Statesman

Statesman (pronounced steyts-muhn)

(1) Certain politicians with a favorable reputation (a rare breed), especially those associated with international relations.

(2) A person (not of necessity an elected politician) experienced in the art & science of government or versed in the administration of government affairs, especially those involved in diplomacy.

(3) A product name used variously of such things as cars, ships and (especially) newspapers and periodicals.

1585–1595: A construct was state + s + -man, modeled on steersman (in nautical use, one who steers a ship or other vessel (the helmsman)).  State was from the early thirteen century Middle English noun stat, from both the Old French estat and the Latin status (manner of standing, attitude, position, carriage, manner, dress, apparel; and other senses), from stare (to stand); a doublet of estate and status.  The idea of “the polity” which evolved ultimately into the construct of the modern nation-state began to develop in fourteenth century Europe, notably the multi-entity Holy Roman Empire.  In other European languages, the comparable words were the French être, the Greek στέω (stéo), the Italian stare, the Portuguese estar, the Romanian sta, and the Spanish estar.  

The suffix –man developed from the noun and was applied describe (1) someone (the original implication obviously implied male) who is an expert in an area or who takes part in an activity, (2) someone employed or holds a position in an area, (3) someone possessing particular characteristics relating to a topic or area, (4) someone (in this case explicitly male) of a certain nationality or sub-national geographical identity (not a universal use which varied according to the structure of the root word (other suffixes including –an, -ian etc) or (5) in Admiralty jargon, a ship which has special characteristics relating to a trade or area (‎merchantman, ‎Greenlandman etc) which produced the amusing linguistic paradox of forms such as “she’s a merchantman” because of the convention ships were always referred to in the feminine.  Man was from the Middle English man, from the Old English mann (human being, person, man), from the Proto-West Germanic mann, from the Proto-Germanic mann-, from the primitive Indo-European mon- (human being, man”).

The derived form statesmanship described an idealized conception of how a politician should behave.  It's now less common, probably less so because the standard of politicians has so obviously declined than a reluctance to use a word thought gender-loaded; to say "statesmanship" might now be thought a micro-aggression.  The suffix -ship was from the Middle English -schipe & -shippe, from the Old English -sċiepe, from the Proto-West Germanic -skapi, from the Proto-Germanic -skapiz.  The equivalent forms in other languages included the Scots -schip, the West Frisian -skip, the Dutch -schap, the German -schaft, the Swedish -skap and the Icelandic -skapur.  It was appended to nouns to form a new noun denoting a property or state of being, time spent in a role, or a specialized union, a popular use being the way a set of social duties associated with a particular role shape or develop one's character (fellowship, ownership et al).  Other suffixes used for similar purposes (property or state of being) include -ness, -hood, -itude, -th, -ity & -dom.

Meeting a statesman: Lindsay Lohan meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; prime-minister or president of the Republic of Türkiye since 2003), Presidential Palace, Ankara, Türkiye, 27 January 2017.

The informal noun superstatesman is used to refer to someone especially successful (especially in international relations) while to say of someone or their actions that they possess the quality of being unstatesmanlike, it’s a criticism which implies they have not reached the expected standard (ie they’re acting more like a politician).  The term "elder statesman" generally is used either of (1) a respected political leader (not of necessity all that elderly but usually retired or at least withdrawn from the controversies of front-line politics) or (2), by extension, a prominent and respected person in any field who usually is retired or inactive with their involvement restricted to commentaries.  Statesman & statesmanship are nouns and statesmanlike & statesmanly are adjectives; the noun plural is statesmen (except in commercial use when Statesman is used as a product name in which case the plural should be Statesmans (although Statesmen seems not uncommon)).  The feminine noun stateswoman and the gender-neutral statesperson are more recent creations (both with the same derived adjectives on the model of those from statesman) and notably used less frequently.

The usually told joke is that a statesman is a “dead politician” and there’s some element of truth in that because the reputation of politicians certainly seems often to improve once they’ve had the decency to drop dead.  Unfairly or not, politicians often are characterized those dedicated to the pursuit of power, advancing their own interests or those of their party and making decisions that cater to short-term political gains (although they also have a great interest in accumulating money and many taxpayers would be surprised to learn just how much of their money ends up each year in the bank accounts of politicians; such is the array of “allowances & entitlements” (often opaque and sometimes secret) that the total is some distance from their notional annual salary).  Anyway, because the focus of a politician is on winning elections and pursuing the agendas of whomever is funding them (or offering to in their post-political life), the term “politician” usually carries negative connotations, implying opportunism, manipulation and a lack of concern for anything except self-interest.  Old Jack Lang (1876–1975; Premier of New South Wales 1925-1927 & 1930-1932) used to tell the young seeking a career in politics his best advice was "...in any race, always back the horse called self-interest; it'll be the only one having a go."

Two statesmen meeting to discuss matters of common interest: Dr Henry Kissinger (b 1923; US national security advisor 1969-1975 & secretary of state 1937-1977, left) and General Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006; dictator of Chile 1973-1990, right), Santiago, Chile, 1976. 

The term statesman carries usually positive connotations and is associated with someone in public life who has demonstrated wisdom, integrity and a vision which includes the interest of the public and this rare breed is characterized by their commitment to serving the greater good, often transcending narrow partisan interests in favor of broader national or societal goals.  It’s probably easier for a politician to be thought statesmanlike if they come into office having already established an illustrious reputation through pervious public service, such as Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US president 1953-1961) who, before he entered the White House, was one of the nation’s most respected soldiers.  Actually, in the US where appointments to the cabinet don’t require election, it’s more likely one can be thought a statesman because one need never dirty one’s hands with the nasty business of electoral politics.  Serving as secretary of state for a scant twelve months between 1950-1951, General George Marshall (1880–1959; US Army chief of staff 1939-1945) is remembered as a “great statesman” because he looked the part and the Marshall Plan (the post-war re-financing of Europe with US dollars) bore his name although it was something he neither conceived, designed or administered.  Another of America’s chief diplomats, Dr Henry Kissinger, is still described by some as a “great statesman” (although many others prefer “war criminal”).  Certainly, politicians good and evil are aware that how they’re remembered is based on who gets to write the histories.  Late in World War II (1939-1945), when things really weren’t going well for the Nazis, Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945), well aware of the enormity of the crimes the regime (of which he was a prominent part) had committed and one of the few realists among a generally deluded lot, was said to have commented: “Either we are going to go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time, or as the greatest criminals.”  Although that phrase has for decades been attributed to him, it’s not certain he used quite those words but his diary entries and collaborated contemporary testimony from others leave little doubt that was what was on his mind.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) had no doubt what qualities defined statesmanship.  In the prison diary assembled from the huge volume of fragments he had smuggled out of Spandau prison while serving the twenty year sentence he was lucky to receive for war crimes & crimes against humanity (Spandauer Tagebücher (Spandau, the Secret Diaries), pp 451 William Collins Inc, 1976), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recounted one of the Führer's not infrequent monologues, a small part of which mentioned the matter:

