Flookerang
(pronounced flook–ah-rang)
A corporate
logo adopted in 1957 by Chrysler Corporation for use in promoting the
dramatically restyled versions of the company’s “Forward Look” designs
(1955-1956).
1957: The
construct was flook + (boom)erang. Now mostly
obsolete, flook was an alternative
spelling of fluke (in the sense of “blade at the end of an anchor”). In wide nautical use, flook (fluke) was used
of any of the triangular blades at an anchor’s end, the appendages there to “catch”
on the seabed or riverbed, keeping the vessel moored in position (ie not
drifting away with the tide). In
armaments design, the flook was a metal hook that appeared close to the tip of
many staff weapons (such as a bill) with the effect in combat depending on use;
if thrust, could be penetrative (armor or flesh as need be) while if swung it
could work as a “grappling hook”. Fluke
& flook are old words, documented since at least the tenth century
although, anchors, staff weapons, arrowheads and such having by then been in
use for millennia, the forms may well be more ancient. The origin was the Middle English flok, fluke & flewke, from
the Old English flōcand and cognate
with the Old Norse flōki; it may be
compared with the Old High German flah
(flat (source of the modern German flach)),
from the Proto-Germanic flakaz
although for technical reasons related to the phonetics, etymologists seem to
prefer a link with the Middle Low German vlögel
(wing) and the Germanic vlōch & vlucht (used in the sense of both “wing”
& “flight”) or even vlunke (the modern
Low German Flunk (wing,
pinion)). The modern use in German of
fluke to describe the tail of whales and such is thought borrowed from
English. The use of sea creatures came
from the Old English flōc (flatfish),
of Germanic origin, related to the German flach
(flat), the Old Saxon flaka (sole),
the Old High German flah (smooth) and
the Old Norse floke (flatfish,
flounder, flak, floe; disk), all ultimately from Proto-Germanic flakaz, from the primitive Indo European
root plak- (to be flat). The parasitic worm was so named in the 1660s
by virtue of the distinctive (flat) shape.
A Flookerang: Chrysler corporation brochure, 1958.
In general
use, “fluke” has become familiar as the description of the two lobes of the
tails of whales (or similar creatures) and whales “fluking” their tails (appearing
above the surface just as a deep dive is about to begin) have long been an
Instagram staple; once hunted close to extinction for their meat and oil, the charismatic
beasts are now among nature’s most prolific content providers although their
flukes do occasionally suffer the indignity of being labelled “fishtails”. Being mammals, they belong to the order
Cetacea and are within the zoological class Mammalia, not Pisces. Interestingly, although “fluke” & “flook”
were historically used of the barbed projections added to some arrowheads, the
terms seemed to have vanished from modern specialist terminology, replaced by “barbed
arrowhead”, the two projections (pointing backwards towards the shaft) designed
to resist withdrawal after penetration (and doing victim much damaged during
the extraction). The link with (in this
case unfortunate) whales is that the biggest of the barbs were on the biggest of
the arrows (the harpoons on whaling ships).
The variant in Scots English was fluik,
known to be in use by at least the early seventeenth century. The way use evolved differently in specialist
vocabularies does make sense with nautical jargon retaining fluke or flook for an
anchor's broad, seabed-catching blades while in archery, the industry settled
on “barb”, presumably because the purpose of the structures mirrored the
natural world, barbs in animals and plants doing much the same job. Boomerang entered English texts only in 1827
and was from būmariny (missile weapon
used by Australian Aborigines (a historic term for the native tribes in the
continent of Australia, now generally classified as “indigenous” or “first
nations” peoples)), the recorded phonetic form of a word in one of the now
extinct languages spoken by the Dharuk people native to an area in what is now
NSW (New South Wales) and known to geographers as the Sydney Basin. A word pronounced as wo-mur-rang was noted in NSW in 1798 and it may have been related
but there’s no documentary evidence. Flookerang is a noun, Fratzonic is an adjective and Fratzonically is an adverb; the noun plural is
Flookerangs.
