivers of road cars are mere affectations (used as noun & verb).

(11) In informal use, abruptly to change a state (light to dark; on to off etc), sometimes implying motion.

(12) In broadcast media (and sometimes used on-line), to replace offensive or controversial words with a tone which renders them inaudible (a synonym of “bleep”, both words used in this contexts as nouns (a bleep) and verbs (to bleep out).  In live radio & TV, a junior producer or assistant was usually the designated “blipper” or “bleeper”.

1894: An onomatopoeic creation of sound symbolism, the speculation being it may have been based on the notion of “blink” (suggesting brevity) with the -p added to bli- as symbolic of an abrupt end, the original idea to capture the experience of a “popping sound”.  The use describing the sight and sound generated by radar equipment was first documented in 1945 but may have been in use earlier, the public dissemination of information about the technology restricted until the end of World War II (1939-1945).  The verbs (blipped & blipping) came into use in 1924 & 1925 respectively while the first documented use of the noun blipper dates from 1966 although “bleeper” appeared some fifteen year earlier and the role was acknowledge as early as the 1930s.  Blip is a noun & verb, blipped & blipping are verbs and blippy, blippier & blippiest are adjectives; the noun plural is blips.

The blipster

One unrelated modern portmanteau noun was blipster, the construct a blend of b(lack) + (h)ipster, used to refer to African-Americans (and presumably certain other peoples of color (PoC)) who have adopted the visual clues of hipster culture.  Whether the numbers of blipsters represent the sort of critical mass usually associated with the recognition of sub-cultures isn’t clear but as in medicine where a novel condition does not need to be widely distributed (something suffered even by a single patient can be defined and named as a syndrome), the coining of blipster could have been inspired by seeing just one individual who conformed to being (1) African American and (2) appearing in some ways to conform to the accepted parameters of hipsterism.  Labeling theory contains reservations about this approach but for etymologists it’s fine although there is always the risk of a gaboso (generalized observation based on single observation).  Predictably, there is debate about what constitutes authentic blipsterism because there are objections by some activists to PoCs either emulating sub-cultures identified as “white” or taking self-defining interest in aspects of that culture (such as those associated with hipsterism).  What seems to be acceptable is a stylistic fusion as long as the fashions are uniquely identifiable as linkable with traditional (ie modern, urban) African-American culture and the cultural content includes only black poets, hip-hop artists etc.

The Blipvert

The construct of blipvert (also historically blip-vert) was blip + vert.  Vert in this context was a clipping of advertisement (from the Middle French advertissement (statement calling attention)), the construct being advertise +‎ -ment.  The -ment suffix was from the Middle English -ment, from the Late Latin -amentum, from -mentum which came via Old French -ment.  It was used to form nouns from verbs, the nouns having the sense of "the action or result of what is denoted by the verb".  The suffix is most often attached to the stem without change, except when the stem ends in -dge, where the -e is sometimes dropped (abridgment, acknowledgment, judgment, lodgment et al), with the forms without -e preferred in American English.  The most widely known example of the spelling variation is probably judgment vs judgement.  In modern use, judgement is said to be a "free variation" word where either spelling is considered acceptable as long as use is consistent.  Like enquiry vs inquiry, this can be a handy where a convention of use can be structured to impart great clarity: judgment used when referring to judicial rulings and judgement for all other purposes although the approach is not without disadvantage given one might write of the judgement a judge exercised before delivering their judgment.  To those not aware of the convention, it could look just like a typo.

As both word and abbreviation “vert” has a number of historic meanings.  One form was from the Middle English vert, from Old French vert, from Vulgar Latin virdis (green; young, fresh, lively, youthful) (syncopated from Classical Latin viridis)  In now archaic use it meant (1) green undergrowth or other vegetation growing in a forest, as a potential cover for deer and (2) in feudal law a right granted to fell trees or cut shrubs in a forest.  The surviving use is in heraldry where it describes a shade of green, represented in engraving by diagonal parallel lines 45 degrees counter-clockwise.  As an abbreviation, it's used of vertebrate, vertex & vertical and as a clipping of convertible, used almost exclusively by members of the Chevrolet Corvette cult in the alliterative phrase "Vette vert", a double clipping from (Cor)vette (con)vert(ible).

Vette vert: 1967 Chevrolet Corvette L88 convertible which sold at auction in 2013 at Mecum Dallas for US$3,424,000, a bit short of the L88 coupé which the next year realized US$3,850,000 at Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale; that remains the record price paid for a Corvette at auction.  The L88 used a 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8 with a single four barrel carburetor, tuned to produce between 540-560 (gross) horsepower although for official purposes it was rated at 430, slightly less than the advertised output of the L71 427 which, with three two barrel carburettors was the most powerful version recommended for “street” use.  The L88 was essentially a race-ready power-plant, civilized only to the extent cars which used it could be registered for road use but, demanding high-octane fuel available only in a limited number of locations and not offered with creature comforts like air-conditioning, it really was meant only for race tracks or drag strips.  For technical reasons, L71 buyers couldn’t order air-conditioning either but were at least allowed to have a radio, something the noise generated by the L88 would anyway have rendered mostly redundant.

When humans emulated CGI: Max Headroom, 1986, background by Amiga 1000.