“Whoever succeeds me must be sure to have an opening for a new war.  We never want a static situation where that sort of thing hangs in doubt In future peace treaties we must therefore always leave open a few questions that will provide a pretext.  Think of Rome and Carthage, for instance. A new war was always built right into every peace treaty. That's Rome for you! That's statesmanship.” 

The Holden Statesman

1971 Ford ZD Fairlane 500.  The industry legend was the development budget for the original ZA Fairlane in 1967 was "three quarters of four-fifths of fuck all".  Like the basic vehicle, the styling updates were borrowed from earlier US Fords so the effort required was about as minimal as the budget. 

Holden was the General Motors (GM) outpost in Australia and in the 1950s and 1960s, for a variety of reasons (not wholly related to the dynamic qualities of the cars they sold), the operation had been highly successful, for many years enjoying a market share as high as 50% odd.  By the early 1970s, increased competition had eroded Holden’s dominance although it remained the market leader in most sectors it contested with one exception: the executive sedan.  Ford in 1967 had effectively re-defined this market by conjuring up a long-wheelbase version of the mass-market Falcon which overnight rendered obsolete some of the antiquated British competition and provided an attractively less expensive alternative to the bigger Fords, Chevrolets, Pontiacs and Dodges, imported via Canada to take advantage of the lower tariffs imposed on products from the Commonwealth (the successor regime to the old imperial preference scheme).  Although well-suited to Australian conditions, the US cars were becoming increasingly expensive because of movements in the exchange rate (the Bretton-Woods system (1944) of “fixed” currency rates was more an interacting series of “managed floats”).  So, developed very cheaply with only detail changes and some (what now seems modest) bling, the elongated Falcon was in 1967 released under the Fairlane name (used earlier in Australia for both a full-sized and intermediate North American import) and it proved an instant success, selling not only in large numbers but with a profit margin unmatched in the local industry.  Of course, one victim of this success was Ford’s own imported Galaxie, sales of which slowed to a trickle, demand now restricted mostly to governments which admired the "statesmanlike" presence the big machines lent the politicians being chauffeured around.  The Galaxies would remain available in Australia until 1973.

1968 HK Holden Brougham.

Holden couldn’t let such an obvious market be ignored but their first response seems bizarre and was treated as such at the time.  Instead of following Ford’s lead and stretching their platform to create a long wheelbase alternative, Holden took their previous top-of-the-line Premier and extended the trunk (boot) by eight inches (200 mm), increasing luggage capacity and presumably pleasing those carrying stuff like bags of golf clubs but that really answered a question nobody had been asking.  Named the Brougham (a name with a tradition dating back to horseless carriages but rapidly becoming popular with US manufacturers), ascetically, the long-tail really didn’t work because it rendered the shape fundamentally unbalanced and the market response was muted, Brougham sales never making a dent in the Fairlane’s dominance.  Time has been kinder and the Brougham now has a cult following among collectors, especially the early versions which used a 307 cubic inch Chevrolet V8 because Holden's own 308 hadn't reached production.  Ironically, the mildly-tuned 307 isn't one of the more highly regarded iterations of the small-block Chevrolet V8 but the allure of the name remains strong.  In the early 1980s, when the things were unwanted and could be bought for a few hundred dollars, one enterprising customizer built a two-door version and while some of the detailing was lacking, the basic lines worked surprisingly well but as Chrysler and Ford discovered in the 1970s, although the market for such things in the US was huge (the segment was called "the personal coupe"), in Australia it was was small and shrinking so it's as well Holden didn't try their own.

1971 Holden Statesman De Ville.

In 1971, Holden did respond with a long wheelbase executive sedan, this time called the Statesman.  Apparently, there had previously been only one short-lived car called a Statesman (joining a governmental-themed roll-call manufacturers had previously used including Senator, Diplomat, President, Ambassador, Envoy and even Dictator).  This time, the styling was outstanding and, especially if buyers could resist the lure of the then inexplicably popular vinyl roof, the Statesman was an elegant execution, details such as the split egg-crate grill especially admired.  The frontal treatment was also a clever design because the whole HQ range used a “nose-cone” making face-lifts much cheaper and the same approach applied to the tail, the tail-lamps used on the commercial range and the station wagons re-purposed.  Holden had learned well from Ford’s example.  Structurally, the Statesman following the Fairlane’s price points, the basic car aimed at the hire-car market and available with a six cylinder engine and bench seats to make it a genuine six-seater while the Statesman De Ville featured a higher level of trim and used either Holden’s 308 cubic inch (5.0 litre) or the imported Chevrolet 350 (5.7).  Just to emphasize how special the Statesman was, the Holden name didn’t appear either on the car or its advertising, the local operation instead seeking, and receiving, GM’s permission to used Cadillac’s famous wreath on the badge.  All the publicity material said "Statesman by General Motors" but few were fooled and eventually the trickery was abandoned.

The misstep Ford got away with: The 1972 ZF Fairlane (left) was criticized because it looked little different from the basic Falcon; the 1976 ZH (right) rectified that, an eight-year old US design this time providing the template.

The Statesman sold better than the Brougham but didn’t threaten the Fairlane’s dominant position in the sector, even though Ford in 1972 made the fundamental mistake when releasing its new version of not ensuring there was sufficient product differentiation; the new ZF Fairlane looked like a somewhat bloated XA Falcon but such was the inertia of the name and the solid reputation for reliability and resale value that fleet-managers and private buyers remained loyal and it wouldn’t be until 1976 that the problem of the Fairlane’s comparative anonymity was rectified and that by bolting on the styling from the 1968 Mercury; that’s how things were done then.  However, Ford in 1973 scored its other big hit by stretching the Falcon still further to create the LTD, a capable but gaudy machine which so appealed to governments and corporations that it for decades dominated those fleets.  Like the Fairlane, the LTD was a highly profitable package developed at low cost and noted for its bling such as the aviation style controls for the air-conditioning.  With the coming of the LTD, the imported Galaxie was withdrawn from the Australian market.