1957 Chrysler brochure with Flookerang. While the 1957 cars were (for better and worse) immensely influential, Virgil's real masterpiece was the 1955-1956 “Forward Look”; frankly, there he should have paused for a few seasons. Although the The
Flookerang can best be described as a pair of stylized boomerangs, one with an
especially acute angle overlaid atop another in a more conventional shape and
it can be assumed Chrysler used flook in the sense of the appendages on weapons
rather than the homophonic fluke’s sense of (1) a lucky or improbable
occurrence unlikely to be repeated or (2) to by pure chance obtain a successful
outcome (although, in retrospect, there was an element of both in the corporation’s
1957 ranges). The shape obviously was abstract
and did not represent one of Chrysler’s manufacturing divisions (in 1957: Plymouth,
Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler & Imperial) or a specific model or range. It was instead a mid-century modernist
allusion to the latest version of the company’s “Forward Look” design,
introduced for the 1955 season and styled by Virgil Exner (1909–1973; vice
president of styling, Chrysler Corporation 1957-1962). The 1955-1956 Chryslers were for the
corporation a watershed because although the mechanical engineering had always
been sound (in some ways, often industry-leading), by the late 1940s the styling
of the cars had become “frumpy”, a product of the design ethos of Kaufman Thuma
“K.T.” Keller (1885–1966; president of Chrysler Corporation
1935-1950 and chairman of the board 1950-1956) who believed a car should be
able to be “driven
by a gentleman with his fedora or Stetson on”. This resulted in cars that were tall &
boxy; while comfortable to sit inside and drive, they looked old-fashioned and
out of step with styling trends from Europe or elsewhere in Detroit. Basic engineering was the message (“function over fashion” in the modern
parlance) and although there were critics of the approach (including many
within Chrysler), Keller was unmoved, quoted as saying that while none of the
corporation’s cars would: “…knock your eyes out, neither will they knock your hat off
as you enter or exit”. He also had earthier ways of explaining his philosophy.
Flookerang variations: 1958 Plymouth Fury (left), 1961 Dodge Dart Phoenix (centre) and 1961 Plymouth Fury (right).
Trouble
was, in the unexpectedly prosperous US of the early 1950s, folk were becoming
more interested in style and less in their hats and when Exner’s “Ford Look” appeared
late in 1954, buyers responded to “longer,
lower, wider” as predictably they would for most of the next two
decades. The lines were elegant, the
dimensions well proportioned and, at least in the more expensive versions, there was nicely detailing and it was a direction the industry could have taken but the US
of the mid 1950s had become something of a candy-store and there were lots of
kids with pocket money; prosperity begat excess. Exner’s 1957 range more than any was the one
that ushered in mass-market fins and a half-decade of bloat in the American
automobile; in retrospect, it was “the curse of plenty”. Still, the macropterous era was among the
most memorable era in an industry that’s had a few and, if excess there must
be, it should be “laid on with a trowel”; that Exner’s re-styling for 1957 did
but within a couple of seasons, compared with the ways GM (General Motors)
outposts like Buick and Cadillac would explore the theme, the 1957 Chryslers
appeared (almost) restrained. By contrast
with the extravagance seen on the cars the emblem was created to promote, the Flookerang
was subtle, the overlaid shapes denoting (1) rapid forward progress and (2) the
sweep of those big fins rearward. As a
conceptual link it was one of the more successful of its kind but,
unfortunately, the species it referenced soon went extinct. Chrysler in 1957 had announced the look in banner
headlines reading “Suddenly, it’s 1960” and, in a period when the “futuristic”
was everywhere in films, newspapers and fiction, the cars did seem to offer a
glimpse of a bright, shiny new world.
The problem was however that once on the path of excess there is nowhere
to go but “more excessive” and that’s what happened; by the time it really was “1960”,
the moment had passed and the fins soon would be pruned, Exner fired (actually
relegated to a face-saving consultancy) with the Flookerang in 1961 (mostly) abandoned,
replaced by the mysterious Fratzog.
Chrysler’s
use of the Flookerang was inconsistent, both in variations in shape and
placement on vehicles, on some models appearing one season, vanishing the next,
only to re-appear for an encore, perhaps explaining why it never really became
culturally embedded as a symbol, its relatively short life contributing
also. It must though have appealed to at
least one custom-builder who blended the tail-fins of a 1960 Plymouth Fury with
a 1966 Dodge Charger, the Flookerangs left in place despite the tendency of
those crafting such things to remove “extraneous detailing”. The styling of the 1966-1967 Chargers was
received with restrained enthusiasm (although, once a small spoiler had been
added to the trunk (boot) lid to tame the “lift” encountered at high speed, the
fastback lines proved aerodynamically efficient on the NASCAR (National
Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) ovals) but few would have suggested
grafting on a 1960 Fury’s fins would have improved the aesthetics. That was however done by one visionary soul
who didn’t stop at what clearly was thought a callipygous optimization, a 1967
interior used with the dashboard modified to house a remarkable 19 gauges, the
four electroluminescent pods on the driver’s side matched by a symmetrical
quartet to the right. The engine was a 440
cubic inch (7.2 litre) V8 that may have been original although it included a Sonoramic
cross ram induction system (most photogenic but never offered by the factory
with the 440); the transmission a TorqueFlite 727 Automatic. Given the configuration, adding five hood
scoops seemed appropriate and the steering wheel boss retained its original
Fratzog. Unfortunately, the unique
machine was damaged in a garage fire (one unkind comment on a Mopar site
suggesting it may have attracted “the wrath of God”) and its fate is unknown.