A blipvert is a very brief advertisement (a duration of one second or less now the accepted definition although originally they could three times as long).  The concept first attracted widespread attention in the 1980s when it was an element in the popular television show Max Headroom, a production interesting for a number of reasons as well as introducing “blipvert” to a wide audience.  In Max Headroom, blipverts were understood as high-intensity television commercials which differed from the familiar form in that instead of being 20, 30 or 60 seconds long, they lasted but three, the line being they were a cynical device to discourage viewers from switching channels (“channel surfing” not then a term in general use).  The character Max Headroom (actually an actor made up to emulate something rendered with CGI (computer generated imagery)) was said to be pure software which had attained (or retained from the downloaded “copy” of the mind taken from a man killed after running into a “Max Headroom” warning sign in a car park) some form of consciousness and had decided to remain active within the television station’s computer network.  In this, the TV show followed a popular trope from science fiction, one which now underpins many of the warnings (not all by conspiracy theorists) about the implications of AI (artificial intelligence).  Although a creation of prosthetics rather than anything digital, the technique was made convincing by using a background generated on an Amiga 1000 (1985), a modest machine by today’s standards but a revelation at the time because not only was the graphics handling much better than on many more expensive workstations but even by 1990, despite what IBM and Microsoft were telling us, running multi-tasking software was a better experience on any Amiga than trying it on a PS/2 running OS/2.

On television, the stand-alone blipvert never became a mainstream advertising form because (1) it was difficult, (2) as devices to stimulate demand in most cases they appeared not to work and (3) the networks anyway discouraged it but the idea was immensely influential as an element in longer advertisements and found another home in the emerging genre of the music video, the technique perfected by the early 1990s; it was these uses which saw the accepted duration reduced from three seconds to one.  To the MTV generation (and their descendents on YouTube and TikTok), three seconds became a long time and prolonged exposure to the technique presumably improved the ability of those viewers to interpret such messages although that may have been as the cost of reducing the attention span.  Both those propositions are substantially unproven although it does seem clear the “video content generations” do have a greater ability to decode and interpret imagery which is separate for any explanatory text.  That is of course stating the obvious; someone who reads much tends to become better at interpreting words than those who read little.  Still, the blipvert has survived, the advertising industry finding them especially effective if used as a “trigger” to reference a memory created by something earlier presented in some form and those who find them distasteful because they’re so often loud and brash just don’t get it; that’s the best way they’re effective.

Alex (Malcolm McDowell (b 1943)) being re-sensitised (blipvert by blipvert) in Stanley Kubrick's (1928-1999) file adaptation of A Clockwork Orange (1971).

The concept of the blipvert is sometimes attributed to US science fiction (SF) writer Joe Haldeman (b 1943) who described something close to the technique in his novel Mindbridge (1976) and it’s clearly (albeit in longer form) used in the deprogramming sessions in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962) but use predates both books.  In 1948, encouraged by their success in countering the Partito Comunista d'Italia (PCd'I; the Communist Party of Italy) in elections in the new Italian republic (the success achieved with a mix of bribery, propaganda, disinformation and some of the other tricks of electoral interference to which US politicians now so object when aimed at US polls), the newly formed US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) turned their attentions to France where the perception of threat was even greater because the infiltration of the press, trade unions, universities, the military and many other organs of state was rife.  The US was well-placed to run effective propaganda campaigns because, uniquely in devastated, impoverished Europe, it could distribute the cubic money required to buy advertising space & airtime, employ cooperative journalists, trade union leaders & professors and even supply scarce commodities like newsprint and ink.  To try to avoid accusations of anything nefarious (and such suggestions were loud, frequent and often not without foundation) much of the activity was conducted as part of Marshall Plan Aid, the post-war recovery scheme with which the US revived post-war European economies with an injection of (what would in 2024 US$ terms) be something like US$182 billion.  As well as extensively publicizing the benefits of non-communist life compared with the lot of those behind the iron curtain, the CIA published books and other pieces by defectors from the Soviet Union.  One novelty of what quickly became an Anglo-American psychological operation (the British Political Warfare Executive (PWE) having honed successful techniques during wartime) was the use of 2-3 second blipverts spliced into film material supplied under the Marshall Plan.  The British were well aware the French were especially protective of what appeared in cinemas and would react unfavourably to blatant propaganda while they might treat something similar in print with little more than a superior, cynical smile.

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

The blipvert is sometimes grouped with subliminal advertising and that’s convenient but they’re different both in practice and definitionally and the rule of thumb can be expressed as (1) if it can (briefly) be seen it’s a blipvert and (2) if it can’t be seen it’s subliminal.  No doubt media studies academics (of which there seem now to be many) could punch holes in that and cite a dozen or more exceptions but as a definition it at least hints in the right direction.  What subliminal advertising involves is the presentation of understandable information (which can be images, sound or text) at a level below the conscious awareness of the viewer, the idea being (unlike the confrontational blipvert) to bypass conscious perception.  The extent to which subliminal messaging is an effective way to influence consumer behaviour is debated (as is the notion of whether it’s manipulative and unethical) but the continued use of the technique in political campaigns does suggest that in that specialized field of consumer behaviour, there must be many convinced of the efficacy.  Certainly it appears to work although the less subtle forms are quickly deconstructed and critiqued, such as the sudden adoption in sports, almost as soon as tobacco advertising was banned, of color schemes triggering memories of cigarette packets.

A Marlboro Man lights up.  The "Marlboro 100s" in the gold & white pack were so-named because each stick was 100 mm (4 inch) long.

After some years of prevarication, in 2005 the European Union (EU) banned tobacco advertising “in the print media, on radio and over the internet” at the same prohibiting “tobacco sponsorship of cross-border cultural and sporting events”.  Making unlawful the promotion of a known carcinogen responsible over a lifetime of use for shortening lifespan (on average) by just under a decade sounds now uncontroversial but at the time it had been bitterly contested by industry.  Of interest to some was that despite the introduction of the laws being known for some two years, only couple of months earlier, Ferrari had signed a fifteen year, billion dollar sponsorship deal with Philip Morris, best known for their Marlboro cigarette and “Marlboro Man” advertising campaign which featured a variety of men photographed in outdoor settings, five of whom ultimately died of smoking-related diseases.

