Magnum (pronounced mag-nuhm)
(1) A
large wine bottle having a capacity of two ordinary bottles or 1.5 liters (1.6
quarts).
(2) In
ballistics, a magnum cartridge or firearm (a loaded with a larger charge than
other cartridges of the same calibre).
(3) A firearm
using such a cartridge.
(4) Used
generally, unusually great in power or size:
1788: From the Latin magnum (“great, large, big" (of size), "great,
considerable" (of value), "strong, powerful" (of force); of
persons, "elder, aged"), neuter of magnus (large), from a suffixed form of the primitive Indo-European
root meg- (great). The original use in English was to describe
the large wine-bottle, then usually containing two quarts. As the name of a powerful type of handgun, it
was first registered in 1935 by the US company, Smith & Wesson of Springfield,
Massachusetts. Outside of ballistics,
the most common use is now probably “magnum opus" (masterpiece, a person's
greatest work, literally "great work", applied, in literature, music,
art and (sometime a little liberally) popular culture. The noun plural is magnums or magna.
Magnum
ammunition
Released in September 2010 at the Venice Film
Festival and distributed internationally by Sony Pictures, Machete would probably be more highly regarded if the full-length
feature had lived up to the promise created by the artfully-edited
trailer. Probably about twenty minutes
too long, the critical consensus suggests Machete was a violent, shallow,
repetitive and probably unnecessary addition to whatever was the sub-genre of
exploitation it inhabited. That said,
the production values were thought high enough for those who like this sort of
thing to be able to look forward to it as one of the more enjoyable
movies of the summer of 2010.
A
magnum cartridge is one with a larger case size than the standard cartridge of
the same calibre and case shoulder shape. The now generic term is derived from Smith
& Wesson’s Original .357 S&W Magnum, introduced in 1934; magnum ammunition
containing either or both additional propellant or a heavier projectile but the
term is a bit of an anomaly in the business of ballistics. Although in the terminology of firearms, most
jargon is explicitly defined, “magnum ammunition” has no precise codified set
of standards, instead being just an indication of the possession of more
powerful characteristics than other loads of the same calibre and shape.
Smith & Wesson’s original .357 Magnum was introduced in 1934 in response to the growing availability of bullet-proofing technology in both automobiles and the ballistics vests used for personal protection. It was an attempt to provide greater penetrative power without the need to increase the bore with the consequential increase in the size and weight of weapons. Predictably though, the arms race had begun, and in the decades which followed, magnum loads would become available for a wide range of calibres, hand guns and long arms as well as shotguns, the classic .44 Magnum, later made famous in popular culture, released in 1954. It didn’t stop there, increasing demand for the .44 convincing Smith & Wesson to develop the .500 Magnum, currently the most powerful handgun load generally available and one marketed, in addition to its other attractions, to those who might find it more convenient than a rifle for hunting big game. The size, weight and recoil however mean it’s not suitable for all and in the US, .500 is anyway the legal limit for handgun loads. In US law, it’s a rare restriction.
.460 Weatherby Magnum.
For that reason, even Smith and Wesson do recommend that unless one plans to hunt elephant at close range or expect to confront a charging wild boar, loads like the .357 Magnum are better for what most people do most of the time. The same caution applies to the Magnum loads for rifles, the .375 Magnum often nominated by experts as the perfect compromise for all but the most extreme applications. Indeed, it was loads like the .375 Magnum which eliminated most of the need for the famous old-style “elephant guns” like Holland & Holland’s .600 Nitro and the .458 and .460 Magnum cartridges of the 1950s were necessitated only by regulations governing big-game hunting in Africa mandating a load above .400. Despite that, demand for the heavy calibres remains strong, Holland and Holland, after introducing a canon-like .700 Nitro found demand so unexpectedly strong that they resumed production of the long retired .600. While it seems unlikely heavier loads will be thought practical, that may not matter, there being some evidence many of the .700 Nitros are sold to collectors, never to be fired.
