Oiler

Oiler (pronounced oi-ler)

(1) A person or device which is some way delivers oil.

(2) A worker employed to oil machinery.

(3) Any of several devices, other than pressure devices, for feeding lubricating oil to a bearing.

(4) In oil exploration, a productive well.

(5) An oilcan.

(6) An oilskin garment, especially a coat.

(7) A ship which uses oil as fuel (archaic).

(8) In admiralty slang, an oil tanker used to refuel other vessels.

(9) In admiralty slang, an assistant in the engine room of a ship, senior only to a wiper, mainly responsible for keeping machinery lubricated (archaic).

(10) In the cleaning kits of firearms, a small (typically thumb-sized) metal container of oil, often containing an integral brush.

(11) As an ethnic slur (mostly southern US), a Mexican (sometimes extended to other of Latino appearance.

Circa 1290: The construct was oil + -er.  Oil was from the Middle English olyer, oyller & oyellere (the later alternative spellings included oylle, olie, oli, eoli, eoyle, olige, oyll, uile, oile & oyl.  Oyler was from the Anglo-Norman olie and the Old French oile, from the Latin oleum (olive oil), from the Ancient Greek ἔλαιον (élaion) (olive oil).  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb.   The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun.  The meaning “an appliance for distributing oil in machines" was in use by 1861 and was adopted by the British Admiralty in 1916 to describe "navy vessels carrying oil for use by other ships"; although such vessels had been in use for some years, the Royal Navy having begun the conversion from coal to oil a decade earlier, by 1911 only the submarine fleet ran exclusive on oil and coal (sometimes sprayed with oil) still fuelled most of the navy’s vessels.  Oiler is a noun; the noun plural is oilers.

Evolution of the Ford 427 side-oiler

The side valve (usually called “the flathead”, an allusion to the almost flat plate covering the combustion chambers) Ford V8 of 1932 is remembered for its vices as well as the many things which made it one of the great engines of the mid-century.  In the 1930s, those vices could be both forgiven and worked-around but by 1953, it was still in production and outdated (though in overseas production it would continue, in French Simca cars until 1961, in Brazilian Fords until 1964 and remarkably, until 1990 in the Simca Unic Marmon Bocquet military truck.  For 1954, Ford responded to the modern overhead valve (OHV) V8s others had introduced with the debut of two new engines, essentially (by the standards of the time) small and big block versions of the same design.  Known as the Y-Blocks because of the shape of the castings, they were sturdy pieces of machinery and addressed many of the problems identified in the flathead over two decades of production but neither was suited to the evolutionary path the American automobile unexpectedly would take during the mid-late 1950s.

Top oiler: 1962 Ford 406 FE V8 with 3 x 2 barrel carburetors.

That path was not one which anyone in Detroit was likely to foresee in the late 1940s when the design work on the Y-Blocks began but by 1954, it was at least competitive with the competition.  However, in 1955, Chevrolet introduced their small-block V8 which was light, compact and free-breathing, not something which could be said of the Y-Blocks and more importantly, the design afforded a potential for development which would play out over decades.  By contrast, the Y-Blocks’ potential in both capacity and power output soon plateaued and Ford was forced to resort to exotic solutions like supercharging, something not practical for low-cost mass-manufacturing.  Ford’s solution was not one new V8 but three.  All released during 1958, the SD (Super Duty, a large, low revving truck engine), the MEL (a big block for what were now very large Lincolns and Mercurys) and the FE (thought at the time a big-block but subsequently listed by pedants as a mid-block because later castings would out-weigh it by so much).  The durable SD would remain in the catalogue until 1980, its demise prompted only by the implications of the second oil-shock in 1979, the sole complaint about it being its prodigious thirst.  The MEL would last a decade, early attempts to use it on the race-tracks abandoned because of the penalty imposed by excessive weight although it did enjoy some success in powerboat racing where it’s capacity to run reliably at full throttle for sustained periods was highly valued.

Side oiler: 1966 Ford 427 FE V8 side oiler with tunnel-port cylinder heads and Kar-Kraft transaxle, the specification used in the mid-engined Ford GT40s which recorded a 1-2-3 finish at that year's 24 Le Mans 24 hour classic.

Although rapidly it would earn a stellar reputation which endures to this day, Ford’s FE V8 engine didn’t enjoy a wholly auspicious start, associated as it was with the ill-fated Edsel (FE really did stand for “Ford-Edsel” despite some post-debacle attempts to suggest “Ford Engine” (the contemporary MEL decodes as Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln)).  However, whatever the problems of the Edsel, the use of the FE in some was not one.  Offered in its first few seasons in several displacements, the most produced in the 1960s would be the 352 & 390 cubic inch (5.8 & 6.5 litre) versions, both of which briefly were offered in high-performance versions until the decision was taken to develop such engines (to be used in competition) as a separate FE branch, the first fruit of which was the 406 (6.6 litre) which debuted in 1962.  The 406 had performed well on Ford’s test-rigs, its output slightly exceeding the engineers’ projections and when installed in the new, slippery bodies offered that year, the combination proved fast on the racetracks.  The power however came at the cost of reliability and the increasing speeds on the circuits had exposed weaknesses in the bottom-end, the main bearing caps “walking” when vibrations attained a certain resonance.

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By their bolts they shall be known.  By convention a "four bolter" was one with the four all into the boss while in a "cross bolter" two were in the boss and two into the block.  "Six bolters" (with four in the boss, two in the block) are now common.

The solution was to “cross-bolt” the caps; an additional two securing bolts (installed sideways through the block) per cap augmenting the pairs mounted in the conventional vertical position.  This approach, still widely used to this day, proved successful and was carried over when in 1963 the FE was further enlarged to 425 cubic inches (7.0 litre), Ford labelling the new mill the 427 to align it with the displacement limit used by both NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) and the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the International Automobile Federation and world sport’s dopiest regulatory body)).  However, greater capacity meant more power, higher speeds and increased heat and the 427 began to also to suffer, the higher internal pressures meaning lubrication to the now cross-bolted main bearings had become marginal.  Ford’s solution was to reverse the priority with which oil was delivered.  The original design (subsequently known as the “top oiler”) lubricated first the valve-train at the top of the engine, then the main bearings which supported the crankshaft.  The new process reversed this order and the design became known as the side-oiler: on one side of the block was cast an additional oil galley, the bulge the external distinguishing feature of the new arrangement.