Variations on a theme of red & white.  Ferrari Formula One cars: F2007 (2007) in Marlboro livery (left), F10 (2010) with "bar code" (centre) and F14 (2014) in post bar-code scheme.

Ferrari’s lawyers took their fine-toothed legal combs to the problem and came up with a way to outsmart the eurocrats.  The Formula One (F1) cars Scuderia Ferrari ran began to appear in what had become the traditional red & white livery (the same combination used on Marlboro’s signature packets) but in the space where once had been displayed the Marlboro logo, there was instead a stylized “bar code”.  In response to a number of accusations (including many by those in the medical community) that the team was guilty of “backdoor advertising” of cigarettes, in 2008 a statement on the company website said it was “baffled”:

"Today and in recent weeks, articles have been published relating to the partnership contract between Scuderia Ferrari and Philip Morris International, questioning its legality.  These reports are based on two suppositions: that part of the graphics featured on the Formula 1 cars are reminiscent of the Marlboro logo and even that the red colour which is a traditional feature of our cars is a form of tobacco publicity.  Neither of these arguments have any scientific basis, as they rely on some alleged studies which have never been published in academic journals. But more importantly, they do not correspond to the truth.  "The so-called barcode is an integral part of the livery of the car and of all images coordinated by the Scuderia, as can be seen from the fact it is modified every year and, occasionally even during the season. Furthermore, if it was a case of advertising branding, Philip Morris would have to own a legal copyright on it.  "The partnership between Ferrari and Philip Morris is now only exploited in certain initiatives, such as factory visits, meetings with the drivers, merchandising products, all carried out fully within the laws of the various countries where these activities take place. There has been no logo or branding on the race cars since 2007, even in countries where local laws would still have permitted it.  The premise that simply looking at a red Ferrari can be a more effective means of publicity than a cigarette advertisement seems incredible: how should one assess the choice made by other Formula 1 teams to race a car with a predominantly red livery or to link the image of a driver to a sports car of the same colour? Maybe these companies also want to advertise smoking!  It should be pointed out that red has been the recognised colour for Italian racing cars since the very beginning of motor sport, at the start of the twentieth century: if there is an immediate association to be made, it is with our company rather than with our partner.”

When red & white was just the way Scuderia Ferrari painted their race cars: The lovely, delicate lines of the 1961 Ferrari Typo 156 (“sharknose”), built for Formula One's “voiturette” (1.5 litre) era (1961-1965), Richie Ginther (1930–1989), XXIII Grosser Preis von Deutschland (German Grand Prix), Nürburgring Nordschleife, August 1961.

The suggestion was of course that this was subliminal marketing (actually unlawful in the EU since the late 1950s) the mechanics being that Ferrari knew this would attract controversy and the story was that at speed, when the bar code was blurred, it resembled the Marlboro logo; racing cars do go fast but no evidence was ever produced to demonstrate the phenomenon happened in real world conditions, either when viewed at the tracks or in televised coverage.  It was possible using software to create a blurred version of the shape and there was a vague resemblance to the logo but that wasn’t the point, as a piece of subliminal marketing it worked because viewers had been told the bar code would in certain circumstances transform into a logo and even though it never did, the job was done because Marlboro was on the mind of many and doubtlessly more often than ever during the years when the logo actually appeared.  So, job done and done well, midway in the 2010 season, Ferrari dropped the “bar code”, issuing a press release: “By this we want to put an end to this ridiculous story and concentrate on more important things than on such groundless allegations.”

Heckblende

Heckblende (pronounced hek-blend or hek-blend-ah (German)

A moulded piece of reflective plastic permanently mounted between a car’s taillight (also as tail light, tail-light, taillamp, tail lamp & tail lamp) assemblies and designed to make them appear a contiguous entity

1980s: A German compound noun, the construct being Heck (rear; back) + Blende (cover).  As a surname, Heck (most common in southern Germany and the Rhineland) came from the Middle High German hecke or hegge (hedge), the origin probably as a topographic name for someone who lived near a hedge.  The link with hedges as a means of dividing properties led in the Middle Low German to heck meaning “wooden fencing” under the influence of the Old Saxon hekki, from the Proto-West Germanic hakkju.  In nautical slang "heck" came to refer to the “back of a ship” because the position of the helmsman in the stern was enclosed by such a fence and from here it evolved in modern German generally to refer to "back or rear".  The Modern German Blende was from blenden (deceive), from the Middle High German blenden, from the Old High German blenten, from the Proto-Germanic blandijaną, from the primitive Indo-European blend- and was cognate with the Dutch blenden and the Old English blendan.  Because all German nouns are capitalized, Heckblende is correct but in English, heckblende is the usual spelling.

The German blende translates as “cover” so the construct Heck + Blende (one of their shorter compounds) happily deconstructs as “back cover” and that obviously describes the plastic mouldings used to cover the space between a car’s left and right-side taillights.  Blenden however can (as a transitive or intransitive) translate as (1) “to dazzle; to blind” in the sense of confuse someone’s sight by means of excessive brightness”, (2) (figuratively and usually as an intransitive) to show off; to pose (try to make an impression on someone by behaving affectedly or overstating one’s achievements) and (3) “to dazzle” in the sense of deception (from the 1680s German Blende (an ore of zinc and other metals, a back-formation from blenden (in the sense of "to blind, to deceive") and so called because the substance resembles lead but yields none (but should not be confused with the English construct hornblende (using the English “blende” in the sense of “mix”) (a dark-green to black mineral of the amphibole group, calcium magnesium iron and hydroxyl aluminosilicate)).  A heckblende thus (1) literally is a cover and (2) is there to deceive a viewer by purporting to be part of the rear lighting rather than something merely decorative (sic).  If a similar looking assembly is illuminated and thus part of the lighting system, then it's not a heckblende but part of a full-width taillight. 