1976 Holden HJ Statesman Caprice: The increasingly baroque touches added during the face-lifts ("heavy-handed" the phrase used at the time) meant the later versions lacked the purity of the HQ, the delicate lines of which were the high-water mark of Holden's styling.     

Holden made no attempt to match the LTD, leaving the lucrative segment to Ford while the Statesman soldiered on although, matching the Fairlane, the slow-selling base model was dropped when the range was revised in 1974, along with the Chevrolet 350 V8 which had been fitted only to around 600 Statesmans (some of which were exported to New Zealand and South Africa with some unpleasing detail changes).  The structure of the range changed with the De Ville now the base car and a new model, the Caprice, sitting atop, the differences between the two all in bling, the mechanical specification identical, both using the Holden 308 V8 and the now more reliable Trimatic automatic transmission.  Through two face-lifts (HJ & HX), the Statesman was relatively unchanged during the troubled and difficult mid 1970s, most attention devoted to devising plumbing to lower emissions, something which worked but at the cost also of decreasing power and drivability; all that increased was the fuel consumption and the price.

1979 Holden Statesman SL/E.

However, in 1979, Holden surprised the market by splicing a new Statesman between the De Ville & Caprice: the Statesman SL/E.  Although mechanically unchanged from the rest of the range, the SL/E was advertised as the “sporty” Statesman, something made vaguely plausible by the huge improvement in handling rendered when the HZ cars were released in 1978 with what Holden called “radial tuned suspension” (RTS).  Unfortunately, the market found the idea of a “sporty Statesman” about as improbable as the conjunction sounds and the car was not a success, presumably because it was neither one thing or the other, the De Ville fundamentally the same only cheaper and the Caprice better equipped and more prestigious.  Whether the SL/E might have been better received had there been a genuine attempt to improve performance can't be known but power without an increase in emissions was hard to find in 1979 and Holden had the misfortune within a couple of months of the launch, the “second oil-shock” hit and V8 engines were suddenly again unfashionable.  Fortunately for Holden, the SL/E had not been an expensive programme, the wheels, badges and much of the bling borrowed from models already in production.

1982 Holden Caprice.

Still, the price of petrol not withstanding, by then, the next model Statesman was locked in for release in 1980.  The WB Statesman De Ville & Caprice existed because, cognizant of the uncertainty around the stability of the world oil market, Holden had replaced their mainstream range with the Commodore, a smaller (critically, narrower) car based on a European platform developed by Opel, GM’s German outpost.  The smaller machine was not suitable as the base for a Fairlane competitor so the decision was taken to update the HZ, even though the platform dated back to 1971.  What was achieved was commendable given the budget although the designers were disappointed that with the release of the new Fairlane & LTD in 1979, Ford had staged a pre-emptive hit with the six-window roof-line Holden had planned as their exclusive.  One genuine difference though was the Caprice’s hand-assembled grill, made from metal in an age when extruded plastic assemblies had long become industry practice but although much admired, it wasn’t enough to save the dated platform and the last Statesmans left the factory in 1985.  Holden did though flirt with a stay of execution because by 1982 it was clear the world would soon be awash with oil (what would come to be called the "oil glut"; the CIA's infamous 1975 prediction the world would "...by 1983 run out of oil" clearly wrong) and there were thoughts of a "low cost" version of the WB Statesman, resurrecting a proposal which seriously had been contemplated during the previous decade.  That was a response to the booming sales Ford was enjoying for it's bigger, wider Falcon range but the decision was taken to focus efforts instead on a bigger, wider Commodore, a vehicle released in 1988 which enjoyed great success.     

Publicity shot for 1983 Holden Statesman De Ville Magnum.

One quirk of the WB’s life however was that Peter Brock (1945–2006), a racing car driver who had created a successful business selling modified, high-performance Commodores, decided to resurrect the Statesman SL/E but this time make it genuinely “sporty”.  Labeled the Statesman Magnum, the car could be based on either the De Ville or Caprice according the buyer’s taste & budget and because Brock’s record-keeping was at the time a little haphazard, it’s not clear how many were built and it may not even have reached three figures.  Unlike the SL/E, the Magnum's 308 V8 benefited from the addition of the improved components Brock used on the Commodores: the cylinder heads, inlet manifold, air cleaner and exhaust system combining to produce a significant lift in output (power increasing from 170 to 250 hp (126 to 188kW) while, perhaps more relevantly for the target market, torque rose from 265 to 315 lb/ft (361 to 428Nm)).  Nor was the chassis neglected, Bilstein gas shock absorbers added all round while the front suspension geometry was revised and up-rated springs were fitted, the anti-roll bars thicker & stiffer.  Externally, most striking were the 16 x 8-inch Momo Polaris aluminium wheels while a variety of color schemes were offered, including the toning down of the chrome fittings to something darker and more menacing.  The press response was favorable, the already fine dynamics the platform had possessed since the debut of RTS now able better to be exploited with the additional power the Magnum provided, more than matching even the Chevrolet 350 fitted to some HQ Statesmans which had been offered only in a mild state of tune.  However, as the American industry had discovered in the 1960s, those who want high-performance vehicles prefer usually that they be in smaller packages and, as Ford two decades would re-discover when the Fairlane G220 was greeted with a polite yawn, those who wanted big luxury and those who wanted something smaller and “sporty” were two different populations, at least at certain stages in their lives.  In a sense though, Holden had the last laugh, the Statesman and Caprice later revived when the Commodore became larger and better suited to a wheelbase stretch and together they first out-sold and then outlived the Fairlane & LTD.

Caprice

Caprice (pronounced kuh-prees)

(1) A sudden, unpredictable change, as of one's mind or the weather.

(2) A tendency to change one's mind without apparent or adequate motive; whimsicality; capriciousness; a disposition to be impulsive.

(3) In music, as capriccio, a term for a kind of free composition.

(4) A brief (and hopefully torrid) romance; a fling

(5) A model name used by General Motors (GM) in several markets.