By their oil galleys they shall be known: Lubrication systems of 1964 Ford 427 FE V8 top oiler (left) & Ford 427 FE V8 side oiler (right). 

Introduced in 1965, the side-oiling proved the final solution and the 427 became a paragon of reliability, powering even the Le Mans 24 hour winning GT40s in 1966 & 1967.  Today the 427 is perhaps best remembered as the power-plant in the Shelby American AC Cobra 427 (although some of those actually used the rather more tame FE 428) but in those happy days when one could tick a box and have what was essentially a racing engine installed in a road car, it was available also in full-sized machines (the Galaxie), intermediates (the Fairlane) and, at the tail-end of production, a few (by then somewhat toned down) were even put in the Cougar, Mercury’s Mustang-based take on the pony-car.  By then however, the side-oiler’s days were numbered because not only was it noisy, apt to be cantankerous and a bit of an oil-burner, the complex lubrication and cross bolting made it quite expensive to build, added to which the big bore was at close to the limit the FE block could accommodate so during the manufacturing process; even a slight shift in the casting cores meant a scrapped block.  Thus the attraction for most (non racing) purposes of the 428 with its smaller bore, less elaborate lubrication and (then) conventional bottom-end bolting.

As supplied ex-factory: Ford 427 SOHC on stand.

The side oiler also provided the basis for one engine which wasn’t exactly mythical because quite a few were built but remains mysterious because nobody seems quite sure how many, the consensus being it was somewhere in mid-three figures, the last of which (in a crate) wasn't sold until 1970 although production ended in 1967.  This was the 427 SOHC (single overhead camshaft (the “sock” in the slang of some)) which for all sorts of reasons never made it onto the circuits for which it was intended nor into even one road car, despite the wishes of many.  Popularly known as “the cammer”, even some sixty years on there’s still a mystique surrounding the cammer and if one can’t find an original for sale (one sold at auction in 2021 for US$60,000), from a variety of manufacturers it’s possible still to buy all the bits and pieces needed to build one (in a quirk of timing and the overlap of simultaneous product development, some of the very early SOHCs used the top oiler block although most were side oilers and the third party reproductions over the years have always been the latter).  Although the production numbers have never been verified (which seems strange given Ford's accounting system recorded everything which emerged with a serial number), what all agree is the horsepower of a stock SOHC was somewhere over 600, the number bouncing around a bit because there were versions with single and dual four barrel carburetors, different camshaft profiles and variations in the cylinder heads and while it never made it into a production car, it remains the ultimate FE.

The Porsche 911 E series and the Ölklappe affair

1971 Porsche 911S (note the flap for the oil filler cap behind the passenger-side door (US market model and thus left-hand drive (LHD)).  The factory confirmed this car was built in July 1971, despite many references to E series production beginning in August.

Porsche in 1971 began the build of its E series update (produced between July 1971-July 1972 and generally known as the “1972 models”) of the then almost decade-old 911 and in addition to the increase in the flat-six’s displacement from 2.2 litres (134 cubic inch) to 2.3 (143) (although always referred to as the “2.4”), there were a myriad of changes, some in response to US safety & emissions legislation while others were part of normal product development.  One of latter was the placing of the hinged-flap over the oil filler cap behind the right side door, something necessitated by the dry sump oil tank having been re-located from behind the right rear wheel to in front, one of a number of design changes undertaken to shift the weight distribution forward and improve the handling of the rear-engined machine’s inherently tail-heavy configuration.  In Germany, the addition was known variously as Ölklappe, Oil Klapper or Vierte Tür (fourth door, the fuel filler flap being the third).  Weight reduction (then becoming difficult in the increasingly strict regulatory environment), especially at the rear, was also a design imperative and the early-build E series cars were fitted with an aluminum engine lid and license-plate panel although these components were soon switched to steel because of production difficulties and durability concerns.

Where the troubles began:  The fuel filler flap on the left-front fender (left) and the oil filler flap on the right-rear (right).  Apparently, not even the “◀ Oil” sticker in red was sufficient warning.  History blames gas station attendants for getting the two confused but, "history being written by the winners", MRDA may apply and it's likely some owners also pumped gas through the wrong spout.

For the E series 911S, Porsche recommended the use of a multigrade mineral oil (SAE 20W-50 or SAE 15W-40, depending on climate) but were aware those using their vehicles in competition sometimes used a high-viscosity SAE50 monograde.  With the car’s 10 litre (10.6 US quarts, 8.8 Imperial quarts) oil tank, the fluid’s weight would be between 8.5-9.1 kg (18.7-20.0 lb) and the physics of motion meant that the more rearward the placement of that mass, the greater the effect on the 911’s handling characteristics.  It was thus a useful contribution to what would prove a decades-long quest to tame the behaviour of what, in the early versions, was a car regarded (not wholly unfairly) as handling like “a very fast Volkswagen Beetle” and ultimately the engineers succeeded, it being only at the speeds which should be restricted to race tracks the 911s of the 2020s sometimes reveal the implications of being rear-engined.

VDO instruments in 1971 Porsche 911S.  In home market cars, the oil pressure gauge (to the left of the centrally mounted tachometer) was labelled DRUCK.

However, when in August 1972 the revised F series entered production, the oil tank was back behind the rear wheel and the filler under the engine lid, the retrogressive move taken because there had been instances of gas (petrol) station attendants (they really used to exist) assuming the oil filler flap was the access point for the gas cap and, to be fair, it was in a location used for gas on many front-engined cars (a majority of the passenger-car fleet in most markets where Porsche had a presence).  Quite how often this happened isn’t known but it must have been frequent enough for the story to become part of the 911 legend and the consequences could have been severe and rectification expensive.  The factory paid much attention to oil and also ensured drivers could monitor the status of the critical fluid; all air-cooled 911s ran hot and the more highly tuned the model (in 1971-1972 the 911T, E & S in increasing potency), the hotter they got.  As well as being a lubricant, engine oil functions also as a coolant and the VDO instrumentation included gauges for oil level, oil temperature, and oil pressure; for all three to appear in a road car was unusual but being air-cooled and thus with no conventional fluid coolant, the oil's dynamics were most important, engineers noting it's as accurate to speak of such machines being "oil-cooled".