Fratzog
(pronounced frat-zog)
A corporate
logo since 1961 used from time to time by Chrysler Corporation (and of late revived by Stellantis,
the multi-national automotive manufacturing concern into which Fiat-Chrysler
was in 2021 absorbed).
1960: According
to industry legend, a wholly meaningless word made up on the spur of the moment
by the shape’s designer. If the designer
(whose name remains unknown) had some inspiration for their choice, it seems
never to have been documented but frequently it’s been assumed the construct
was frat(ernity)+ zog. Fraternity was
from the Middle English fraternite, from
the Old French fraternité, from the Latin
frāternitās, ultimately from frāter (brother). Although almost certainly unrelated to
Fratzog, in the Albanian language, zog translates
literally as “bird” (zogu (“the bird”,
using the definite article)). The Zogolli
family’s (the construct being the root Zog + the Ottoman-Turkish patronymic
suffix –oglu (son of)) most famous member
was Zog I (Ahmed Muhtar Bey Zogolli; 1895–1961); King of Albania 1928–1939) and
in 1922 (after the Ottoman Empire was dissolved), he Albanized and shortened
his surname to Zogu, six year later clipping the final “-u” and adopting the
mononym King Zog as his royal title.
Fratzog also predates by some 16 years the acronym ZOG (used also as
Zog) (Zionist Occupation Government, Zionist Occupational Government, or
Zionist-Occupied Government), a term (dating from 1976) for the US government
used by certain antisemitic conspiracy theorists claiming Jews secretly control
the US government (a recurrent theme in Nazi propaganda under the Third Reich
(1933-1945) extended also to the UK government). JOG (Jewish Occupational Government) has also
been used but, historically, SOG was preferred it was thought to distinguish “Jewish
subversive conduct” from “being Jewish” although that subtlety escaped most. Fratzog is a noun; the noun plural is Fratzogs.
1966 Dodge Charger. In case people didn't “get the message”, Dodge added a fratzog to the hubcaps (top left), gas cap (top left) and grill (centre) while a Flookerang appeared on the C-Pillar (bottom left) with a pentastar behind the front wheel-arch (bottom right). Using
standard etymological deconstruction, a surface analysis of Flookerang reveals
the portmanteau construction but all that’s known of the origin of Fratzog is
the logo emerged in mid 1960 from Chrysler’s Highland Park styling studio, then
under the direction of Elwood Engel (1917–1986; Chief Designer, Chrysler
Corporation 1961-1973). Whether it was
the work of an individual or something of a team effort is unclear but, given
the simplicity of the task, that it came from the hand of a single designer is
quite plausible. While never named, some
sources have referred to the designer as “he” so it’s reasonable to assume it
was a man (throughout Detroit the styling studios then an almost exclusively male
domain although women had for decades being involved in color choices and
interior detailing) but no documentary evidence has ever been sighted. The meaning of Fratzog has long been a mystery
with the industry legend being it was “made up on the spot” after someone in
the marketing department sent a request asking how they should refer to the
thing. Having the punchy qualities of
being short, memorable, phonetic, unique and needing only two syllables, it
would have had some appeal to marketing types but whether they ever sent a
“follow-up” asking what it meant, isn’t known.