1934 Auburn Boat-tail Speedster.

On cars, the design of taillights stated modestly and few were in use before 1914, often a small, oil-lit single lens the only fitting.  Electric lights were by the 1920s standardized (although the oil lamps lingered on some commercial vehicles into the next decade) while early legislation passed in many jurisdictions specified the need for red illumination to the rear (later also to indicate braking) but about the only detail specified was a minimum luminosity, shape, size and placement left to manufacturers.  Before the late 1940s, most taillights were purely functional with little attempt to make them design motifs although during the art deco era, there were some notably elegant flourishes but despite that, they remained generally an afterthought and on lower priced models, a second taillight was sometimes optional, the standard of a left and right-side unit not universal (in the West) until the 1950s.

A tale of the tails of two post-war economies:  1959 MGA Twin-Cam FHC & 1959 Daimler Majestic (upper) and 1959 Chevrolet Impala (batwing) flattop & 1959 DeSoto Adventurer convertible (lower).

It was in the 1950s the shape of tail lights became increasingly stylized.  With modern plastics freeing designers from the constraints the use of glass had imposed and the experience gained during World War II (1939-1945) in the mass-production of molded Perspex, new possibilities were explored.  In the UK and Europe, there was little extravagance, manufacturers content usually to take advantage of new materials and techniques mostly to fashion what were little more than larger, more rounded versions of what had gone before, the amber lens being adopted as turn indicators to replace the mechanically operated semaphore signals often little more than a duplication of the red taillight or an unimaginatively styled appendage.

1961 Chrysler Turboflite show car (left) and 2024 Dodge Charger (right).

Across the Atlantic, US designers were more ambitious but one idea which seems not to have been pursued was the full-width taillight and that must have been by choice because it would have presented no challenges in engineering.  Instead, as the jet age became the space age, the dominant themes were aeronautical or recalled the mechanism of rocketry, taillights styled to resemble the exhausts of jet-engines or space ships, the inspiration as often from SF (science fiction or Sci-Fi) as the runway.  Pursuing that theme, much of the industry succumbed to the famous fin fetish, the tails of their macropterous creations emphasizing the vertical more than the horizontal.  Surprisingly though, despite having produced literally dozens of one-off “concept” and “dream” cars over the decade, it seems it wasn’t until 1961 when Chrysler sent their Turboflite around the show circuit that something with a genuine full-width taillight was shown.  The corporation revived the look for the eighth generation (LB) Dodge Charger introduced in 2024.

1936 Tatra T87 (left), 1961 Tatra T603A prototype (centre) & 1963 Tatra T-603-X5 (right).

That same year, in Czechoslovakia, the Warsaw Pact’s improbable Bohemian home of the avant-garde, Tatra’s engineers considered full-width taillights for their revised 603A.  As indicated by the specification used since before the war (rear-engined with an air-cooled, 2.5 litre (155 cubic inch) all-aluminum V8), Tatra paid little attention to overseas trends and were influenced more by dynamometers and wind tunnels.  However, the taillights didn’t make it to volume production although the 603A prototype did survive to be displayed in Tatra’s Prague museum.  Tatra’s designs, monuments to mid-century modernism, remain intriguing.

1967 Imperial LeBaron four door Hardtop.

If the idea didn’t impress behind the iron curtain, it certainly caught on in the West, full-width assemblies used by many US manufacturers over the decades including Mercury, Imperial, Dodge, Shelby, Ford, Chrysler & Lincoln.  Some genuinely were full-width taillights in that the entire panel was illumined, a few from the Ford Motor Corporation (FoMoCo) even with the novelty of sequential turn-signals (outlawed in the early 1970s, bureaucrats seemingly always on the search for something to ban).  Most however were what would come to be called heckblendes and were intended to created only an illusion.

FoMoCo's take on the idea: Clockwise from top left: 1974 ZG Fairlane (AU), 1977 Thunderbird (US), 1966 Zodiac Mark IV (UK), 1970 Thunderbird (US), 1973 Landau (AU) & 1970 Torino (US).

Whether heckblendes or actually wired assemblies, Ford became especially fond of the idea which in 1966 made an Atlantic crossing, appearing on the Mark IV Zodiac, a car packed with advanced ideas but so badly executed it tarnished the name and when it (and the lower-priced Zephyr which made do without the heckblende) was replaced, the Zephyr & Zodiac names were banished from Europe, never to return.  Ford Australia picked-up the style (and typically several years later), using heckblendes on the ZF & ZG Fairlanes (1972-1976) and the P5 LTD & Landau (1973-1976).  The Fairlane’s heckblendes weren’t reprised when the restyled ZH (1976-1979) model was released but, presumably having spent so much of the budget on new taillights, the problem of needing new front end styling was solved simply by adapting that of the 1968 Mercury Marquis (the Marquis name also shamelessly borrowed for the up-market version), colonies often run with hand-me-downs.

The 1968 HK Holdens used the taillight assemblies to denote a model's place in the hierarchy: The basic Belmont (top left), the better equipped Kingswood (top left, the blinged-up Premier (bottom left) and the sporty Monaro GTS (bottom right).  By their heckblende (or its absence), they shall be known.  It's not believed Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) modelled the fall of his tie on the HK Premier but there may be a connection.