Bolter

Bolter (pronounced bol-tah)

(1) A person or animal (most especially a horse) that bolts or is prone to running away.  The phrase (applied to HWAGs (horses, wives and girlfriends)) is usually “a bit of a bolter” and historically was never applied to unreliable men; for them, women have many other epithets.

(2) In Australian colonial slang, an escaped convict or absconder.

(3) In botany and horticulture, a plant that grows larger and more rapidly than usual.

(4) In flour milling, a machine or mechanism that automatically sifts milled flour; a person who sifts flour or meal; to sift or filter through a sieve or bolter.

(5) In petroleum refining, a filter mechanism.

(6) In the slang of engine builders, to distinguish between the means used to secure the main bearings supporting a crankshaft (2-bolter, 4-bolter, cross-bolter) which is rare except in the US, where it's most common south of the Mason-Dixon line.

(7) In sport, an obscure athlete who wins an unexpected victory or is a surprise selection in a team (Australia & New Zealand).

(8) In horse racing, a horse which wins at long odds (Australia & New Zealand).

(9) In politics, a member of a political party who does not support the party's nominee or (US archaic).

(10) In naval aviation, a missed landing on an aircraft carrier; an aircraft that has made a missed landing.

(11) As the homophone boulter, a kind of fishing line.

(12) In archaic dialectal use, to smear or become smeared with a grimy substance (later by blood).

(13) In zoology (cetology; the study of whales), to swim or turn sideways while eating.

(14) In the design of retail haberdashery outlets, the shafts supporting bolts of fabric for purposes of display and facilitation of cutting (UK).

From the Middle English bolt (verb) and the Old English (noun); it was cognate with the Dutch bout and the German Boltz.  The Old English bolt (short, stout arrow with a heavy head; crossbow for throwing bolts) was from the Proto-Germanic bultas, source also of the Old Norse bolti, the Danish bolt, the Dutch bout & the German Bolzen.  The original meaning may have been or connected in some sense with "arrow, missile" and therefore derived from the primitive Indo-European bheld- (to knock, strike), source also of the Lithuanian beldžiu (I knock) & baldas (pole for striking).  The word has since Middle English been applied to short metal rods (especially those with knobbed ends) meaning variously "stout pin for fastening objects together" and "part of a lock which springs out" both from circa 1400. A bolt of canvas or (circa 1400 and later applied to other fabrics) was so called for its shape.  The adverbial phrase bolt upright (like a bolt or arrow) is from the late fourteenth century.  The sense of a "sliding metal rod that thrusts the cartridge into the chamber of a firearm" is from 1859.  From the notion of an arrow's flight comes the bolt of lightning (1530s) and the sense of "a sudden spring or start" is attested from the 1540s.

The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought usually to have been borrowed from Latin –ārius and reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  As an abbreviation (or sometimes following a number), it’s written sometimes as -'er.  The suffix was added to verbs, forming an agent noun to describe a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb.  The antonym suffix was –ee which was added to nouns to denote an occupation, hobby etc and to numbers to denote a quantified set.  The related forms were the present participle bolting and the simple past and past participle bolted.  In one sense, the use by Shakespeare in Macbeth (1623) made specific what was once more general.  In Middle English, it meant “to smear or be smeared with a grimy substance” and was applied usually to farm animals getting wet with sweat, rain etc and then "boltering" with mud, hair etc.  However, the Shakespearian purloin popularized the term as means to describe getting covered in blood and that became the most common use in that context.  Bolter is a noun; the noun plural is bolters.

Cross bolters

By their bolts they shall be known.  By convention a "four bolter" was one with the four all into the boss while in a "cross bolter" two were in the boss and two into the block.  "Six bolters" (with four in the boss, two in the block) are now common.

Cross bolters (sometimes hyphenated) is engine-builder slang for the main bearing caps in an internal combustion engine (ICE) being secured by bolts which are screwed into ribs in the block as well as the traditional pair (now often four) into bolt bosses.  The bolt sets are thus mounted at 90^o to each other, a diagram of which would form a + shape when viewed from the front of the engine, hence the idea of “cross-bolted”.  The general effect of cross-bolting is to make a crankcase stiffer by reducing the tendency to twist, something made inherent by the the reciprocating motion of the crankshaft.  The additional bolts limit the movement of the bearings (which engine-builders call "walking"), the purpose being to reduce component failure because a break anywhere in the crankcase area can destroy an engine.  Six-bolt arrangements are now common and some specialists even sometimes install the bolts into the bosses at slightly differing angles on the basis that computer modelling confirms this confers a (slight) benefit in torsional rigidity under certain conditions.  Although not unique to the line and far from novel when added, the best known of the cross-bolters were those in two iterations of the Ford FE range (1958-1976) produced between 1962-1968.  Although it would quickly earn a stellar reputation which endures to this day, Ford’s FE V8 engine didn’t enjoy a wholly auspicious start, associated as it was with the ill-fated Edsel (FE really did stand for “Ford-Edsel” despite some post-debacle attempts to suggest “Ford Engine” (the contemporary MEL stood for Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln)).  However, whatever the problems of the Edsel, the use of the FE is some was not one.

The Ford FE 427: Top vs side oiling.

Offered initially in several displacements, the most produced in the 1960s would be the 352 & 390 cubic inch (5.8 & 6.5 litre) versions, both of which briefly were offered in high-performance versions until the decision was taken to develop such engines as a separate FE branch, the first fruit of which was the 406 (6.6 litre) which debuted in 1962.  The 406 had performed well on Ford’s test-rigs, its output slightly exceeding the engineers’ projections and when installed in the new, slippery bodies offered that year, proved fast on the track.  The power and speed however came at the cost of reliability and the increasing speeds on the circuits had exposed weaknesses in the bottom-end, the main bearing caps “walking” when the vibrations reached a certain resonance.  The solution was to “cross-bolt” the caps; an addition two securing bolts (installed sideways through the block) per cap augmenting the pairs mounted in the conventional vertical position.  This approach, still widely used to this day, proved successful and was carried over when in 1963 the FE was further enlarged to 425 cubic inches (7.0 litre), Ford labelling the new mill the 427 to align it with the displacement limit used by both NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) and the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the International Automobile Federation and world sport’s dopiest regulatory body)).  However, greater capacity meant more power, higher speeds and increased heat and the 427 began to also to suffer, the higher internal pressures meaning lubrication to the now cross-bolted main bearings had become marginal.  Ford’s solution was to reverse the priority with which oil was delivered.  The original design (retrospectively dubbed the “top-oiler”) lubricated first the valve-train at the top of the engine, then the main bearings which supported the crankshaft.  The new process reversed this order and the design became known as the "side-oiler" so all FE 427s are "cross-bolted" but only some are "side oilers". 