1660-1670: From the French caprice (whim) & capricieux (whimsical), from the Italian capriccioso from capriccio (a shivering), possibly from capro (goat), from the Latin capreolus (wild goat).  Another theory, drawn from folk etymology, connects the Italian compound capo (head) + riccio (hedgehog) suggesting a convulsive shudder in which the hair stood on end like a hedgehog's spines.  The application in musical composition to describe a kind of free composition dates from the 1690s, the sense drawn from the Italian capriccio (the music characterized by a “sudden start or motion”); earlier it meant "a prank, a trick".  The closest synonym is probably whim but vagary, notion, fancy & fling can, depending on context, summon a similar meaning.  An act of caprice differs from a fiat in that the latter, although it may be arbitrary, is an authoritative sanction issued by those vested with a certain legal authority.  The descendents include the Danish kaprice, the German Caprice and the Romanian: capriciu.  Caprice & capriciousness are nouns, capricious is an adjective and capriciously is an adverb; the noun plural is caprices.

Famously capricious in her youth, Lindsay Lohan is now a mature and responsible mother.

Ford, and the rest of the industry, learned much from the Edsel debacle of the late 1950s.  Although unlucky to be launched into the teeth of the worst recession of the post-war boom, mistakes in conception, design and production had been many and may anyway have been enough to kill the thing.  The lessons learned had been expensive, depending on the source, a loss between US$250-300 million is usually quoted and that was at a time when a million dollars was a lot of money although how much of that loss was real or a product of taking advantage of accounting rules has never been clear.  None of the most expensive aspects to design and build (1) engine, (2) transmission, (3) suspension, (4) body platforms and (5) assembly plant production lines were unique to the Edsel, all being shared variously with other Ford, Mercury and Lincoln models; surprisingly little was exclusive to the Edsel, indeed that sameness was one of the complaints about a car which Ford had puffed-up as “all new”.  That essentially left interior and exterior trim, body panels, marketing and the distribution network to pay for.  Ford certainly lost a lot of money on the Edsel but perhaps not quite as much as the books suggest.  Still, it was a big loss and the corporate capriciousness wasn’t repeated in the 1960s.  The Edsel had been a bad implementation of a sound concept: a spread of brand-identities across a market with a wide price-spread so a corporation can achieve economies of scale using many of the same resources to produce products which to compete both at the low-end on cost-breakdown and in segments where prestige or exclusivity matters.  Ford’s notion was that General Motors (GM) and Chrysler were at the time better able to cover the market because both had more brand-names, GM having five: Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick & Cadillac as did Chrysler: Plymouth, Dodge, De Soto, Chrysler & Imperial.  Ford had only three: Ford, Mercury & Lincoln (the short-lived Continental Division (1956-1957) a failure).

Thus the attraction of adding another, an idea which worked well with products like washing powder although, in the auto industry, costs tended to be higher and the model wasn’t essential to cover a broad market, Mercedes-Benz for decades successfully using the one brand for diesel taxis, trucks small and large, Formula One racing cars and cars up to the grandest limousines.  Indeed, the idea by Daimler-Benz to resurrect adopt the long moribund Maybach name to sit atop the range was a failure, reflecting the misunderstanding by the MBA-types involved of the value of the Mercedes-Benz brand which had been acceptable for kings, queens, popes, presidents and potentates.  Only salesmen with no background would think dotcom millionaires and the other newly-rich would be more attracted to Maybach than Mercedes.  Another brand might not have been a bad idea but Maybach should have been positioned as a platform for the front wheel drive and other categories which, frankly have only devalued the three-pointed star; while some have been good cars, they simply were not Mercedes-Benz as they once were understood. 

Nor is the idea infinitely scalable.  GM at one time had nine divisions and the pattern evolved that the brand names tend to appear in times of economic buoyancy (al la Edsel) and disappear during or after recessions (Edsel & De Soto after 1958; Imperial after the first oil shock, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Mercury and Plymouth in the wake of the global financial crisis from 2008).  So, while the 1960s were about the most buoyant years yet, Ford didn’t repeat quite the mistake though they certainly repeated one aspect of the Edsel debacle although the implications of that wouldn’t play out for decades.

1965 Ford LTD.

In 1965, Ford reverted to the business model which had worked in pre-Edsel times and introduced the LTD as an up-market option for their full-sized Galaxie.  It seemed a good idea at the time and it was, the option proving popular with customers and lucrative for Ford, the option package costing about US$175 to install yet it added some US$335 to the sticker price and the psychology of turning the mainstream Ford into a “luxury car” seemed also to exert a pull on the buyers’ wallets because it was possible to work through the option list and add some 30% to the bottom line.  Unlike most Galaxie customers, LTD buyers were inclined to tick the boxes.  Even at the time, although generally impressed with the thing (and in fairness to Ford much attention had been devoted to some basic engineering to ensure it was quieter and smoother than before), reviewers did ponder quite what the effect of moving a Ford up-market would be on the companion Mercury Division, positioned since 1938 as up-market from Ford, yet well short of Lincoln.  The corporation aimed to solve that problem by maintaining some differentiation between the two brands and to some degree this worked for decades but eventually the point of maintaining three distinct layers had ceased to have value for Ford and in 2011 Mercury was shuttered.

1965 Ford LTD.

The LTD (it apparently meant “Lincoln Type Design” and not “Limited”) did though have quite an effect on the completion with the entry level ranges of others soon augmented with similar options.  Chevrolet called their effort the “Caprice”, Plymouth, like Ford” preferred a TLA (three letter acronym) and opted for “VIP” while AMC used “DLP” which apparently stood for “Diplomat”.  Of them all, only the Caprice and the LTD endured but the concept overtook the industry which switched increasingly to adding variations of their basic models with as many “luxury” fittings added as the budget would permit.  There were critics at the time who criticized all this as “gingerbread” but buyers responded and soon tufted, pillowed upholstery in crushed velour or even leather could be had in even the most humble showrooms.  A popular name for such models was “Brougham”, borrowed from a nineteenth century horse-drawn carriage named after a member of the UK’s House of Lords and even if most weren’t aware of the etymology, they knew it sounded suitably aristocratic which was all that mattered.  What came in retrospect to be known as the “brougham era” lasted into the 1980s.