In Australia, the local outpost of General Motors (GM) applied a double fake.  The "heckblende" on the HK Holdens (1968-1969), as a piece of cost-cutting, was actually red-painted metal rather than reflective plastic and unfortunately prone to deterioration under the harsh southern sun; it was a fake version of a fake taillight.  Cleverly though, the fake apparatus was used as an indicator of the model's place in the hierarchy, the basic Belmont with just taillights, the (slightly) better-appointed Kingswood granted heckblendesque extensions, the up-market Premier with extended extensions and the Monaro GTS with the full-width part.  Probably the Belmont and Premier were ascetically most successful.  Exactly the same idea was recycled for Holden's VH Commodore (1981-1984), the SL/E (effectively the Premier's replacement) model's taillight assemblies gaining stubby extensions which, unfortunately, looked as "tacked-on" as they were.

Holdens: 1967 HR Premier (left), 1969 HT Brougham (centre) & 1971 HQ Premier (right).

The idea of a full-width decorative panel wasn’t new, Holden having used such a fitting as a signifier of "more expensive" on earlier Premiers.  Known as the “boot appliqué strip”, it began small on the EJ (1962-1963), EH (1963-1965) & HD (1965-1966) before becoming large and garish on the HR (1966-1968) but although not then known as bling, that must have been thought a bit much because it was toned down and halved in height when applied to the elongated (the trunk (boot) rather than the wheelbase!) and tarted-up Brougham (1968-1971 and a model reflecting what the industry then thought appealed to the bourgeoisie) and barely perceptible when used on the HQ Premier (1971-1974).  Holden didn’t however forget the heckblende and a quite large slab appeared on the VT Commodore (1997-2000) although it wasn’t retained on the revised VX (2000-2002) but whether in this the substantial rise in the oil price (and thus the cost of plastic) was a factor isn’t known.

Germans, factory and not: 1973 Porsche 914 2.0 (left), 1983 BMW 323i (E30, centre) & 1988 Mercedes-Benz 300E (W124, right).

Although, beginning with the 914 in 1973, Porsche was an early European adopter of the heckblende (since used with some frequently), it was the 1980s which were the halcyon days of after-market plastic, owners of smaller BMWs and Mercedes-Benz seemingly the most easily tempted.  The additions were always unnecessary and the only useful way they can be catalogued is to say some were worse than others.  Predictably, the fad spread to the East (Near, Middle & Far) and results there were just as ghastly although the popularity of the things must have been helpful as a form of economic stimulus, such was the volume in which they were extruded; reputedly, one factory in Pakistan had to expand to meet demand.  Among males aged 17-39, few things have proved as enduringly infectious as a love of gluing or bolting to cars, pieces of plastic which convey their owner's appalling taste. 

2019 Mercedes-Benz EQC 400 with taillight bar.

After the 1980s, fewer manufacturers used heckblendes as original equipment and when they did the terminology varied, the nomenclature including "decor panels", "valances" or "tail section appliqués".  However, although it seemed the heckblende may have been headed for extinction, full-width taillights still entice stylists and modern techniques of design and production, combined with what LEDs (light-emitting diodes) & OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diode) have made possible, mean it’s again a popular feature, the preferred term now “taillight bar”.  Hopefully, the moment for resuscitated fad will be brief. 

Oligarch

Oligarch (pronounced ol-i-gahrk)

(1) In political science, one of the rulers in an oligarchy (a system of government characterized by the institutional or constructive rule of a few and the literal or effective exclusion of the many); a member of an oligarchy.

(2) A very rich person involved in business in a manner which interacts intimately with the organs of government, the nature of the relationship varying between systems but usually with the implication of mutually beneficial corrupt or improper (if sometimes technically lawful) conduct.

(3) In cosmogony, a proto-planet formed during oligarchic accretion.

1600-1610: From the French oligarque & olygarche, from the Late Latin oligarcha, from the Ancient Greek ὀλιγάρχης (oligárkhēs) and related to oligarkhia (government by the few), the construct being olig- (few) (from stem of oligos (few, small, little) (a word of uncertain origin)) +‎ -arch (ruler, leader) (from arkhein (to rule)).  The noun plural was oligarchs.  In English, an earlier form of oligarchy was the circa 1500 oligracie, a borrowing from the Old French.  Oligarch & oligarchy are nouns, oligarchal, oligarchical & oligarchic are adjectives, and oligarchically is an adverb; the noun plural is oligarchs.  The playful minigarch (the offspring of an oligarch) and oligarchette (a female oligarch or an aspiring oligarch not yet rich enough to be so described are both non-standard while oligarchie & oligarchisch are sometimes used to convey a deliberate sense of the foreign.  Oligarch is now almost never used in its classical sense to refer to rulers of a political entity but instead to describe the small numbers of those who have become exceedingly rich, usually in some improper (even if technically lawful) way with the corrupt and surreptitious cooperation of those in government, the implication being they too have benefited.  Words like plutocrat, potentate and tycoonocrat are sometimes used as synonyms but don’t covey the sense of gains improperly and corruptly achieved.

Oligarchs are sometimes described in the press as "colorful characters", something a bit misleading because many seek a low profile, something often advisable in Mr Putin's Russia.  In a movie about oligarchs Netflix presumably would focus on some of the more colorful.

In modern use, an oligarch is one of the select few people who have become very rich by virtue of their close connections to rule or influence leaders in an oligarchy (a government in which power is held by a select few individuals or a small class of powerful people).  Unlike the relationship between “monarch” & “monarchy”, “oligarch” & “oligarchy” are not used in the literature of political science in quite the same way.  A monarch’s relationship to their monarchy is a thing defined by the constitutional system under which they reign and that may be absolute, despotic or theocratic but is inherently directly linked.  However, even in a political system which is blatantly and obviously an oligarchy, the members of the ruling clique are not referred to as oligarchs by virtue of their place in the administration, the more common descriptors being autocrat, despot, fascist, tyrant, dictator, totalitarian, authoritarian, kleptocrat or other terms that to varying degrees hint at unsavoriness.  Instead, the word oligarch has come to be used as a kind of encapsulated critique of corruption and economic distortion and the individual oligarch a personification of that.  The modern oligarch is one who has massively profited, usually by gaining in some corrupt way either the resources which once belonged to the state or trading rights within the state which tend towards monopolistic or oligopolistic arrangements.  Inherent in the critique is the assumption that the corrupt relationship is a symbiotic one between oligarch and those in government, the details of which can vary: oligarchs may be involved in the political process or entirely excluded but a common feature to all such arrangements is that there is a mutual enrichment at the expense of the sate (ie the citizens).  The word oligarch has thus become divorced from oligarchy and attached only to oligopoly.