The Bolter

"The Bolter" entered popular culture after the publication in 1945 of Nancy Mitford’s (1904-1973) The Pursuit of Love (1945) in which one character, (the bolter) was so named because of her many marriages, a consequence of her tendency to bolt from one relationship to another; throughout the novel, the bolter is never named and is referred to by all as “the bolter”.  Love in a Cold Climate (1949) was a companion volume to The Pursuit of Love, the title a direct quotation from George Orwell's (1903-1950) Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936).  The usual form of expression is: “she’s a bit of a bolter”, borrowed from the use to refer to a flighty horse and historically, was applied only to wives and girlfriends; for unreliable men, women have many other epithets.  Mitford based the character on Lady Myra Idina Sackville (1893-1955), daughter of the eighth Earl De La Warr (1869-1915) and Lady Muriel Agnes Brassey (1872-1930).  Known always by her middle name, Idina, she led what many considered a scandalous life and married and divorced five times, her other connection with unconventionality that she was the cousin of the writer Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962), remembered for many things including her long marriage to the writer Harold Nicholson (1886-1968) and being the inspiration for the protagonist of Orlando: A Biography, by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), one of her lovers.  A modern version of the phrase "a bit of a bolter" is "I'm going to Meghan Markle" meaning (in this context) "I'm leaving".  It must be used with care because as the entries in Urban Dictionary suggest, "to Meghan Markle" can mean many things.

Usage guide: The meaning of "to bolt" from somewhere differs from "to leave" the place in that the former indicates the departure was either (or a combination of) rapid, unexpected, unauthorized or sudden.   

Dual & Duel

Duel Pronounced doo-uhl or dyoo-uhl)

(1) A prearranged combat between two persons, fought with deadly weapons according to an accepted code of procedure, especially to settle a private quarrel.

(2) Any contest between two persons or entities.

1585–1595: From the earlier English form duell (a single combat (also "a judicial single combat”), from the late thirteenth century Medieval Latin duellum (combat between two persons), a poetical variant of the old Latin form of bellum (war) (related to bellicose), probably maintained and given the sense “duel” by folk etymology with the Latin duo (two).  The Old Latin word was retained in poetic and archaic language, the fancied Medieval connection with duo organically creating the linguistic semi-coincidence.  In pre-Modern English, the Italian form duello was also used.  By the 1610s, the English word had taken on the specialized sense of "premeditated and pre-arranged single combat involving deadly weapons in the presence of at least two witnesses", the general sense of "any contest between two parties" dating from the 1590s.  The related verbs are duels, dueling & dueled , dueler & duelist are nouns and duelistic an adjective.  The US spelling favors the double “l”.

A cased pair of engraved, gold & silver-accented Durs Egg flintlock dueling pistols.  The case contains a three-way combination flask, rod, mallet head, worm, oiler, and “46” marked ball mold.

Dating from the early nineteenth century, this brace of duelling pistols was from the London shop of Durs Egg (1748-1831) and features an uncommon 90^o grip angle, similar to that used on the heavier “saw-handle” pistols.  The smooth-bore Damascus barrels features gold blade front sights, case-hardened breech plugs with dovetailed notch rear sights, platinum vent liners & dual gold bands.  This pair belong to the class of dueling pistols known as “detented” which were once damned by the dueling class as “unfair weapons which no gentleman would hold” but, such were the advantages, by the late flintlock era the design was close to universal.  The “detent” refers to the mechanism in a flintlock (or later, percussion cap) pistol built into the lock or trigger system and its purpose was to ensure a smoother, more controlled trigger pull, something obviously critical in duelling where a fraction of an inch or second might have been the difference between life & death.  The detent was a small, spring-loaded catch or resistance point in the trigger system which provided a subtle “stop” (ie a resistance point) before the trigger fully releases the hammer, affording a duelist greater control and awareness of exactly when the gun would discharge, minimizing accidental firings or flinching.  In formal duels, both participants had to fire under controlled, fair circumstances so the classic arrangement was for a matched pair of duel pistols to be provided by the man who had issued the challenge with the choice of weapon granted to the respondent.

In the West, although very much a clandestine activity, the classic duel did survive into the twentieth century, mostly in aristocratic and military circles.  One institution which did attempt a codified revival was Nazi-era (1922-1945) SS.  The SS (ᛋᛋ in Armanen runes; Schutzstaffel (literally “protection squadron” but translated variously as “protection squad”, “security section" etc) was formed (under different names) in 1923 as a Nazi party squad to provide security at public meetings (then often rowdy and violet affairs) and was later re-purposed as a personal bodyguard for Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).  The SS name was adopted in 1925 and during the Third Reich the institution evolved into a vast economic, industrial and military apparatus more than two million strong to the point where some historians (and contemporaries) regarded it as a kind of “state within a state”.  The Waffen-SS (armed SS (ie equipped with military-grade weapons)) existed on a small scale as early as 1933 before Hitler’s agreement was secured to create a formation at divisional strength and growth was gradual even after the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 and it was the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which triggered the Waffen-SS’s expansion into a multi-national armoured force with over 900,000 men under arms.  As well as the SS’s role in the administration of the many concentration and extermination camps, the Waffen-SS was widely implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The head of the SS was Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945) and while rightly infamous for his many crimes, he’s of interest also for his weirdnesses.  One idea he introduced was the duel as a way of settling “matters of honor” (ie squabbles over this & that) between SS members and twisted though the conception may have been, “honor” was in the SS a core tenet, the organization's motto being Meine Ehre Heisst Treue (My Honor Is Loyalty).  As things turned out, Himmler didn’t quite live up to that ethos but by 1945 maybe he regarded loyalty as something like what John Howard (b 1939; prime minister of Australia 1996-2007) would have called a “non-core promise”.  A few SS duels were fought before Hitler, who regarded the practice as archaic and inefficient, ordered it stopped although the Führer did though see a place for the duel.  Calling priests “those black crows” and believing all Germans must learn it was "shameful to be a lawyer", ruefully he observed he’d be quite content to see duelling added to the rituals of both professions.