1969 Chevrolet Caprice four-door hardtop.

While never the biggest sellers, dealers liked to have four-door hardtops on display because of the perception they generated showroom traffic and although the collector market prefers two-doors (especially convertibles), the four-door hardtops were often Detroit’s most ascetically successful coachwork for full-sized cars.  In 1969, Chevrolet restricted the Caprice range to two & four door hardtops because the more elaborate interior trim (compared to the cheaper Biscayne, Bel Air & Impala) was more susceptible to sun damage which precluded offering a convertible.  That may have been the reason why in the same era some European manufacturers switched from timber veneer to leather for some vulnerable surfaces in a few convertibles although the published explanations were sometime different.  Improvements in the durability of materials meant that when the revised range was released in 1973, a convertible Caprice was added to the range.

1981 Holden WB Caprice.

Holden, the General Motors operation in Australia began selling their own Caprice in 1974.  In the tradition it was a more elaborately-appointed version of an existing model and in GM tradition replaced an existing badge as the top-of-the-range, the Statesman de Ville relegated to become the entry-level of the long-wheelbase cars, the basic Statesman (always aimed at the hire-car business) retired, mirroring Ford which dropped its Fairlane Custom and, adding a Marquis (a name borrowed from Mercury) as a Caprice competitor atop the Fairlane 500.  The Statesman & Caprice never quite matched the appeal of the competition but it did go out in surprisingly fine style, the WB range (1980-1984) a remarkably successful re-styling of the HQ-HJ-HX-HZ platform (1971-1980) which endured for almost half a decade after the smaller, Opel-based Commodore had replaced the mainstream models.  Developed in unusual secrecy, Holden were miffed to learn Ford’s ZJ Fairlane & FC LTD (released in 1979) had beaten them to the market by six months and included the additional side window they’d hoped would make such a splash on the WB.  Instead, they made much of the Caprice having a grill made from steel.  Not that long before, all grills had been made from steel but most had long switched to extruded plastic so to have one genuinely hand-assembled in steel was a point of differentiation although the public response was muted.  Despite the age of the platform, the attention to the underpinnings which began to be taken seriously after 1977 meant the thing was a capable, if thirsty road car and among the dedicated customer base, there was genuine regret when production ended in 1984.  In 1990, Holden revived the name for a stretched Commodore (some of which were even exported to the US and the Middle East to be sold as Chevrolets) and production continued until the Australian operation was shuttered in 2017.

Vulpine

Vulpine (pronounced vuhl-pahyn or vuhl-pin)

(1) Of or resembling a fox.

(2) Possessing or being thought to posses the characteristics often attributed to foxes; crafty, clever, cunning etc.

1620-1630: From the Latin vulpīnus (foxy, fox-like, of or pertaining to a fox), the construct being vulp(ēs) (fox) + -īnus.  Vulpēs was from the earlier volpes (genitive vulpis, volpis) of unknown origin, though though probably from the  primitive Indo-European wl(o)p and cognate with the Welsh llywarn (fox), the Classical Greek ἀλώπηξ (alṓpēx) (fox), the Armenian աղուէս (ałuēs), the Albanian dhelpër, the Lithuanian vilpišỹs (wildcat) and the Sanskrit लोपाश (lopāśa) (jackal, fox).  The Latin suffix -inus was from the Proto-Italic -īnos, from the primitive Indo-European -iHnos and cognate with the Ancient Greek -ινος (-inos) and the Proto-Germanic -īnaz.  It was used to indicate "of or pertaining to, usually a relationship of position, possession, or origin.

The Holy Fox: Lord Halifax

The Rt Hon Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, First Earl of Halifax, KG, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, TD, PC, was a leading Tory politician of the inter-war and wartime years.  Among other appointments, he was Viceroy of India, Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to the United States.  He was known as the Holy Fox because of his devotion to church, the hunt and Tory politics.  More holy than foxy and perhaps too punctilious ever to be truly vulpine, he was born too late.  Had he lived a century earlier, he’d likely be remembered as a leading statesman of the Victorian era but even before 1945, he seemed a relic of the past.

A fox and other beasts.  Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903–1944; Italian Foreign Minister 1936-1943), Edward Wood, Lord Halifax (1881–1959; UK Foreign Secretary 1938-1940), Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940; UK Prime Minister 1937-1940) and Benito Mussolini (1883–1945; Duce & Prime Minister of Italy 1922-1943), Rome, January 1939.

Some three months after signing the infamous Munich Agreement that permitted Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia, the UK's  prime minister Neville Chamberlain and foreign secretary Lord Halifax visited Rome to confer with the Italian Duce & prime-minister premier Benito Mussolini.  Although it had long been obvious the Duce had been drawn into the German orbit, British foreign policy was still based on the hope war could be avoided and, having seen appeasement prevent immediate conflict over Berlin's demands about Czechoslovakia, the  hope was to find a way to appease Rome, goal no more ambitious than the maintenance of the status quo in the Mediterranean.  Pointless in retrospect, the meeting, held between 11-14 January 1939, was the last attempt through official channels to tempt the Duce away from the entanglement with Hitler to which, in reality, he was already committed although, he certainly didn't expect war to be declared quite so soon.

The spirit of the meeting was well captured in Count Ciano's diary.  Ciano's entries are not wholly reliable but he was one of the century's great diarists, an astute observer and too clever to be much bothered by principles, he painted vivid pictures of some of the great events of those troubled years.  Mussolini, already seeing himself as a Roman emperor, after his meetings with Hitler, must have though he was being visited by the ghosts of the past, Chamberlain looking like the provincial lord-mayor he'd once been and Halifax the archbishop he probably wished he'd become.  “In substance, the visit was kept on a minor tone, since both the Duce and myself are scarcely convinced of its utility. . . . How far apart we are from these people!" Ciano noted in his diary.  "It is another world."

After dinner with Mussolini he recorded the Duce's feelings: "These men are not made of the same stuff as the Francis Drakes and the other magnificent adventurers who created the British Empire.  These, after all, are the tired sons of a long line of rich men, and they will lose their Empire,... The British do not want to fight. They try to draw back as slowly as possible, but they do not want to fight."  Whatever other mistakes he may have made, on that night in Rome, Mussolini made no error in his summary of the state of thought in Downing Street and the Foreign Office.  "Our conversations with the British have ended" Ciano concluded and "Nothing was accomplished."  He closed the diary that evening with the note "I have telephoned Ribbentrop (Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi Foreign Minister 1938-1945) that the visit was a big lemonade [ie a farce].”

Goth

Goth (pronounced goth)

(1) A member of an East Germanic people from Scandinavia who settled south of the Baltic early in the first millennium AD. They moved on to the Ukrainian steppe, first raiding and later invading many parts of the Roman Empire between the third and fifth centuries.