The word oligopoly dates from 1887, from the Medieval Latin oligopolium, the construct being the Ancient Greek ὀλίγος (olígos) (few) + πωλεῖν (poleîn) (to sell) from the primitive Indo-European root pel (to sell) and describes a market in which an industry is dominated by a small number of large-scale sellers called oligopolists (the adjectival form oligopolistic from a surprisingly recent 1939).  Oligopolies, which inherently reduce competition and impose higher prices on consumers do not of necessity form as a result of improper or corrupt collusion and may be entirely organic, the classic example of which is two competitors in a once broad market becoming increasingly efficient, both achieving such critical mass that others are unable to compete.  At that point, there is often a tendency for the two to collude to divide the market between them, agreeing not to compete in certain fields or geographical regions, effectively creating sectoral or regional monopolies.  If competitors do emerge, the oligopolists have sufficient economic advantage to be able temporarily to reduce their selling prices to below the cost of production & distribution, forcing the completion from the market, after which the profitable price levels are re-imposed.

A classic game theory model of oligopolistic behavior.

Although not thought desirable by economists, they’ve long attracted interest interest because they create interesting market structures, especially when they interact with instruments of government designed to prevent their emergence or at least ameliorate the consequences of their operation.  The most obvious restriction governments attempt to impose is to prevent collusion between oligopolists in an attempt to deny them the opportunity to set prices of particular goods.  Even if successful, this can only ever partially be done because most prices quickly become public knowledge and with so few sellers in a market, most of which tend to operate with similar input, production & distribution costs, each oligopolist can in most cases predict the actions of the others. This has been of interest in game theory because the decisions of one player are not only in reaction to that of the others but also influences their behavior.

Dartz Prombron, produced in Latvia and manufactured to much the same standard of robustness which during Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) made the Soviet-built T-34 tank so formidable.

The Prombron is now typical of the preferred transport for an oligarch, the traditional limousine not able to be configured to offer the same level of protection against attacks with military-grade weapons.  Prombrons were originally trimmed with leather from the foreskins of whale penises but the feature was dropped after protests from the environmental lobby.  It was a rare victory for the greenies in their battles with the Kremlin, usually a most unequal contest. 

Oligarchs in the modern sense operate differently and the Russian model under Mr Putin has become the exemplar although some on a smaller scale (notably Lebanon since 1990) are probably even more extreme.  The Russian oligarchs emerged in the 1990s in the chaos which prevailed after the dissolution of the old Soviet Union.  They were men, sometime outside government but often apparatchiks within, well-skilled in the corruption and the operations of the black market which constituted an increasingly large chunk of the economy in the last decade of the USSR and these skills they parlayed into their suddenly capitalistic world.  Capitalism however depends on there being private property and because the USSR was constructed on the basis of Marxist theory which demanded it was the state which owned and controlled the means of production and distribution, there was little of that.  So there was privatization, some of it officially and much of it anything but, the classic examples being a back-channel deal between the oligarch and someone in government purporting to be vested with the authority to sell the assets of the state.  Few in government did this without a cut (often under the guise of a equity mechanism called “loans for shares”) and indeed, some apparatchiks sold the assets to themselves and those assets could be nice little earners like oil & gas concessions or producers, electricity generators, transport networks or financial institutions.  One of the reasons the assets were able to be sold at unbelievably bargain prices was a product of Soviet accounting: because the book value of assets had so little meaning in communist accounting, in many cases recorded asset values hadn’t be updated in decades and were in any case sometimes only nominal.  There were therefore sales which, prima facie, might have appeared to verge on the legitimate.

2021 Aurus Senat, now the official presidential car of the Russian state.

Few were and in any event, even if the aspiring oligarch didn’t have the cash, somewhere in government there would be found an official able to arrange the state to loan the necessary fund from the resources of the state, if need be creating (effectively printing) the money.  From that point, newly acquitted assets could be leveraged, sold to foreign investors at huge profit or even operated in the novelty of the free market, an attractive proposition for many given the asset obtained from the state might be a natural monopoly, competition therefore of no immediate concern.  Thus was modern Russian capitalism born of what were economic crimes on a scale unimaginable to the legions condemned to death or years in the Gulag under comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953).  Even before becoming prime-minister in 1999, Mr Putin was well aware of what had happened, being acquainted with some of the players in the process but shortly after assuming office, he had small a team of lawyers, accountants and economists undertake a forensic analysis to try more accurately to quantify who did what and who got how much.  Although the paperwork his investigative project produced has never been made public, it was reputed to have been reduced to a modestly-sized file but the contents were dynamic and put to good use.