Hitler was of the school which believed the world would become a fine place "when the last lawyer was strangled with the guts of the last priest" (one of the variants of the phrase attributed to the French Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784): "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.").  Diderot picked up his notion from Mémoire contre la religion (Memoir against religion, a work of over 600 pages written circa 1729 but uncovered only posthumously) which was the final testament of French Catholic priest Jean Meslier (1664–1729) who, it transpired, secretly was an atheist, an intellectual position believed to be held by a number of rationalist cardinals in the Roman curia although, being obviously a sensitive issue in a place like the Vatican, it'd be a challenge to do the research and get the numbers.  Meslier wrote: “Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre; Au défaut d'un cordon pour étrangler les rois” (And his hands would weave the priest's entrails; For lack of a rope, to strangle kings), the most appealing fragment in that vein being: “Je souhaiterais que tous les grands de la terre et tous les nobles fussent pendus et étranglés avec les boyaux des prêtres” (I wish that all the great ones of the earth and all the nobles would be hanged and strangled with the guts of the priests).  Plenty of academics and revolutionaries have needed many more words (sometimes several volumes) to say much the same thing.  What the SS was allowed to retain was the “honourable” option of suicide for members in disgrace (ie found to be a bit of a homosexual), something of which George V (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936) would have approved.  Gay SS members who declined the generous offer were sent to a concentration camp where routinely they were processed with the traditional EWEF (Erschossen während eines Fluchtversuchs (shot while attempting to escape)) method.

In bizarre circumstances, Himmler almost was given the opportunity to prove his prowess as a duelist.  In 1938, knowing Hitler was unimpressed by the attitude of both Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg (1878–1946; minister of war 1933-1938) and Generaloberst (colonel-general, equivalent to general (four-star) in UK & US use) Werner von Fritsch (1880–1939; commander-in-chief of the German Army 1934-1938) towards his foreign policy and plans for war, in a series of internal machinations, Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) and Himmler engineered the removal of from the army of both.  Göring coveted the war ministry and Himmler was seeking to weaken the army in order to strengthen the role of his SS.  Blomberg mistake was to marry an attractive young woman with some history of prostitution (appalling Hitler whose lower-middle class views on morality never left him; upon learning of the scandal he remarked to his staff: "if a German field marshal can marry a whore, anything is possible") while Fritsch was accused of being a bit of a homosexual on the basis of evidence which Himmler knew to be a concoction.  Prior to the marriage, Göring had been told of the bride’s past but, with Hitler, happily attended the wedding as a witness, knowing he had the tool with which to procure Blomberg’s demise while Fritsch was cleared by a military court of honor, the evidence (of the general having performed upon himself by another man: "an act of indecency") so obviously fake the verdict quickly was delivered, delayed only by an adjournment necessitated by the German invasion of Poland which triggered World War II (1939-1945).

However, the accusation was enough to end his career and although rehabilitated, he wasn’t restored to office but, following the old Prussian code, Fritsch challenged Himmler to a duel with pistols.  Realizing a duel would make the unfortunate situation even worse for the army, the general to whom Fritsch gave the letter containing the challenge choose not to deliver it to Himmler so one of history’s more potentially significant duels was never fought.  Most analysts have assumed the result would not have been in doubt, Fritsch a fine shot and Himmler more used to pen & paper.  When, in January 1945, Himmler’s ineptitude as a military commander was exposed by his brief and undistinguished command of an army group, Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945), with typical acerbity, noted in his diary: “The Reichsführer may be a fusspot but he’s no warlord.”  The greatest loss to history in the duel never being fought was that Goebbels never had the opportunity to leave a tart comment about Fritsch’s service to the world in ridding it of Himmler.  As a footnote, there has long been speculation that Fritsch may have been a bit of a homosexual, based both on his bachelorhood and Blomberg telling Hitler Fritsch: “…was not a lady’s man”.  There is however no evidence to support this and the general’s correspondence reveals only a deep misogyny, felt apparently towards to whole species except his mother, something he had in common with the Führer although Hitler’s attitude was more a dismissive uninterest than hatred.

Dual (pronunced doo-uhl or dyoo-uhl)

(1) Of, relating to, or denoting two.

(2) Composed or consisting of two people, items, parts, etc., together; twofold; double; having a twofold, or double, character or nature.

(3) In the formal grammar of Old English, Old Russian, Arabic and Ancient Greek, denoting a form of a word indicating that exactly two referents are being referred to (a form in the dual, as the Old English git (you two), as opposed to ge (you) referring to three or more.

(4) In mathematics and formal s logic (of structures or expressions) having the property that the interchange of certain pairs of terms, and usually the distribution of negation, yields equivalent structures or expressions

1535–1545: From the Latin duālis (containing two, relating to a pair), the construct being du(o) (two) + -ālis (-al) The Latin duo was from the primitive Indo-European root dwo (two).  The General sense of "relating to two, expressing two, composed or consisting of two parts" is from 1650s.  The general sense of "division into two" has been in use since 1831.  The noun duality (two-fold nature, state of being two or divided in two) is a late fourteenth century form from the Late Latin dualitas.  The noun dualism dates from 1755 as a term in philosophy, the sense being "a way of thinking which explains phenomena by the assumption of two independent and absolute elements," from the French dualisme (1754).  The theological adoption to describe the doctrine of “two independent divine beings or eternal principles” was first noted in 1847.  Duel & dueling are nouns & verbs, dueler & duelist are nouns, dueled is a verb and dually is an adverb; the noun plural is duels (duelers & duelists now rare expet in historic contexts).  The adverb duely is an obsolete spelling of duly. 

Apparently, at the premiere of Disney’s The Parent Trap (1998), then CEO Michael Eisner (b 1942; chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of The Walt Disney Company, 1984-2005), believing the central parts in the film had been played by identical twins asked her “Where's your twin?”.  She told him she didn’t have one and that she should have been paid double.