Probably it was good they didn’t pursue the matter because the orthodoxy
is “Fratzog” has no meaning, speculation focused usually on the “frat” element with
the most popular theory being it may be a borrowing of the clipping of “fraternity”
(a social organization of male students at a college or university) and
familiar in forms such as “frat party” (much associated with drunkenness, frat
houses to this day one of the most convenient paths to alcohol for those under
21 (in the US the minimum age at which alcohol may be purchased and consumed)). Many of the designers at Highland Park would
have been “frats” (members of a fraternity and habitués of frat houses) so it’s
not impossible “fratzog” may have been slang among certain drunken students
although that’s wholly speculative but there is a rich history of such constructs
including “frat boy” & “frat rat” (members of a fraternity, the most obnoxious
of the breed dubbed “fratholes”), “frat house” (a fraternity's building) and “frat
flick” & “frat lit” (movies & books about fraternities or appealing to
the frat boy stereotype (“fratire” the ultimate form of the literature, now
understood as a stream of “toxic masculinity”)). As
might be predicted given the elements of frat house life (males aged 17-25,
ample stocks of alcohol, disposable income and proximity to sorority houses (a source
of female students aged 17-25)), behavior can be less than ideal and recent
scandals at Cornell University have illustrated aspects of the culture. Sorority was from the Renaissance Latin sorōritās, from the Classical Latin soror (sister), from the primitive Indo-European
swésōr; the word may be compared with
the Portuguese sororidade, the Spanish
sororidad and the French sororité.
Lindsay Lohan “on theme” in the livery of the
Cincinnati Bengals (a football team in the NFL (National Football League) as a member of the AFC (American Football Conference) North division (left) and 1968 Dodge Charger Bengal Edition (right). The
Dodge Charger Bengal Edition was created in 1968 by Cincinnati Dodge dealer to
celebrate the formation of an NFL franchise for the city, arranging with
Chrysler’s fleet supply staff to have the cars painted in orange and fitted
with black vinyl roofs to match the team’s colors. Amusingly, Chrysler had no such orange in the
color charts for its passenger cars but a shade mixed for Michigan Department
of Transportation's fleet proved a perfect match. An order of 50 was required for the
specialized run so 50 duly were ordered in a variety of mechanical
configurations. Reflecting Dodge’s usual
build practice for 1968 Chargers, Fratzog logos were fitted on the grill and
rear panel unless the R/T package also was ordered in which case R/T badges
were substituted. In either case, a
Fratzog appeared on the steering wheel boss but mysteriously, some 1968 Charger
R/Ts exist with a small Fratzog on the instrument panel while others have a
miniature R/T. “Special editions” like
the Bengal Charger often appeared to stimulate sales of slow-selling models but
the 1968 Charger was a hit from day one and although the product planners had
projected sales that season of around 20,000, they were pleasantly surprised
when more than 96,000 left the showroom, a second assembly line quickly added
to meet demand. It was a remarkable increase
on its slab-sided predecessor (1966-1967) that in 1967 had struggled to achieve
a volume of less than 15,000.
King Zog I
of Albania died in 1961 but there’s nothing to suggest Fratzog’s second element
was inspired by or a tribute to the deposed monarch, by then living in France (the
culmination of a peripatetic exile made comfortable by having looted the
Albanian treasury of its gold reserves) where he would succumb to cancer, his
65 years a reasonable achievement for someone who reputedly smoked some 200
cigarettes a day (if true, assuming he slept 8 hours a day, that’s a fag about
every 5 minutes which does seem a heroic devotion to the art).
It’s intriguing to ponder whether being dubbed a “fratzog” was something
good or bad but, whatever might be the history of the name (that might to some sound
like something associated with the rituals in a Masonic Temple), the shape is
no mystery to mathematicians, the Fratzog based on a Deltoid curve (the
roulette created by a point on the circumference of a circle as it rolls
without slipping along the inside of a circle with three or one-and-a-half
times its radius). Its year of debut came
of course at the at the dawn of the space race but while the shape (three delta-forms
arranged in an equilateral triangle) might be thought (at least vaguely)
evocative of an aerospace theme, that would not much have encouraged more
pessimistic types who saw only a “fractured deltoid”. So, no translation, acronym or verified linguistic
origin exists but despite that it certainly caught on, first appearing on the
1962 Dodge Polara 500 and Custom 880, before being applied to various Dodge and
other Chrysler models until 1976 and in some places lingering until 1981 when,
at the instigation of the new CEO, Lee Iacocca (1924–2019), the pentastar logo was
standardized corporation-wide.
Fratzog on 1972 Australian Chrysler Valiant Charger E55 SE 340; not only the Americans had long model names.