In either 2003 or 2004, Mr Putin, assisted by officers of the FSB (successor to the alphabet-soup of similar agencies (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD, SMERSH, MGB & (most famously) KGB)) experts in such things, “arranged” a series of interviews with the oligarchs whose conduct in the privatizations of 1990s had been most impressive (or egregious depending on one’s view).  Well aware of the relationship between wealth and political influence, Mr Putin’s explained that the oligarchs had to decide whether they wished to be involved in business or politics; they couldn’t do both.  Mr Putin then explained the extent of their theft from the state, how much was involved, who else facilitated and profited from the transactions and what would be the consequences for all concerned were the matters to come to trial.  Then to sweeten the deal, Mr Putin pointed out that although the oligarchs had on a grand scale stolen their wealth, because “they had stolen it fair and square”, they could keep it if they agreed to refrain from involvement in politics.  The Russian oligarchy understood his language, the lucidity of his explanation perhaps enhanced by oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky (b 1963; then listed as the richest man in Russia and in the top-twenty worldwide) being arrested on charges of fraud and tax evasion, shortly before the meetings were convened (he was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to nine years in prison and while serving his sentence was charged with and found guilty of embezzlement and money laundering.  Mr Putin later pardoned Khodorkovsky and he was released to self-imposed exile in late 2013).  Few failed to note the significance of Mr Khodorkovsky having been "meddling in politics".

Alastair Campbell (b 1957; Downing Street Director of Communications & official spokesperson (1997–2003) rear) with Vladimir Putin (b 1952; Prime-Minister of Russia 1999-2000 & 2008-2012, President of Russia 1999-2008 & since 2012, left) and Tony Blair (b 1953; UK Prime Minister 1997-2007, right).  Mr Putin in recent years has stretched plausible deniability well beyond the point at which plausibility can be said to have become implausible and the not infrequently seen: "cause of death: falling from window of high building" is known by Russians as the "oligarch elevator".  Predating even the Tsarist state, grim humor has a long tradition in Russia.     

Mr Putin being taken for a drive by George W Bush (b 1946; George XLIII, US president 2001-2009) in the Russian president's GAZ-21 Volga (left) and casting an admiring glance at his 2009 Lada Niva (right).

In a sign the oligarchs were wise to comply, it was estimated by Bill Browder (b 1964; CEO and co-founder of the once Moscow-linked Hermitage Capital Management) during his testimony to the US Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017 that the biggest single increase in Mr Putin’s personal wealth happened immediately after Mr Khodorkovsky was jailed.  Given the history, Mr Browder is perhaps not an entirely impartial viewer but the pact between the autocrat and the oligarchy has been well-understood for years but what has always attracted speculation is the possibility that attached to it was a secret protocol whereby Mr Putin received transactional fees, imposing essentially a license to operate in Russia, alleged by some to be a cut of as much as 50%, based apparently on assessed profits rather than turnover.  Even if a half-share is too high and his cut is a more traditional 10%, the amount payable over the years would have been a very big number so there’s been much speculation about Mr Putin’s money, some estimates suggesting he may have a net wealth in the US$ billions.  That would seem truly impressive, given the Kremlin each year publishes a disclosure of their head of state’s income and assets and the last return disclosed Mr Putin enjoys an annual salary of US$140,000 and owns an 800-square-foot (74 m²) apartment, his other notable assets being three cars: a 1960 (first series) GAZ-21 Volga, a 1965 (second series) GAZ-M21P Volga and a 2009 Lada Niva 4x4.  Keen on outdoor pursuits, he also owns a camping trailer.

A country cottage on the Black Sea coast alleged to be owned by Mr Putin.  The large grounds surrounding the cottage are an indication why Mr Putin needs his 2009 Lada 4x4 & camping trailer.

On the basis of that, income and net wealth seem not at all out of alignment but intriguingly, he’s been photographed with some high-end watches on his wrist, including an A. Lange & Söhne 1815 Tourbograph which sells for around US$500,000.  He is rumored to be the owner of a 190,000 square-foot (17,650 m²) mansion which sits atop a cliff overlooking the Black Sea (reputedly Russia’s largest private residence and known, in a nod to the understated manner of the rich, as “Putin’s country cottage”) which has an ice hockey rink, a casino, a nightclub with stripper poles, an extravagantly stocked wine cellar and the finest furniture in Louis XIV style, the toilet-roll holders apparently at US$1,250 apiece (although, given the scale of the place, he may have received a bulk-purchase discount).  It demands a full-time staff of forty to maintain the estate, the annual running costs estimated at US$2-3 million.  Designed by Italian architect Lanfranco Cirillo (b 1959), and officially owned (though alleged to be held under a secret trust of which Mr Putin is the sole beneficiary) by oligarch Alexander Ponomarenko (b 1964), the construction cost was estimated to be somewhere around a US$ billion which seems expensive but a yacht currently moored in Italy and alleged also to belong to Mr Putin is said to have cost not much less to launch so either or both may actually represent good value and to assure privacy, the Russian military enforces a no-fly zone around the property.  Like many well-connected chaps around the world, a few of Mr Putin’s billions figured in the release of the Panama Papers in 2016.

A GAZ-23 Volga at a Moscow car show, 2006.

Apart from the Black Sea cottage, there are unverified reports Mr Putin is the owner of 19 other houses, 58 aircraft & helicopters and 700 cars (although it’s not clear if that number includes his two Volgas and the Lada).  No verified breakdown of the 700 cars has ever been published but given Mr Putin’s obvious fondness for Volgas, it may be his collection includes the limited-production variant of the GAZ-21 Volga, 603 (as the GAZ-M23 Volga) of which were produced between 1962-1970 for the exclusive use of the KGB (Комитет государственной безопасности (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti), the Committee for State Security) and other Soviet “special services”.  Equipped with the 5.5 litre (337 cubic inch) V8 engine from the big GAZ-13 Chaika (Gull) (1959-1981 and in the Soviet hierarchy, second only to the even bigger ZiL limousines (1936-2012)), the car was said to be a not entirely successful piece of engineering but it was certainly faster than the four-cylinder model on which it was based.  It’s never been clear just what was the top speed because the speedometer was calibrated only to 180 km/h (112 mph) but one intrepid KGB apparatchik claimed to have achieved that and reported his Volga was “still accelerating”.  Known to be nostalgic for the old ways of the KGB (with all that implies), it’s hoped Mr Putin has preserved at least one.

