Sabotage

Sabotage (pronounced sab-uh-tahzh (U) or sab-oh-tahzh (non-U))

(1) Any underhand interference with production, work etc, in a plant, factory etc, as by enemy agents during wartime or by employees during a trade dispute; any similar action or behavior.

(2) In military use, an act or acts with intent to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of a country by willfully injuring or destroying, or attempting to injure or destroy, any national defense or war materiel, premises, or utilities, to include human and natural resources.

(3) Any undermining of a cause.

(4) To injure or attack by sabotage.

1907: From the French sabotage from saboter (to botch; to spoil through clumsiness (originally, to strike, shake up, harry and literally “to clatter in sabots (clog-like wooden soled shoes)”).

The noun sabotage is said to have been absorbed by English in 1907, having been used as a French borrowing since at least 1903.  The sense of the French usage was “malicious damaging or destruction of an employer's property by workmen", a development from the original idea of mere deliberate bungling and inefficiency as a form of ad-hoc industrial action.  Contemporary commentators in England noted "malicious mischief" was likely the “nearest explicit definition” of sabotage before point out “this new force in industry and morals” was definitely something associated with the continent.  As the meaning quickly shifted from mere lethargy in the means to physically damaging the tools of production, the story began to circulate that the origin of the word was related to instances of disgruntled strikers (something the English were apt to ascribe as habitual to French labour) tactic of throwing their sabots (clog-like wooden-soled shoes) into machinery.  There is no evidence this ever happened although it was such a vivid image that the tale spread widely and even enjoyed some currency as actual etymology but it was fake news.  Instead it was in the tradition of the French use in a variety of "bungling" senses including the poor delivery of a speech or a poorly played piece of music, the idea of a job botched or a discordant sound, like the clatter of many sabots on as a group walked on a hardwood floor.  The noun savate (a French method of fighting with the feet) from French savate (literally "a kind of shoe") is attested from 1862 and although linked to footwear, is unrelated to sabotage.

Prepared for sabotage: Lindsay Lohan in Gucci Black Patent Leather Hysteria Platform Clogs with wooden soles, Los Angeles, 2009.  The car is a 2009 (fifth generation) Maserati Quattroporte leased by her father.

What sabotage was depended also from where it was viewed.  In industry it was thought to be a substitute for striking in which the workers stayed in his place but proceeded to do his work slowly and badly, the aim being ultimately to displease his employer's customers and cause loss to his employer.  To the still embryonic unions seeking to organize labour, it was a reciprocal act of industrial democracy, going slow about the means of production and distribution in response to organized capital going slow in the matter of wages.  The extension by the military to describe the damage inflicted (especially clandestinely) to disrupt in some way the economy by damaging military or civilian infrastructure emerged during World War I (1914-1918).  The verb sabotage (to ruin or disable deliberately and maliciously) dates from 1912 and the noun saboteur (one who commits sabotage) was also first noted in the same year (although it had been used in English since 1909 as a French word); it was from the French agent noun from saboter and the feminine form was saboteuse.

The word exists in many European languages including Catalan (sabotatge), Czech (sabotáž), Danish (sabotage), Dutch (sabotage), Galician (sabotaxe), German (Sabotage), Hungarian (szabotázs), Italian (sabotaggio), Polish (sabotaż), Portuguese (sabotagem), Russian (сабота́ж) (sabotáž), Spanish (sabotaje), Swedish (sabotage) & Turkish (sabotaj).  Sabotage is so specific that it has no direct single-word synonym although, depending on context, related words include destruction, disruption, subversion, treachery, treason, vandalism, cripple, destroy, disrupt, hamper, hinder, obstruct, subvert, torpedo, undermine, vandalize, wreck, demolition, impairment, injury & disable.  Sabotage is a noun & verb, sabotaged is a verb & adjective, saboteur is a noun, sabotaging is a verb and sabotagable is an adjectival conjecture; some sources maintain there is no plural of sabotage and the correct form is “acts of sabotage” while others list the third-person singular simple present indicative form as sabotages.

Franz von Papen.