Dualism in Philosophy

In Metaphysics, dualism holds there are two kinds of reality: the physical world (material) and the spiritual world (immaterial).  In the philosophy of mind, Dualism is the position that mind and body are in some categorical way separate and that mental processes and phenomena are, at least in some respects, non-physical.  Both positions are radically different from even nuanced flavors of monism (which, at its most pure, maintains there is but the universe and that any form of division of the whole is artificial and arbitrary) and pluralism suggests there are many kinds of substance and not just dualism’s two.  In the pre-enlightenment age, dualism had some appeal but it’s now of only historic interest except as a device to train the mind to explore speculative paths.

Dualism in Carburetion

1967 Shelby C7zx dual quad-aluminum intake manifold for Ford 427 FE.

From the late 1950s, Detroit’s V8s, with a sudden and increasing rapidity, grew bigger and more thirsty, the most rapacious of the engines out-pacing the capacity of the carburetors brought from outside suppliers, with the result the only solution was to use two or even three carburettors.  The manufacturer did eventually produce units with sufficient throughput but it took a while for supply to meet demand.  For street use, triple induction was for some time quite a good solution because the three-in-a-row layout lent itself to a good compromise, the engine most of the time being fed only by the central two-barrel carburetor, the outer two used only when the throttle was pushed wide open.  It meant engines with great available power were actually surprisingly economical most of the time although the delicate business of tuning could be a challenge, especially in conditions where there were notable variations in temperature or humidity.  For the high performance engines however, the best cost-performance equation (ignoring the fuel consumption which was the customer's problem) was dual induction, two four barrel carburettors, mounted either in-line or side-by side, the air-flow dynamics of the latter delivering the optimal top-end-power.

Short & Long-Ram Sonoramic dual quad intake manifolds.  The difference was that the short versions had 15 inch (380 mm) tuned intake runners while the long rams had their entire 30 inch (760 mm) length tuned.  

Most dramatic in appearance of all the dual quad setups were the Sonoramics, offered by Chrysler on a handful of models between 1959-1963.  Sonoramic was a linguistic novelty but the engineering principles of tuned resonance in thermal dynamics had been known for decades, the trick being to create a shape which essentially caused the fuel-air mixture to “bounce around”, emulating a low-boost “ram-air” effect.  There were two different versions which looked externally similar but differed internally, the rare so-called “short-ram” tuned for top-end power, the “long-ram” for the mid-range torque which was ideal for street use because the additional performance was delivered in the speed-ranges at which highway passing manoeuvres typically were undertaken.

Jaguar E-Type 4.2 with triple SUs (top) & with dual Strombergs (bottom).

From its introduction, the Jaguar E-Type (1961-1974 and in the US known also as XK-E or XKE) used triple SU HD.8 carburetors but in 1967, to conform to US emission control rules, models built for the North American market were switched to dual Zenith Stromberg 175 CD2SEs.  Unlike some manufacturers which applied the such changes globally, Jaguar maintain the triple assembly for sale in place with less rigorous rules which, at the time, was the rest of the world.  Ominously, power and torque dropped a bit, especially higher in the rev range, a prelude to the malaise which would affect so many in the 1970s.  The dual Zenith Stromberg were one element in a series of changes phased-in during 1967 and culminated in all of them appearing in the re-designated Series 2 (S2) E-Type, released as a 1968 model.  Again necessitated by US legislation, the most obvious modifications were (1) the carburetors, (2) the slight truncation of the cigar-shaped tail & the substitution of the elegant tail-lamps with rather more agricultural-looking units, (3) the use of safer, softer rocker switches on the dash instead of the stylish but sharp toggle switches and (4) the deletion of the lovely, fared-in head-lamp covers, the slightly elevated  replacements lending the car a not exactly bug-eyed look, but combined with the gaping "mouth", perhaps something which recalled a wide-eyed catfish scanning the waters.  There were a host of other changes, most of which made the Series II a better car but it was just a bit slower and didn't look as good.  The unofficial (but helpful and semi-codified) designation used to refer to the two distinct phases of the transitional Series 1 (S1) cars was 1.25 & 1.5, now an accepted part of the E-Type lexicon.

The lovely, pure lines of the S1 Jaguar E-Type (1961-1967, left).  It's not certain Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) really did say it was "the most beautiful car ever made" but he never denied it and was a fair judge of such things.  Visually, the S2 cars (1968-1971, right) were a little more cluttered although they were available with air-conditioning, something which for most owners was more important than the superior throttle response above 100 mph (160 km/h) delivered by the triple SUs.

Comet

Comet (pronounced kom-it)

(1) In astronomy, a celestial body moving about the sun, usually in a highly eccentric orbit, most thought to consist of a solid frozen nucleus, part of which vaporizes on approaching the heat from Sun (or other star) to form a gaseous, luminous coma (the envelope of dust and gas, the most dramatic part of which is the long, luminous tail which streams away from the sun (under the influence of solar winds).

(2) In astronomy, a celestial phenomenon with the appearance of such a body.

(3) Any of several species of hummingbird found in the Andes.

(4) In slang, as “vomit comet”, a reduced-gravity aircraft which, by flying in a parabolic flight path, briefly emulates a close to weightless environment.  Used to train astronauts or conduct research, the slang derived from the nausea some experience.

(5) In figurative use (often applied retrospectively and with a modifier such as “blazing comet”), someone (or, less commonly, something) who appears suddenly in the public eye, makes a significant impact and then quickly fades from view, their fleeting moment of brilliance a brief but spectacular event.

1150–1200: From the Middle English comete, partly from the Old English comēta and partly from the Anglo-French & Old French comete (which in Modern French persists as comète), all from the Latin comētēs & comēta, from the Ancient Greek κομήτης (komḗtēs) (wearing long hair; ling-haired), the construct being komē-, a variant stem of komân (to let one's hair grow), from κόμη (kómē) (hair) + -tēs (the agent suffix).  The Greek was a shortened form of ἀστὴρ κομήτης (astēr komētēs (longhaired star)), a reference to a comet’s streaming tail.  The descendants in other languages include the Malay komet, the Urdu کومٹ (komeṭ) and the Welsh comed.  Comet, cometlessness, cometography, cometographer, cometology & cometarium are nouns, cometless, cometic, cometical, cometocentric, cometary, cometographical & cometlike (also as comet-like) are adjectives, cometesimal is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is comets.