The
Magnum Concilium
Dating
from Norman times, the Magnum Concilium
(Great Council) was an English assembly eventually composed of senior ecclesiastics,
noblemen and representatives of the counties of England and Wales (and later of
the boroughs too) which was from time-to-time convened to discuss matter of
state with the king and his advisors (sitting as the Curia Regis (King's Court;
a kind of predecessor to the Privy Council and later the cabinet). The Magnum
Concilium evolved into the Concilium Regis
in Parliamento (the parliament of
England), the first generally thought to be the so-called "Model
Parliament" of 1295, which included archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls,
barons, and representatives of the shires and boroughs. The evolution wasn’t linear, power in the
land a constant struggle between king and parliament, the authority of both fluctuating
as the politics of the day effed and flowed.
Nor was the parliament a united force, shrewd kings knowing how to
exploit divisions between the parliamentary factions but by the reign of Edward
II (1284-1327; as Edward of Caernarfon, King of England 1307-1327), the
nobility was ascendant, the Crown compliant and the rest essentially
irrelevant.
Under Edward
III (1312–1377; as Edward of Windsor, King of England 1327-1377), the modern
bicameral structure (a House of Commons & a House of Lords), became clear
and the authority of Parliament grew although the Lords remained by far the
most powerful because that was where the economic resources were concentrated. That reality was reflected by the practice,
under the Plantagenet kings, of the summoning of the Magnum Concilium being something exclusively ecclesiastical &
aristocratic, the representatives of the commons rarely in attendance. After Henry VII (1457–1509; King of England
1485-1509) convened the Magnum Concilium
on several occasions in the late 1400s, for various reasons, its participation
in the governance of England went into abeyance until, in 1640, Charles I was
advised to summon the Magnum Concilium
after he’d dissolved the Short Parliament in order to raise money because his misrule
and wars of adventure had bankrupted the state.
The king got his money but his private army was soon at war with the
parliamentary forces of both Scotland and England and those wars did not for
him go well. Before the decade was over,
he would be beheaded.
The Magnum Concilium has not since met but
experts in English constitutional law have confirmed it still exists and can,
at any time, be summoned by the Crown.
Chrysler’s
440 Magnum Six-Pack
Chrysler’s family of big-block
wedge V8s lasted from 1958 until 1978 but, although the label is often commonly
applied, not all were designated “Magnum”.
The first Magnum was a high-performance version of the B-series 383
cubic inch (6.3 litre) V8 (which differs from the later RB 383), the highlight
being the option of a (long) cross-ram inlet manifold with two four-barrel carburetors. It was only Dodge which used the Magnum
label; the equivalent power-plant in a Plymouth was called a Commando (there
were adjectives sometimes added) and in a Chrysler, a TNT.
Introduced
in 1969, the highest evolution of the RB Magnum were the 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) versions built with
three Holley 2300 series two-barrel carburetors instead of the more commonly
seen single carburetor induction (which were on the 440 almost exclusively in four-barrel
form). The early versions used an Edelbrock
manifold cast in aluminum but supply difficulties forced Chrysler also to cast
their own in cast-iron to meet demand.
Although obviously a high-performance variation, marketed by Dodge as
the 440 Magnum Six-Pack, the engine was engineered to use only the centre 250
cubic feet per minute (7 m3) carburetor under normal throttle
loads, the outer two 370 cfm (10.4 m3) units used only if
summoned. If one could resist the
temptation of the sudden onrush of power, the Magnum Six-Pack could be quite economical
by the admittedly slight standards of the time.