Although his activities as German Military Attaché for Washington DC during 1914-1915 would be overshadowed by his later adventures, Franz von Papen’s (1879–1969) inept attempts at sabotaging the Allied war effort would help introduce the word to the military vocabulary.  He attempted to disrupt the supply of arms to the British, even setting up a munitions factory with the intension of buying up scare commodities to deny their use by the Allies, only to find the enemy had contracted ample quantities so his expensive activities had no appreciable effect on the shipments.  Then his closest aide, after falling asleep on a train, left behind a briefcase full of letters compromising Papen for his activities on behalf of the central powers.  Within days, a New York newspaper published details of Papen’s amateurish cloak & dagger operations including his attempt to induce workers of Austrian & German descent employed in plants engaged in war production for the Allies to slow down their output or damage the goods.  Also in the briefcase were copies of letters he sent revealing shipping movements.

Even this wasn’t enough for the US to expel him so he expanded his operations, setting up a spy network to conduct a sabotage and bombing campaign against businesses in New York owned by citizens from the Allied nations.  That absorbed much money for little benefit but, undeterred, he became involved with Indian nationalists living in the US, arranging with them for arms to be shipped to India where he hoped a revolt against the Raj might be fermented, a strategy he pursued also with the Irish nationalists.  Thinking big, he planned an invasion of Canada and tried to enlist Mexico as an ally of the Central Powers in the event of the US entering the war with the promise California and Arizona would be returned.  More practically, early in 1915 he hired agents to blow up the Vanceboro international rail bridge which linked the US and Canada between New Brunswick and Maine.  That wasn’t a success but of greater impact was that Papen had departed from the usual practices of espionage by paying the bombers by cheque.  It was only his diplomatic immunity which protected him from arrest but British intelligence had been monitoring his activities and provided a file to the US State Department which in December 1915 declared him persona non grata and expelled him.  Upon his arrival in Berlin, he was awarded the Iron Cross.

Hopelessly ineffective though his efforts had proved, by the time Papen left the US, the words sabotage and saboteur had come into common use including in warning posters and other propaganda.  Papen went on greater things, serving briefly as chancellor and even Hitler’s deputy, quite an illustrious career for one described as “uniquely, taken seriously by neither his opponents nor his supporters”.  When one of the Weimar Republic's many scheming king-makers suggested Papen as chancellor, others thought the noting absurd, pointing out: "Papen has no head for politics."  The response was: "He doesn't need a head, his job is to be a hat".  Despite his known limitations, he proved one of the Third Reich’s great survivors, escaping purges and assassination and, despite being held in contempt by Hitler, served the regime to the end.  Even its coda he survived, being one of the few defendants at the main Nuremberg trial (1945-1946) to be acquitted (to be fair he was one of the few Nazis with the odd redeeming feature and his sins were those of cynical opportunism rather than evil intent) although the German courts did briefly imprison him, albeit under rather pleasant conditions.

The Simple Sabotage Field Manual (SSFM) was published in 1944 by the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  Its original purpose was as a resource for OSS field agents to use in motivating or recruiting potential foreign saboteurs and permission was granted permission to print and disseminate portions of the document as needed.  The idea was to provide tools and instructions so just about any member of society could inflict some degree of damage of a society and its economy, the rationale being that of a “death of a thousand cuts”.  In contrast, the more dramatic and violent acts of sabotage (high-risk activities like killings or blowing stuff up) were only ever practiced by a handful of citizens.  The SSFM was aimed at US sympathizers keen to disrupt war efforts against the allies during World War II (1939-1945) in ways that were barely detectable but, in cumulative effect, measurable and thus contains instructions for destabilizing or reducing progress and productivity by non-violent means. The booklet is separated into headings that correspond to specific audiences, including: Managers and Supervisors, Employees, Organizations and Conferences, Communications, Transportation (Railways, Automotive, and Water), General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion & Electric Power.  The simplicity of approach was later adopted by the CIA when it distributed its Book of Dirty Tricks.

Of great amusement to students (amateur and professional) of corporate organizational behavior was that a number of the tactics the SSFM lists as being disruptive and tending to reduce efficiency are exactly those familiar to anyone working in a modern Western corporation.

Middle Management

(1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

(2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.

(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committee as large as possible — never less than five.

(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

(5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

(7) Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

Senior Management

(8) In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers.

(9) Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw.

(10) To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions.

(11) Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.

(12) Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.

Employees

(13) Work slowly.

(14) Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can.