Comets orbit the Sun along an elongated path and when not near the heat, the body consists solely of its nucleus, thought to be almost always a solid core of frozen water, frozen gases, and dust.  When near the sun, the nucleus heats, eventually to boil and thus release the gaseous and luminous coma (the envelope of dust and gas), the most dramatic part of which is the long, luminous tail which streams away from the sun (under the influence of solar winds).  The path of a comet can be in the shape of an ellipse or a hyperbola; if a hyperbolic path, it enters the solar system once and then leaves forever while if it follows an ellipse, it remains in orbit around the sun.  Astronomer divide comets into (1) “short period” (those with orbital periods of less than 200 years and coming from the Kuiper belt) and (2) “long-period” (those with an orbital period greater than 200 years and coming from the Oort cloud).

Before the development of modern techniques, comets were visible only when near the sun so their appearance was sudden and, until early astronomers were able to calculate the paths of those which re-appeared, unexpected.  Superstition stepped in where science didn’t exist and comets were in many cultures regarded as omens or harbingers of doom, famine, ruin, pestilence and the overthrow of kingdoms or empires.  It was the English astronomer, mathematician and physicist Edmond Halley (1656–1742; Astronomer Royal 1720-1742) who in 1682 published the calculations which proved many comets were periodic and thus their appearance could be predicted.  Halley's Comet, named in his honor, remains the only known short-period comet consistently visible from Earth with the naked eye and remains the world’s most famous; it last appeared in 1986 and will next visit our skies in 2061.

Comet wine: Non-vintage Alois Lageder Natsch4 Vigneti Delle Dolomiti.

Halley’s findings put an end to (most) of the superstition surrounding comets but commerce still took advantage of their presence.  A comet with a famously vivid tail appeared in 1811 and in that year, Europe enjoyed a remarkably pleasant autumn (fall) which was most conducive to agriculture and became associated with the abundant and superior yield of the continental vineyards.  For that reason, the vintage was called the “comet wine” and the term became a feature in marketing the product which emerged from any year in which notable comets were seen, a superior quality alleged (and thus a premium price).  Wine buffs say any relationship between the quality of a vintage and the travel of celestial bodies is entirely coincidental.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (2021) by Dr Heather Clark (b 1974).

One of things about the feminist cult which is now the construct of Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) is that her mistreatment at the hands of her husband Ted Hughes (1930–1998; Poet Laureate 1984-2008) tends to obscure her work which many quite familiar with the story of her brief life will barely have read and that’s perhaps predictable, certainly for those for whom the lure of tales of tragic woman and brutish men is a siren.  As human tragedies go, her story is compelling: A precocious talent, the death of the father to whom she was devoted when only eight, the suicide attempt while a student and the burning ambition to write and be published.  Almost as soon as she met Ted Hughes she knew he was “my black marauder” and their affair was one of intense physicality as well as a devotion to their art, something which might have endured during their marriage (which produced two children) had Hughes not proved so unfaithful and neglectful.  In 1963, as an abandoned solo mother in a freezing flat during what entered history as London’s coldest winter of the century, she took her own life while her two babies slept nearby, becoming a symbol onto which people would map whatever most suited their purposes: the troubled genius, the visionary writer, a feminist pioneer and, overwhelmingly, a martyr, a victim of a man.  To his dying day, feminists would stalk literary events just to tell Hughes he had “Sylvia’s blood on his hands”.

So the story is well known and in the years since her death there have been a number of biographies, critical studies, collections of letters, academic conferences; given that, it’s seemed by the 2020s unlikely there was much more to say about one whose adult life spanned not even two decades.  For that reason the 1000-odd densely printed pages of Dr Heather Clark’s Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath was a revelation because, as the author pointed out, her life “has been subsumed by her afterlife” and what was needed was a volume which focused on what she wrote and why that output means she should be set free from the “cultural baggage of the past 50 years” and shown as “one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.”

Sylvia Plath in Paris, 1956.

Red Comet is thus far this century’s outstanding biography and a feminist perspective is not required to recognize that when reading her last poems (written in obvious rage but sustaining a controlled tension few have matched) that she was a profoundly disturbed woman.  Most clinicians who have commented seem now to agree her depression of long-standing had descended to something psychotic by the time of her suicide, a progression she seems to have acknowledged, writing to one correspondent that she was composing poetry “on the edge of madness”.  This is though a biography written by a professional literary critic so it does not construct Plath as tale of tragedy and victimhood as one might if telling the story of some troubled celebrity.  Instead, the life is allowed to unfold in a way which shows how it underpins her development as a writer, the events and other glimpses of the person interpolated into the progress of a text through drafts and revisions, each word polished as the poet progresses to what gets sent to the publisher.  Red Comet is not a book for those interested in how much blame Ted Hughes should bear for his wife killing herself and in that matter it’s unlikely to change many opinions but as a study of the art of Sylvia Plath, it’s outstanding.  Unlike many figurative uses of "comet", Plath continues to blaze her trail. 

Pre-production de Havilland Comet (DH 106) with the original, square windows, England, 1949 (left) and Comet 4 (Registration G-APDN) in BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation (1939-1974 which in 1974 was merged with BEA (British European Airways) and others to later become BA (British Airways)) livery, Tokyo (Haneda International (HND / RJTT)), Japan October 1960.

The term hoodoo is often attached to objects thought jinxed.  When the de Havilland Comet (DH 106; the first commercial jet airliner), within a year of its first flight in 1949, began to suffer a number of catastrophic in-flight accidents, newspapers wrote of the “Comet hoodoo”, something encouraged because, in the pre “black-box” era, analysis of aviation incidents was a less exact science than now and for some time the crashes appeared inexplicable.  It was only when extensive testing revealed the reason for the structural failures could be traced to stresses in the airframe induced aspects of the design that the hoodoo was understood to be the operation of physics.  Other manufacturers noted the findings and changed their designs, Boeing's engineers acknowledging the debt they owed to de Havilland because it was the investigation of the Comet's early problems which produced the solutions which helped the Boeing 707 (1957) and its many successors to be the successful workhorses they became.  As a footnote, by the time the Comet 4 was released in 1958 the problems had been solved but commercially, the project was doomed and reputational damage done.  Between 1949-1964, barely more than 100 were sold although many did provide reliable service until 1981 and the airframe proved adaptable, dozens of military variants produced, the most notable being the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod, a maritime patrol version which was in service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) until 2011.