(2) In historic slang, a person of no refinement; barbarian.

(3) A genre of rock music, first popular in the 1980s and characterized by morbid themes and dreary melodies.

(4) A person part of a sub-culture favoring this style of music and whose tastes tend to be dark and morbid.

(5) In fashion, a descriptor of dark (usually black or purple) clothing and heavy make-up intended to create a ghostly appearance.

Pre-900: From the Middle English Gothe and Late Latin Gothī (plural); which supplanted the Old English Gota (plural Gotan), cognate with Gothic Gut (as in Gut-thiuda (Goth-people)).  Word in Greek was Gothoi.  In the nineteenth century, use in English became common to describe both architecture (often written as Gothick) and the literary style of certain novels; an adherent of either style was sometimes called a Gothicist.  Modern use to describe the fashion and music emerged in the 1980s, considered still a fork of the punk aesthetic.

The Visigoths

The Visigoths were the western branches of the old nomadic tribes of Germanic peoples referred to collectively as the Goths.  These tribes flourished and spread throughout the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, an era known as the Migration Period.  It was the Visigoths under Alaric I who sacked Rome in 410, an act which made Europe’s descent into medievalism inevitable although there are historians who dispute the detail of that.

The term Visigoth was a geo-etymological error made by Cassiodorus (Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, circa 485–circa 585).  Always known as Cassiodorus, he was a Roman statesman, renowned scholar of antiquity, and a bureaucrat in the administration of the Ostrogoth king, Theoderic the Great.  Confusingly for students of the epoch, Senator was part of his surname; he was not a member of any senate.  His mistake was thinking Visigoth meant "west Goths".  Visigoth is from the Latin Visigothus, probably deriving from the Proto-Germanic Wīsagutô, a construction of wīsaz (wise, knowledgable) +‎ gutô (a Goth) or from the primitive Indo-European wesu (good).

Battle of Guadalete, circa 1890, by Salvador Martínez Cubells (1845–1914)).

It happened in what is now southern Spain but it’s not known exactly where the Battle of Guadalete was fought and even the date is disputed, most sources saying it was in 711, others a year later although all agree it lasted, on and off, for days.  There had been earlier engagements but Guadalete, fought between the Umayyad Caliphate and Roderic, Visigothic King of Hispania, was the first major battle of the Umayyad conquest of Hispania.  Against the Christian Visigoth army under Roderic, the invading force of the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate was comprised mostly of Berbers and a smaller number of Arabs.  The significance of the battle, not wholly realized at the time, is that it was a set-piece culmination of the earlier skirmishes which had weakened the structure and lines of communications of the Visigoth army.  The Umayyad victory marked the beginning of their conquest of Hispania,  Roderic and many of his generals killed in the battle, opening the way for the capture of the Visigothic capital of Toledo.

Modern-sounding geopolitical concepts like political economy were important influences in the Islamic expansion in North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula.  North African politics and economics influenced the early Muslims’ decision to cross the Strait of Gibraltar because the Arab armies which had conquered North Africa found themselves drastically outnumbered by the Berbers (Amazigh), many of whom were either Christian or somewhere in the pagan tradition and the invaders’ rules were unambiguous: Christians, a “People of the Book,” were expected to pay the jizya, an additional tax not imposed on Muslims while pagans were offered the choice of conversion or the blade of the sword.

Clear though the theocratic rules may have been, the realities of an small occupying force attempting to exploit a local population which was hostile and greatly outnumbered the conquerors meant the triumph of politics over ideology, both the collecting of tax and conversions of heathens soon haphazard.  But, the lands of North Africa were vast and their defense and administration required money and if it couldn’t locally be collected, it would have to come from the spoils of war new conquests will bring.  To the south lay the seemingly endless deserts of the Sahara and to the north, the waters of the Mediterranean and whatever dangers lay in the sea-crossing to Iberia, they were preferable to attempting to push through the Sahara.

Some toxicity in Visigothic politics was also a factor in the invasion.   The Visigoths had ruled almost all of Hispania since 415 when they drove out the Vandals who taken control of the province from Rome; ironically it was to North Africa the Vandals fled.  The Visigoth king had once been elected but, as happens in kingdoms, dynastic habits evolved and had become the practice for the crown to be passed to a son although, that inheritance was subject to the veto of the aristocracy.  Usually the nobles concurred but not always and in 710, upon the death of a king, they intervened to replace the dynasty with new blood.  Conflict between the clans ensued and, although in battle the new king prevailed, it appears part of the settlement was the division of the kingdom.

At that point, matters cease to be history and become the stuff of myth and legend.  From Arabic sources is the story that the Muslims invaded Hispania at the behest of Count Julian of Ceuta, the last Christian governor in North Africa. Ceuta lies on the African coast just south of Gibraltar and Julian, who may have been Berber, or Germanic, or Greek and was either a vassal of the Visigoths or a Byzantine governor of North Africa, the records to establish the truth are lost.  Julian had somehow succeeded in holding Ceuta against the Muslim advance and, secure in his city, sent his daughter to Toledo to study at the court of Roderic, the new Visigoth king, which seemed a good idea at the time but within months, Julian was told she was pregnant with Roderic’s child.  Enraged, in 710 Julian approached his former enemies and suggested an invasion of Hispania.  Improbable though this may be, the PR machines on the Muslim and Christian sides were cranked up and offered their own embellishments, the former saying the evil Roderic had raped the poor girl, the latter that the little harlot had seduced poor Roderic.

Julian, it is said, provided provisions, logistical support and intelligence for the assault but little more is known other than it was the name of the general leading the invasion force, Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād (طارق بن زياد in the Arabic) from which the Rock of Gibraltar gained its name, Jabal Ṭāriq (جبل طارق), meaning “mountain of Ṭāriq”.  The invasion was a success but the scale of the military operation is uncertain, medieval writings mentioning forces on both sides in the hundreds of thousands but most historians believe the Muslims had no more than 20,000 troops and the Visigoths perhaps twice that number.