(15) Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.

(16) Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker.

Sabot & Clog

Sabot (pronounced sab-oh or sa-boh (French)

(1) A shoe made of a single block of wood hollowed out, worn especially by farmers and workers in the Netherlands, France, Belgium etc.

(2) A shoe with a thick wooden sole and sides and a top of coarse leather.

(3) In military ordinance, a wooden or metal disk formerly attached to a projectile in a muzzle-loading cannon.

(4) In firearm design, a lightweight sleeve in which a sub-caliber round is enclosed in order to make it fit the rifling of a firearm; after firing the sabot drops away.

(5) In nautical use, a small sailing boat with a shortened bow (Australia).

1600–1610: From the French sabot, from the Old French çabot, a blend of savate (old shoe), of uncertain origin and influenced by bot (boot).  The mysterious French savate (old shoe), despite much research by etymologists, remains of unknown origin.  It may be from the Tatar чабата (çabata) (overshoes), ultimately either from the Ottoman Turkish چاپوت‎ (çaput or çapıt) (patchwork, tatters), or from the Ottoman Turkish چاپمق‎ (çapmak) (to slap on), or of Iranian origin, cognate with the modern Persian چپت‎ (čapat) (a kind of traditional leather shoe).  It was akin to the Old Provençal sabata, the Italian ciabatta (old shoe), the Spanish zapato, the Norman chavette and the Portuguese sapato.  The plural is sabots.

Young women in clogs, smoking cigarettes.

Sabot is the ultimate source of sabotage & saboteur.  English picked up sabotage from the French saboter (deliberately to damage, wreck or botch), used originally to refer to the tactic used in industrial disputes by workers wearing the wooden shoes called sabots who disrupted production in various ways.  The persistent myth is that the origin of the term lies in the practice of workers throwing the wooden sabots into factory machinery to interrupt production but the tale appears apocryphal, one account even suggesting sabot-clad workers were simply considered less productive than others who had switched to leather shoes, roughly equating the term sabotage with inefficiency.

Vintage Dutch sabots.

The words saboter and saboteur appear first to have appeared in French dictionaries in 1808 (Dictionnaire du Bas-Langage ou manières de parler usitées parmi le peuple of d'Hautel) suggesting there must have been some use of the words in printed materials some time prior to then.  The literal definition provided was “to make noise with sabots” and “bungle, jostle, hustle, haste” but with no suggestion of the shoes being used in the “spanner in the works” sense suggested by the myth.  Sabotage would not appear in dictionaries for some decades, noted first in the Dictionnaire de la langue française of Émile Littré (1801-1881) published between 1873-1874 and curiously, it’s defined as referencing that specialty of cobbling “the making of sabots; sabot maker”.  It wouldn’t be until 1897 that the use to describe malicious damage in pursuit of industrial or political aims was recorded, anarcho-syndicalist Émile Pouget (1860-1931) publishing Action de saboter un travail (Sabotaging or bungling at work) in Le Père Peinard, which he helpfully expanded in 1911 in the user manual Le Sabotage.  In neither work however was there mention of using sabots as a means of damaging or halting machinery, the sense was always of things done by those wearing sabots, the word a synecdoche for the industrial proletariat.  Contemporary English-language sources confirm this.  In its January 1907 edition, The Liberty Review noted sabotage was a means of “scamping work… a device… adopted by certain French workpeople as a substitute for striking.  The workman, in other words, purposes to remain on and to do his work badly, so as to annoy his employer's customers and cause loss to his employer”.

Clog promotion, H&M catalog 2011.

Clog (pronounced klog or klawg)

(1) To hinder or obstruct with thick or sticky matter; choke up.

(2) To crowd excessively, especially so that movement is impeded; overfill.

(3) To encumber; hamper; hinder.

(4) To become clogged, encumbered, or choked up.

(5) A shoe or sandal with a thick sole of wood, cork, rubber, or the like; a similar but lighter shoe worn in the clog dance.

(6) A heavy block, as of wood, fastened to a person or beast to impede movement.

(7) As clog dance, a type of dance which specifically demands the wearing of clogs.

(8) In British dialectal use, a thick piece of wood (now rare).

(9) In the slang of association football (soccer), to foul an opponent (now rare).