Restored GAZ-23 Volga.

Identified as 1962 model (still in the "transitional" bodywork used between the second and third series) the car is claimed to be a genuine, fully-restored GAZ-23 and while there were some sites which suggested it was a “Russian restromod” (ie a M-21 built to M-23 specifications), a hard-to-replicate detail like the special locking mechanism which permitted the trunk (boot) to be opened only when the passenger’s side back door was ajar (said to prevent the prevents the penetration of anyone unauthorized) does lend credence to the claims of authenticity.  Additionally, the supplied documents do support the claim and tie in with the extant license plates (5487 ЮБЯ).  This car wasn’t allocated to the KGB and the 20 years it was in government service were spent as a courier vehicle, transporting people or packages between Moscow and one of the space institutes and period photographs suggest that while white-wall tyres did exist behind the iron curtain, they were rare and not all M-23s seem to have been fitted with either the “chrome package” (the “keels” & “arrows” on the fenders) or the amber turn signals (used on export models).  While a million odd of the four-cylinder versions were produced, between 1962-1970, only 603 V8 M-23s left the factory and in the era, none were ever offered for general sale, availability restricted to the select few organs of the state deemed to require the inconspicuous hotrod.  As far is known, 19 still exist, mostly in museums or private collections although whether any remain stashed away in the Kremlin’s garages has never been disclosed which may seem strange but much in Mr Putin’s Russia remains a state secret.

The origins of the M-23 lie in a commission the KGB in 1960 issued to the Gorky Automobile Plant for the design of a vehicle able to be used for pursuits, VIP escorts and other “special missions”, the KGB doing a great many of the latter.  On the same basis “plain clothes” police in many jurisdictions use cars visually indistinguishable from those run by private citizens, the KGB specified that externally, their special model had to look exactly the same as the standard Volga GAZ-21 but be more powerful and thus faster.  In other words, KGB Volgas were to be “equal to” and yet “more equal” than the others.  In the commission, it was specified the car must be able to attain a top speed of 170 km/h (106 mph) and achieve 100 km/h (62 mph) within 16 seconds which may not now sound impressive but in the Warsaw Pact of 1960, it would have been supercar stuff.

GAZ 5.5 litre V8 in M-23.

The Chaika’s V8 was a tight fit in the smaller engine bay of the M-21 and the engineers were compelled to align it 2º off centre of the crankshaft and even after redesigning the right-side chassis member, the clearance between parts of the structure and the engine was in places just a few millimetres.  The V8 was by Western standards inefficient and generated much heat so the use of the Chaika’s large radiator was essential, meaning the frontal internal panels had to be changed, the opportunity taken also to strengthen the front cross-members, better to support the V8’s greater weight.  As was to become the practice when Detroit did such things, the suspension was upgraded using springs coiled from steel bars of increased diameter and heavy-duty shock absorbers were fitted.  Being a V8, there were of course two manifolds and thus two exhaust pipes but to disguise the identity of the thing, the two pipes terminated near the rear bumper but did not protrude into view.  As the US manufacturers also discovered, when it came to putting big, wide V8s in cars designed originally to house something more narrow, few components were as troublesome as exhaust manifolds and the performance of some muscle cars (notably the big-block (383 & 440 cubic inch (6.3 & 7.2 litre) Dodge Darts and second generation Plymouth Barracudas) was compromised by the need to use more restrictive systems.

Separated at birth: 1962 GAZ-23 (left) and 1964 Pontiac GTO (right).

Although barely mentioned by collectors, the GAZ-23 pre-dated the Pontiac Pontiac GTO (1963-1974) by more than a year though it's the GTO which usually is cited as "the first muscle car" (a concept defined as "a big engine from the full-sized line installed in the smaller intermediate platform") but the KGB's project was exactly that.  In a sense, the true MRCA (most recent common ancestor) of the muscle cars of the 1960s was probably the 1936 Buick Century, a revised version of the model 60, created by replacing the 233 cubic inch (3.8 litre) straight eight with the 320 cubic inch (5.2 litre) unit from the longer, heavier Roadmaster.  It wasn’t exactly a transplant into an “intermediate” (a concept unknown until the 1960s) but the process was not dissimilar.  Still, if one sticks to the accepted the definition, it’s the V8 GAZ-23 which came first and not the GTO but the Soviet vehicle rates not even a mention in Mike Mueller’s (b 1959) otherwise comprehensive Muscle Car Source Book (2015, Quarto Publishing Group), something which is that’s publication’s only omission of note.  Mr Mueller’s book is unusual in that it appears to contain not a single error, a rarity in a field in which misinformation is rife.  His book is data-dense and highly recommended though should Mr Mueller ever release a revised edition, hopefully the KGB’s seemingly thus far unacknowledged contribution to the muscle car ecosystem will gain a footnote.  While chief engineer of GM's (General Motors) PMD (Pontiac Motor Division), shamelessly John DeLorean (1925–2005) stole the GTO's name (Gran Turismo Omologato) from the Italians so it's at least not impossible he pinched the concept from the Soviets. 

Mr Putin agitprop.

Mr Putin has admitted: "I am the wealthiest man, not just in Europe but in the whole world: I collect emotions. I am wealthy in that the people of Russia have twice entrusted me with the leadership of a great nation such as Russia. I believe that is my greatest wealth."  In conventional (ie money) terms, quite how rich Mr Putin might be is such a swirl of estimates, rumors, supposition and doubtlessly invention (lies) that it's unlikely anyone except those disinclined to discuss the matter really know and after all, if he's rich as his detractors claim, he probably isn't exactly sure himself.  Given that, his statement seemed intended to clear up any misunderstandings.