Nor is it
known if the Fratzog’s “triangular” theme was an allusion to the company’s
original logo. The Dodge brothers' (Horace
(1868–1920) and John (1864–1920) engineering business had begun production of
passenger cars just before World War I (1914-1918) and their first emblem had
been a dual interlocking triangle that resembled a stylized Star of David. The family was not Jewish and it’s believed
the logo used representations of the Greek letter delta (in upper case use a
triangle shape) meant to represent the two brothers who had always been close
(John dying of pneumonia during the 1918-1921 influenza pandemic and Horace
expiring the same year from cirrhosis of the liver). Other logos would appear after Chrysler purchased
Dodge in 1928 (following an abortive earlier attempt) but none were even vaguely
Fratzogish so history is not much help in tracing the origin; the industry
legend of a designer just “liking the shape” may really be true. It did though have a longer and more diverse
career than the Flookerang, serving variously as body badges & grill
emblems and appearing also on gas (petrol) caps & horn buttons. Despite the proliferation, the Fratzog never
became thematic in print advertising the way the Flookerang had been used in
the 1950s. So that's it, both words (one a conventional portmanteau, the other possibly one but genuinely mysterious) emerging from a Detroit styling studio although, had anyone concluded Flookerang & Fratzog was likely a firm of Jewish accountants, that would have been understandable.
Except
among collectors or students of such things, by 2024, neither logo probably
much registered in the public consciousness in the way of Chevrolet’s bow-tie
or Ford’s “Blue Oval” (that font a hand-drawn rendition based on Henry Ford’s
(1863-1947) signature although Truetype emulations are now available (FordScript
the closest, Fabiola Script & Neville Regular similar)) but despite the
collective memory having faded, in 2024 Dodge announced the Fratzog would be
revived as symbol of its new range of electric power-trains, assuring the world
the constant advances in battery chemistry meant the days of thousand HP (horsepower)
EVs with AWD (all-wheel-drive) and a 500 mile (800 km) range were nigh; burning
rubber wasn’t going away, it’d just no longer require gas. To make the historic link, there was CGI (computer
generated graphics, generative AI (artificial intelligence) at that point not sufficiently
refined) footage with Fratzogs, a rationale and lots of tyre smoke. As things turned out, batteries continued to
improved but Dodge’s announcement 2023 would be the end of the line for their
gas-powered V8 muscle cars turned out to be premature though genuinely that was
the intent, keen-eyed observers of promotional material for the 2024 (EV) Charger
Daytona noting Fratzog logos on the wheel hubs with the one in the centre of
the grill being illuminated.
EV: The future of Fratzog. Dodge's EV shtick is that “people buy performance, not a mechanical specification”, a variant of the hardware store's “people don't want 20 mm drill bits, they want 20 mm holes); it'll be interesting to see if the “US muscle car model” (front-mounted V8, RWD (rear-wheel-drive)) can be re-defined to “performance breakdown”. The market will decide.
There was
also a neologism, “Frazonic” emblazoned on the rear valance; it turned out that
adjective referred to the “Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust” (piped “engine noise”,
replicating in tone and dB (decibels) the song of a Hellcat V-8; the adverb presumably “Fratzonically”). Just as government regulations had by the
early 1970s contributed to the demise of the first muscle car era (although the
insurance companies did their bit), so it seemed clear that five decades on, government
edicts might also drive extinct at least the V8-powered monsters of the new
generation, production of such things no longer viable given the new fleet fuel
efficiency mandate. However, as things turned out, there may be a stay of execution, internal documents “obtained” by
various sites appearing to confirm Dodge’s EV ranges may in 2028 be augmented
by a Charger running the supercharged 6.2-liter (376 cubic inch) Hemi Hellcat V8
in a RWD (rear-wheel-drive) configuration.
The internal designation appeared as “HEV” though that stood for not the
by now common “Hybrid EV” but the wholly
more subversive “Hellcat Equipped Vehicle”;
that repurposing may not have been mischievous but someone at Dodge may have
been trying to annoy Greta Thunberg (b 2003).
So Dodge is gearing up for what may be one last hard ride for those who
can remember the way things used to be done (when noise was organic and not
Fratsonic) but within the Stellantis product planning department, the only poem
much read is likely to be To a mouse (1785)
by Robert "Rabbie" Burns (1759–1796) with focus on the two famous
lines: “The
best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men / Gang aft agley” (ie however
well-planned, things can go awry).
Corporate America has found Donald Trump’s (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and
since 2025) second administration more accommodating than its immediate
predecessor but, like many, keenly they’ll be watching the returns from the
2026 mid-term elections.