(10) A heavy block, especially of wood, fastened to the leg of a person or animal to impede motion.

(11) To use a mobile phone to take a photograph of (someone) and upload it without their knowledge or consent, the construct being c(amera) + log, a briefly used term from the early days of camera-equipped phones on the which never caught on.

1300s: Of unknown origin, most likely from the Middle English clogge (weight attached to the leg of an animal to impede movement) or from a North Germanic form such as klugu & klogo (knotty tree log) from the Old Norse, the Dutch klomp or the Norwegian klugu (knotty log of wood).  The word was also used in Middle English to describe big pieces of jewelry and large testicles.  The meaning "anything that impedes action" is from the 1520s, via the notion of "block or mass constituting an encumbrance” although it became nuanced, by 1755 builders were distinguishing between things clogged with whatever naturally belonged then and becoming “choked up with extraneous matter”, a distinction doubtlessly of great significance to plumbers.  The sense of the "wooden-soled shoe" is attested from the late fourteenth century, used as overshoes until the introduction of rubber soles circa 1840.  Related forms include the adjective cloggy, the noun clogginess, the verbs clogged & clog·ging and the adverb cloggily.  A frequently used adjectival derivative is anticlogging, often as a modifier of agent and, unsurprisingly, the verb unclog, first noted circa 1600, is also common.

Lindsay Lohan in Gucci Black Patent Leather Hysteria Platform Clogs with wooden soles, Los Angeles, 2009.  The car is a 2009 (fifth generation) Maserati Quattroporte leased by her father.

Clogs were originally made entirely of wood (hence the name), the more familiar modern form with leather uppers covering the front being noted first in the late sixteenth century but may have been worn earlier.  Long popular with men working in kitchens (always with a rubber covering on the sole), the first revival as a fashion item occurred circa 1970, primarily for women and clog-dancing, a form "which required the wearing of clogs" is attested from 1863.  There are now a variety of variations on the clog sole including the Tengu geta, having a single tooth in the centre and the Albarcas which features extensions something like a three-legged stool.  None look very comfortable but their users appear content.

Lindsay Lohan's promotion for the collaboration between German fashion house MCM & Crocs, introducing the "pragmatic" Mega Crush Clog.  Not that there was ever much doubt but now we know clogs can be "pragmatic".

Luddite

Luddite (pronounced luhd-ahyt)

(1) A member of any of various bands of workers in England (1811–1816) organized to destroy manufacturing machinery, under the belief that its use diminished employment.

(2) Someone opposed or resistant to new technologies or technological change.

(3) Of or relating to the Luddites

1805–1815: Said to be named after a Mr Ned Ludd, a Leicestershire worker who in the late eighteenth century, a fit of rage destroyed mechanical knitting machines he believed were threatening his livelihood by displacing him from his job.  There is doubt (1) whether there was an actual mill worker called Ned Ludd and (2) whether the famous act of industrial sabotage really happened in the circumstances described.  The origin of the name Ludd can be traced to the ancient Anglo-Saxon tribes of the British Isles and was occupational, used by those employed as pages or servants, the Old English Ladde a term which described a household servant.  That’s generally accepted among genealogists but there are sources which note that in the Old English and Scotch, the word lade meant “a canal or duct for water” and that Ludd evolved as a geographical name, used to describe one who worked near or lived on the banks of a waterway.  It’s entirely possible the two forms evolved separately and while the name was probably in use earlier, the first traces of it in the parish records of England appear circa 1100 variously as Ladda, Ladde, le Ladd, Ludd & Ludde.  Variations in spelling were common and it wasn’t until the late Middle English that a widespread standardization can be said to have begun and because elements of Greek, the various flavours of Latin, French and Germanic languages mixed with the native tongues of the British Isles, the influences were many, the differences in pronunciation accounting for at least some of the variations.  Related to what would become the lineage of Ludd included Ladd, Ladde, Laddey, Ladds, Lade, Ladey, Laddy and others.  The -ite suffix was from the French -ite, from the Old French, from the Latin -ītēs, from the Ancient Greek -ῑ́της (-ī́tēs).  It had a wide application including (1) the formation of nouns denoting the followers or adherents of a individual, doctrine or movement etc, (2) the formation of nouns denoting descendants of a certain historic (real or mythical) figure (widely used of biblical identities), (3) the formations of demonyms, (4) in geology the formation of nouns denoting rocks or minerals, (5) in archeology, the formation of nouns denoting fossil organisms, (6) in biology & pathology to form nouns denoting segments or components of the body or an organ of the body, (7) in industry & commerce to form nouns denoting the product of a specified process or manufactured product & (8) in chemistry to form names of certain chemical compounds (historically especially salts or esters of acids with names with the suffix –ous).  Luddite & Ludditism are nouns; the noun plural is Luddites.