Whatever the numbers, the Visigoths were defeated, Roderic killed in battle.  After the fog of war cleared, the fog of history drifted in and there are many tales to explain how a big army with all the advantages which accrue to defenders could be defeated by a smaller expeditionary force.  Some suggest Roderic didn’t enjoy the loyalty of all his men, many unhappy at his usurpation of the throne but this is contradicted by those who claim the old king was despised by all and that Roderic’s enthronement had been widely celebrated.  Apart from the legal point about the nobles exercising their right to elect a king so it could hardly be said to be a usurpation, the truth of any of this is unknown.  Nor is much known about the battle, military historians tending to conclude the most likely reason for the Arab success was the deployment of fast, mobile, cavalry against static defencs lines in an unrelenting succession of attacks which simply overwhelmed the Visigothic army.

After victory at Guadalete, Ṭāriq didn’t pause, marching on to the Visigothic capital, Toledo before his enemy had time to regroup.  At that point, Musa bin Nusayr, Ṭāriq’s commanding officer, shocked at the rapidity of the advance and anxious to grab for himself the glory of victory, assembled “reinforcements” and hastened across the strait to assume personal command.  Musa didn’t long get to bask in the glow of Ṭāriq’s triumph, the Caliph, Ibrahim ibn al-Walid (ابراهيم ابن الوليد بن عبد الملك‎), soon recalling them both to Damascus where they would live out their days.  This narrative, though widely told, is disputed, some claiming the two soldiers had a harmonious relationship and some saying that while there were disputes, they were later reconciled.  Again, it’s all lost to history.

One military legacy of the conquest of their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula was one hardly noticed at the time and dismissed as insignificant by those who did.  The one area which did not fall to them was the tiny northern kingdom of Asturias and it was from this postage stamp of a renegade province that one day would form the political and geographic base for the Reconquista, the eventual re-imposition of Christian control over Iberia.

American Sapphic, Lindsay Lohan & former special friend Samantha Ronson by Ben Tegel after American Gothic (1930) by Grant Wood (1891-1942).

Satellite

Satellite (pronounced sat-l-ahyt)

(1) In astronomy, celestial body orbiting around a planet or star; a moon.

(2) In geopolitics, as “satellite state”, a country under the domination or influence of another.

(3) Something (a county, sub-national state, office, building campus etc), under the jurisdiction, influence, or domination of another entity; Subordinate to another authority, outside power, or the like (also known as a “satellite operation”, “satellite campus”, “satellite workshop” etc).

(4) An attendant or follower of another person, often subservient or obsequious in manner; a follower, supporter, companion, associate; lackey, parasite, sycophant, toady, flunky; now used usually in the derogatory sense of “a henchman” although, applied neutrally, it can be used of someone’s retinue or entourage (and even the machinery of a motorcade).

(5) A man-made device orbiting a celestial body (the earth, a moon, or another planet etc) and transmitting scientific information or used for communication; among astronomers and others form whom the distinction matters, man-made devices are sometimes referred to as “artificial satellites” to distinguish them for natural satellites such as the Earth’s Moon.  The standard abbreviation is “sat” and the situation in which a satellite is hit by some object while in orbit (which at the velocities involved can be unfortunate) is called a “sat-hit”.

(6) As “derelict satellite”, a man-made device (including the spent upper-stages of rockets) in orbit around a celestial body which has ceased to function.

(7) In medicine, a short segment of a chromosome separated from the rest by a constriction, typically associated with the formation of a nucleolus.

(8) In biology, a colony of microorganisms whose growth in culture medium is enhanced by certain substances produced by another colony in its proximity.

(9) In formal grammar, a construct that takes various forms and may encode a path of movement, a change of state, or the grammatical aspect (highly technical descriptor no longer used in most texts).

(10) In television, as satellite TV, the transmission and reception of television broadcasts (and used also in narrowcasting) using satellites in low-earth orbit.

(11) In the military terminology of Antiquity, a guard or watchman.

(12) In entomology, as satellite moth, the Eupsilia transversa, a moth of the family Noctuidae.

1540-1550: From the fourteenth century Middle French satellite, from the Medieval Latin satellitem (accusative singular of satelles) (attendant upon a distinguished person or office-holder, companion, body-guard. courtier, accomplice, assistant), from the Latin satelles, from the Old Latin satro (enough, full) + leyt (to let go) and listed usually as akin to the English “follow” although the association is undocumented.  Although the Latin origin is generally accepted, etymologists have pondered a relationship with the Etruscan, either satnal (klein) (again linked to the English “follow”) or a compound of roots: satro- (full; enough) + leit- (to go) (the English “follow” constructed of similar roots).  Satellite is a noun, verb & adjective and satellitic & satellitious are adjectives; the noun plural is satellites.  Satellitious (pertaining to, or consisting of, satellites) is listed by most dictionaries as archaic but is probably the best form to use in a derogatory sense, best expressed in the comparative (more satellitious) or the superlative (most satellitious).

Lindsay Lohan promoting the Sick Note series, TV & Satellite Week magazine, 21-27 July 2018.

The adjectival use is applied as required and this has produced many related terms including satellite assembly (use of committees or deliberative bodies created by a superior authority), satellite broadcasting (in this context distinguished from transmissions using physical (point-to-point) cables or ground-based relays), satellite campus, satellite DNA (in genetics, an array in  tandem of repeating, non-coding DNA), satellite-framing (in linguistics, the use of a grammatical satellite to indicate a path of motion, a change of state or grammatical aspect (as opposed to a verb framing)), satellite navigation (the use of electronic positioning systems which use data from satellites (often now as “SatNav”)) and satellite station (either (1) as ground-base facility used for monitoring or administrating satellites or (2) a manned facility in orbit such as the ISS (International Space Station)), satellite telephone (telephony using satellites as a transmission vector)

Sputnik 1 blueprint, 1957.

The original sense in the 1540s was "a follower or attendant of a superior person" but this use was rare before the late eighteenth century and it seemed to have taken until the 1910s before it was applied in a derogatory manner to suggest "an accomplice or accessory in crime or other nefarious activity” although the Roman statesman Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 BC) often used the Latin form in this way.  In the seventeenth century, as telescopes became available, the idea was extended to what was then thought to be "a planet revolving about a larger one" on the notion of "an attendant", initially a reference to the moons of Jupiter.  In political theory, the “satellite state” was first described in 1800, coined by John Adams (1735-1826; US president 1797-1801) in a discussion about the United States and its relationships with the other nations of the Americas although in geopolitics the term is most identified with the “buffer states”, the members of the Warsaw Pact which were within Moscow’s sphere of influence.  The familiar modern meaning of a "man-made machine orbiting the Earth" actually dates (as scientific conjecture) from 1936, something realized (to the surprise of most) in 1957 when the USSR launched Sputnik 1.  Sputnik was from the Russian спу́тник (sputnik) (satellite (literally "travelling companion” and in this context a shortened form of sputnik zemlyi (travelling companion of the Earth), from the Old Church Slavonic supotiniku, the construct being the Russian so- (as “s-“ (with, together)) + пу́тник (pútnik) (traveller), from путь (put) (way, path, journey) (from the Old Church Slavonic poti, from the primitive Indo-European pent- (to tread, go)) + ник (-nik) (the agent suffix).