It’s because of the lessons learned from the Comet hoodoo that the apertures of airliner windows have rounded edges, the traditional four-cornered openings creating four weak spots prone to failure under stress.  In the early 1950s there was much optimism about the Comet and had it been successful, it could have given the UK’s commercial aviation industry a lead in a sector which rapidly would expand in the post war years.  One who didn’t express much faith in his country’s capacity to succeed in the field was the politician Duff Cooper (1890–1954) who, shortly before taking up his appointment as the UK’s ambassador to France, was flying on an Avro York (a transport and civil adaptation of the Lancaster heavy bomber) and he noted in his diary: “I think the designer of the York has discovered the shape of an armchair in which it is quite impossible to be comfortable, if this is typical of the civil transport plane in which were are to compete against the US, we are already beaten.”  As Lindsay Lohan’s smiles indicate, as least on private jets, the seats are now comfortable.

Not quite an Edsel, not yet a Mercury: The 1960 Comet; it was an era of imaginative (other use different adjectives) styling (and at this time they were still "stylists" and not "designers").

The Mercury Comet, built in four generations between 1960-1969 and another between 1971-1977, had a most unusual beginning.  The Ford Motor Company (“FoMoCo”, Mercury’s parent corporation) had in the mid 1950s studied the five-tier (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac) branding used by General Motors (GM) and decided it too would create a five divisional structure (which by 1955 Chrysler had also matched).  The GM model dated from the 1920s and was called the “ladder” (GM at times had as many as nine rungs) and the idea was each step on the later would take a buyer into a higher price (and at least theoretically more profitable) range of models.  There was a time when this approach made sense but even in the 1950s when Ford embarked on their restructure it was beginning to fragment, the implications of which would become apparent over the decades.  Thus Ford ended up (briefly) with five divisions: Ford, Mercury, Edsel, Lincoln and Continental.  That didn’t last long and Continental was the first to go, followed soon by the still infamous Edsel and the corporation even flirted with the idea of shuttering Lincoln.

1963 Mercury Comet S-22 Convertible.

The original plan had been for the Comet to be the “small Edsel” but by the time the release date drew close, the decision had been taken to terminate the Edsel brand so the Q&D (quick & dirty) solution was to sell the car through the Lincoln-Mercury dealer network, an expedient which lasted for the 1960 & 1961 model years before the Comet was integrated into the Mercury range and badged appropriately.  The early Comets were built on the Falcon platform (“compact” in contemporary US terms) but when the 1966 range was released, the cars became “intermediates” (ie the size between the “compact” and “full-size” platforms).  The Comet name was withdrawn from use after 1969 but was in 1971 revived for Mercury’s companion to the Maverick, Ford’s replacement for the compact Falcon which slotted above the Pinto which was smaller, requiring the industry to coin the class-designation “sub compact”.  Cheap to produce and essentially a “consumer disposable”, the Maverick and Comet proved so popular they continued in production for a season even after their nominal replacements were in showrooms.

1967 Mercury Comet Cyclone "R Code", one of 60 built that year with the 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) FE side-oiler V8 and one of the 19 with a four-speed manual transmission.

The Mercury Comet has never attracted great interest from collectors because few were built with the more robust or exotic drive-trains found more frequently in both the competition from GM & Chrysler and the companion versions from Ford.  The mid-range performance package for the general market was the Comet Cyclone, introduced in 1964 to replace the Comet’s earlier S-22 option; neither were big sellers but they were not expensive to produce and remained profitable parts of the Mercury range.  In 1968, during the peak of the muscle car era, Mercury sought to promote the line, dropping the Comet name and promoting the machines as the “Cyclone”, now with quite potent engines although the emphasis clearly was drag racing rather than turning corners; the high performance package was now called the “Cyclone Spoiler”.  For the NASCAR circuits however, there was in 1969 the Cyclone Spoiler II, one of the so-called “aero cars”, the better known of which were the much more spectacular, be-winged Dodge Daytona (1969) and Plymouth Superbird (1970).  Chrysler’s cars looked radical to achieve what they did but the modifications which created the Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II and Ford Torino Talladega were so subtle as to be barely noticeable, the most effective being the increased slope on the lengthened nose, the flush grill and some changes which had the effect of lowering both the centre of gravity and the body.  The Ford and Mercury might have been a less spectacular sight than the Dodge or Plymouth but on the tracks the seeming slight tweaks did the job and both were among the fastest and most successful of their brief era.

1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II (slab-sided but slippery, left), 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler (sleek but less aerodynamic than its predecessor, centre) and the aborted 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II (handicapped out of contention by NASCAR, right).   

In 1970, just how aerodynamic was the 1969 Cyclone Spoiler was proved when the racing teams tried the new model which, although it looked sleek, was not as aerodynamically efficient and noticeably slower.  That might seem something of an own goal but Ford were blindsided by NASCAR’s decision to render the low-volume “aero cars” uncompetitive by restricting them to the use of 305 cubic inch (5.0 litre) engines while the conventional bodies were permitted to use the full 430 (7.0).  Thus the aerodynamic modifications planned for the 1970 Torino and Cyclone never entered production.  Of the two prototype Cyclone Spoiler IIs built, one survives revealing a nose which was in its own way as radical as those earlier seen on the Plymouth and Dodge.  In the collector market, the aero cars are much sought but the Cyclones are the least valued which may seem strange because they were on the circuits among the most successful of the era.  Market analysts attribute this to (1) the Cyclone Spoiler II (and Torino Talladega) being visually much less eye-catching than the wild-looking pair from Chrysler and (2) the Cyclone Spoiler II being sold only with a modest 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) engine whereas the Fords ran 428s (7.0) and the Chryslers 440 (7.2) & 426 (6.9) units, the latter a version of the engine actually used in the race cars.

The highly qualified Kate Upton (b 1992) was in 2014 featured in a Sports Illustrated session filmed in a "vomit comet" (a modified Boeing 727 with a padded interior).