The Luddites were a social movement of textile workers in England during the early nineteenth century who protested against the introduction into factories of machinery, their concern being their jobs would be lost and they and their families would face destitution because they would be forced into manual labor at a very low rate of pay.  Real though the movement was, there is no documentary evidence to support the suggestion a Mr Ned Ludd was a real figure associated with the Luddites and the English parish records of the era are comprehensive and regarded as accurate.  Historians have trawled through the ledgers covering the relevant decades and have been unable to verify that a Mr Ned Ludd was ever employed in the factories.  The consensus is that the identity of Ned Ludd was a construct with which the cause of the workers could be identified although whether the name emerged organically from the movement or was created by a writer as a narrative device is unknown.

Lindsay Lohan with sledge-hammer demonstrating a Luddite technique by attacking Volvo.  This wasn’t an industrial protest and was actually an event staged to protest about the cancellation of a television show.  Actually, a sledge-hammer or some other suitable tool may have been what the Luddites used for their sabotage.  English picked up sabotage from the French saboter (deliberately to damage, wreck or botch), used originally to refer to the tactic used in industrial disputes by workers wearing the wooden shoes called sabots who disrupted production in various ways.  The persistent myth is that the origin of the term lies in the practice of workers throwing the wooden sabots into factory machinery to interrupt production but the tale appears apocryphal, one account even suggesting sabot-clad workers were simply considered less productive than others who had switched to leather shoes, roughly equating the term sabotage with inefficiency.

Even the extent to which weavers (and other factory workers) actually sabotaged machines in the manner of the legendary of Ned Ludd is unclear and while it clear from the reports of the time there were instances of sabotage, it does appear they were sporadic and opportunistic acts and certainly not part of a planned movement, much less a revolutionary one.  However, the term has endured to be applied broadly to encompass anyone who opposes new technology or social change and it’s now rarely used with any hit the recipient is contemplating violent resistance.  In this sense, the term is often used in a pejorative way to describe individuals or groups who are seen as reactionary or obstructionist.  Ludditism can exist even at high technological levels, some users accustomed to the familiarity of certain apps or operating systems resistant to change, usually on the basis that the change offers no benefits and sometimes even brings disadvantages.

Chicane

Chicane (pronounced shi-keyn or chi-keyn)

(1) In bridge, a hand without trumps.

(2) In motor sport, one bend or a short section of sharp bends formed either by the design of the track or by barriers placed on the circuit.

(3) To quibble over; cavil at (now rare, probably extinct).

(4) A less common word for chicanery (deception; trickery); to use chicanery, tricks or subterfuge (rare).

1665-1675: A borrowing from the French chicane, from chicaner (to quibble (of obscure origin)), from the Middle French chicaner, from the Middle Low German schicken & schikken (to arrange), ultimately from the Proto-Germanic skikkijaną, origin of modern French chic.  The word has been used in English in various senses, including as an "act of chicanery” (the art of gaining advantage by using evasions or cheating tricks) from the 1670s.  The now most familiar sense, "obstacles on a roadway" didn’t emerge until 1955 (quickly spreading to motor-racing circuits) although it had been a technical term in bridge design since the 1880s.  All the English forms are from the archaic verb chicane (to trick), first noted in the 1660s, from the sixteenth century French chicane (trickery) from chicaner (to pettifog, to quibble).  Chicane, chicanery & chicaner are nouns, chicanerous is an adjective and chicaned & chicaning are verbs; the noun plural is chicanes.

Chicanery & low skullduggery: The film Mean Girls (2004) was based on Rosalind Wiseman's (b 1969) book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence (2002) which explored the interaction of the shifting social cliques formed by school girls.