Sputnik, 1957

Russian Sputnik postcard, 1957.

The launch of Sputnik shocked the American public which, in a milieu of jet aircraft, televisions and macropterous Cadillacs, had assumed their country was in all ways technologically superior to their Cold War enemy.  Launched into an elliptical low-Earth orbit, Sputnik was about twice the size of a football (soccer ball) and it orbited for some three more months before falling towards earth, the on-board batteries lasting long enough for it to broadcast radio pulses for the first three weeks, transmissions detectable almost anywhere on earth.  It sounds now a modest achievement but it needs to be regarded as something as significant as the Wright Flyer in 1903 travelling 200 feet (61 m), at an altitude of some 10 feet (3 m) and in the West the social and political impact was electrifying.  There were also linguistic ripples because, just as a generation later the Watergate scandal would trigger the –gate formations (which continue to this day), it wasn’t long before the –nik prefix (which had actually been a part of Yiddish word creation for at least a decade) gained popularity.  Laika, the doomed stray dog launched aboard Sputnik 2 in November 1957 was dubbed muttnik (although the claims it was the first living thing in space have since been disproved because "living" entities were both on board the Nazi V2 rockets (1944-1945) which often briefly entered the stratosphere and have long been present in the upper atmosphere where they’re ejected into space by natural atmospheric processes) while the early US satellites (quickly launched to display the nation’s scientific prowess) failed which gave the press the chance to coin kaputnik, blowupnik, dudnik, flopnik, pffftnik & stayputnik.

Sputnik 1's launch vehicle (left), the satellite as it orbited the earth (centre) and in expanded form (right. 

Although not a great surprise to either the White House or the Pentagon, the American public was shocked and both the popular and quality press depicted Sputnik’s success as evidence of Soviet technological superiority, stressing the military implications.    This trigged the space race and soon created the idea of the “missile gap” which would be of such significance in the 1960 presidential election and, although by the early 1960s the Pentagon knew the gap was illusory, the arms race continued and the count of missiles and warheads actually peaked in the early 1970s.  It also began a new era of military, technological, and scientific developments, leading most obviously to the moon landing in 1969 but research groups developed weapons such as the big inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and missile defence systems as well as spy satellites.  Satellites were another step in the process of technology being deployed to improve communications.  When President Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, the news didn’t reach Europe until the fastest ship crossed the Atlantic a fortnight later.  By the time of President McKinley’s assassination in 1901, the news travelled around the world by undersea cables within minutes.  In 1963, while news of President Kennedy’s death was close to a global real-time event, those thousands of miles from the event had to wait sometimes twenty-four hours to view footage which was sent in film canisters by air.  By 1981, when an attempt was made on President Reagan’s life, television feeds around the planet were within minutes picking up live footage from satellites.

1967 Plymouth Satellite convertible.

Chrysler's Plymouth division introduced the Satellite on the corporation's intermediate ("B") platform in 1965 as the most expensive trim-option for the Belvedere line.  Offered initially only with two-door hardtop and convertible coach-work, the range of body-styles was later expanded to encompass four-door sedans and station wagons.  In a manner, typical of the way the industry applied their nomenclature as marketing devices to entice buyers, the Belvedere name was in 1970 retired while Satellite remained the standard designation until it too was dropped after 1974.

1970 Plymouth Road Runner, 440 6 Barrel.

Were it not for it being made available in 1966 with the 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Street Hemi V8, the Belvedere and Satellite would have been just another intermediate but with that option, it was transformed into a (slightly) detuned race-car which one could register for the road, something possible in those happier times.  The Street Hemi was an expensive option and relatively few were built but the demand for high-performance machinery was clear so in 1968, Plymouth released the Road Runner, complete with logos (licensed from the Warner Brothers film studio for US$50,000) and a “beep beep” horn which reputedly cost US$10,000 to develop.  The object was to deliver a high-performance machine at the lowest possible cost so the Road Runner used the basic (two-door, pillared) body shell and eschewed niceties like carpet or bucket seats, the only addition of note a tuned version of the 383 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V8 engine; for those who wanted more, the Street Hemi was optional.  Plymouth set what they thought were ambitious sales targets but demand was such that production had to be doubled and the reaction encouraged the usual proliferation, a hardtop coupé and convertible soon rounding out the range.

1970 Plymouth Hemi Road Runner Superbird.

The option list later expanded to include the six-barrel version of the 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) V8, a much cheaper choice than the Street Hemi and one which (usually) displayed better manners on the street while offering similar performance until travelling well over 100 mph (160 km/h) although it could match the Hemi’s sustained delivery of top-end power which, with the right gearing, would deliver a top speed in excess of 150 mph (240 km/h), something of little significance to most.  However, by the early 1970s sales were falling.  The still embryonic safety and emission legislation played a small part in this but overwhelmingly the cause was the extraordinary rise in insurance premiums being charged for the highset-performance vehicles, something which disproportionately affected the very buyers at which the machines were targeted: single males aged 19-29.  However, the platform endured long enough to provide the basis for the Road Runner Superbird, a “homologation special” produced in limited numbers to qualify the frankly extreme aerodynamic modifications for use in competition.  At the time, the additions were too radical for some buyers and dealers unable to find buyers were forced to convert the things back to standard specifications to shift them from their lots but they’re now prized collectables, the relatively few with the Street Hemi especially sought.

1971 Plymouth Hemi Road Runner.

The intermediate line was revised in 1971 using the then current corporate motif of “fuselage styling” and it was probably more aesthetically pleasing there than when applied to the full-sized cars which truly were gargantuan.  The 1971 Satellites used distinctly different bodies for the two and four-door models and while there were no more convertibles, the Street Hemi and six-barrel 440 enjoyed a swansong season although sales were low, the muscle car era almost at an end.