Of the chicanery of the FIA

The FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (International Automobile Federation)) has since 1904 been involved in the organisation and regulation of motor-racing.  The FIA used to be mostly harmless but in recent decades has degenerated into about the most dopey regulatory body in sport, making the men of World Rugby’s (the old International Rugby Board (IRB)) standing Laws Committee look like chaps of rare skill and talent.  For a long time the FIA have approved not at all of any interesting form of motor-racing, their response always to make things slower and more processional, a curious approach in a sport about speed.  Although most obsessed with publishing volumes of complex regulations which require the employment of FIA officials to administer, the FIA also has an almost fetishistic relationship with chicanes.  A chicane is essentially an obstruction which requires a racing car to slow to negotiate.  While curves, climbs and corners have always been part of just about any form of motor-racing, the FIA seems never convinced there are enough.  It’s suspected if the FIA had their way, there would be no straights on motor-racing circuits, just corners.

Le Mans, before and after.

Mulsanne Straight (Ligne Droite des Hunaudières in French) at Circuit de la Sarthe where the annual Twenty-Four Hours of Le Mans (24 Heures du Mans) is run was once 3.7 miles (6 km) in length.  It was one of the sport’s great institutions, the speeds attained a benchmark of progress in engineering and aerodynamics.

Year	Car	Config	CI	CM3	MPH	KM/H
1961	Maserati Tipo 63	V12	183	3.0	173.6	279.4
1962	Ferrari 330 TRI/LM	V12	244	4.0	182.9	294.3
1963	Ferrari 330 TRI/LM	V12	244	4.0	187.2	301.3
1964	Ferrari 330 P	V12	244	4.0	192.2	309.3
1965	Ford GT40 Mk1	V8	289	4.7	192.2	309.3
1966	Ford GT40 MkII	V8	427	7.0	201.5	324.3
1967	Ford GT40 MkIV	V8	427	7.0	212.6	342.1
1968	Porsche 908	F8	244	3.0	191.0	307.4
1969	Porsche 917 LH	F12	275	4.5	197.8	318.3
1970	Porsche 917 L	F12	275	4.5	205.2	330.2
1971	Porsche 917 K	F12	298	4.9	224.4	361.1
1972	Matra-Simca MS670	V12	183	3.0	205.8	331.2
1973	Ferrari 312 PB-73	F12	183	3.0	210.8	339.2
1974	Matra-Simca MS670C	F12	183	3.0	207.1	333.3
1975	Gulf-Mirage GR8	V8	183	3.0	193.4	311.2
1976	Renault-Alpine A442	V6	122	2.0	208.9	336.2
1977	Renault-Alpine A442	V6	122	2.0	218.2	351.2
1978	Renault-Alpine A442B	V6	122	2.0	227.5	366.1
1979	Porsche 936	F6	131	2.1	218.8	352.1
1980	WM P79	V6	165	2.7	217.6	350.2
1981	Porsche 936	F6	159	2.6	220.7	355.2
1982	Porsche 956	F6	159	2.6	220.1	354.2
1983	Porsche 956	F6	159	2.6	230.0	370.1
1984	WM P83B	V6	165	2.7	225.1	362.3
1985	Porsche 956B	F6	159	2.6	230.6	371.1
1986	Porsche 962C	F6	159	2.6	231.9	373.2
1987	WM P87	V6	165	2.7	236.2	380.1
1988	WM P88	V6	165	2.7	251.1	404.1
1989	Sauber Mercedes C9	V8	303	5.0	248.0	399.1
1990	Nissan R90CP	V8	214	3.5	226.9	365.2

These achievements impressed most but not the FIA which, for reasons of their own, decided to sabotage things, initially by reducing the maximum engine capacity in the premier class, firstly from seven litres to five and later to three.  When this didn’t prove sufficient to nobble the engineers, they insisted two chicanes be added to Mulsanne Straight.  They were installed in 1990 and proved effective, no car since has, in the race, come within 20 mph (32 km/h) of the marks set in the late 1980s and speeds in excess of 200 mph (320 km/h) are now rare.  The FIA has emasculated other circuits too; in 1987 a chicane was added to Conrod Straight at Mount Panorama, Bathurst in Australia.  Quite why the FIA remains involved in motor-racing isn’t clear when it’s apparent they'd be better suited to the administration of something like competitive basket-weaving.