Internally,
the Six-Pack Magnums differed from the single carburetor engines in the use of
stiffer valve springs borrowed from the 426 Street Hemi, stronger rocker arms (strengthened
connecting rods were added in 1970), molybdenum-filled piston rings and flash
chromed valves. Better to cope with the additional
stresses imposed by those high-tension springs, the camshaft lobes and
lifter faces were blueprinted to equalise the loads, the lifters rotating to
distribute wear equally across the surfaces subject to friction. With its compression ratio upped from 10.1:1
to 10.5:1, upon release, the Magnum Six-Pack was rated at 390 bhp (290 kw),
dropping slightly to 385 (287) when some minor anti-emission adjustments were
made in 1971. At around half the price
of Chrysler’s much-vaunted Street-Hemi adaptation of the race engine, the
Magnum Six-Pack was a bargain, at least matching the Hemi in most aspects of
performance until speeds above 120 mph (190 km/h) were attained, along with a
longer manufacturer’s warranty and lower insurance costs, at least for
some. It was good while it lasted but
1971 was the swansong for both the Magnum Six-Pack and the Street-Hemi,
emission regulations and an astonishing increase in the cost of insuring the
things crushing demand.
Across the Atlantic however, the Six-Pack Magnum did enjoy a brief afterlife after being driven extinct in the US. Jensen, in the throes of phasing out their acclaimed but unprofitable all-wheel-drive FF, were looking for a flagship which could be created quickly and cheaply, ruling out the mooted convertible which wouldn’t appear for some years. With their planned new F-Type unlikely to be on sale before 1973, the need was for something which demanded neither much development time nor an onerous budget.
Jensen had for years been building their Interceptor & FF models with the Chrysler RB engines and had even flirted with the idea of doing a run with the Street Hemi, a project aborted when the costs of adaptation became apparent. In late 1970, Jensen’s need for something was communicated to Chrysler which, by happy coincidence, had a batch of Magnum Six-Pack engines which had been gathering dust in a Canadian warehouse since being effectively orphaned by the new US emission control legislation. Within days, agreement was reached, Jensen taking delivery of the first tranche of the batch which, although unable to be sold in the US, were legal just about everywhere else. The mechanical specification settled, discussions then turned to other features which could be included to enhance the car’s status as a premium product. Because it was the 1970s (and there's really no other excuse), without much discussion, it was agreed to glue on a vinyl roof; that many others did the same thing is no defense. More defensible was the inclusion of a high-quality and very expensive Learjet eight-track cartridge stereo system and, to provide some continuity with the FF, it was decided to use that model’s blue-themed badges rather than the red used on the Interceptor. Also, interestingly, it was during these initial discussions that a fully louvered hood (bonnet) would be included in the coachwork but there’s no indication there was any concern about additional engine-bay heat, the louvers apparently just a styling device to evoke memories of earlier eras when they were common on high-performance machinery. There was little debate about the name; several people had suggested SP was the obvious choice. In December 1970, the first prototype SP was built although the intricacies of the triple carburetor engine weren’t entirely new to Jensen’s engineers, having a few months earlier fitted one to an Interceptor to fulfil a customer request. Assessment of the prototype proved the adaptation was as straight-forward as expected, the minor issue of the additional clearance demanded by the big air-filter effected by a quick fix to the filter housing.
Scheduled for release in the northern autumn of 1971, Jensen’s original plan had been to announce the SP as part of their new range including the Mark III versions of both the Interceptor and FF but the realities of the future made apparent the mixed-messaging was a bad idea. The SP was intended to be the new top-of-the line model so announcing it with an updated version of the doomed yet still more expensive FF made little sense, the Mark III FF created only as a way to ensure the last fifteen FF body-shells (the all-wheel drive configuration necessitated a longer wheelbase) could be utilised. Almost all FF marketing was thus terminated and the emphasis switched to the new two-model range with the SP sitting atop which meant the Mark III FF, which would become one of the Jensens most prized by collectors, went at the time almost unnoticed.
Beginning its tour of the motor show circuit, the new flagship was greeted with subdued interest by the motoring press which viewed the SP as the hot rod Interceptor it was and which, while entertaining in a occasionally brutish (and rather un-Jensen like) sort of way, was not as intriguing as the soon-to-be lamented FF, the prowess of which had so astonished all who drove it, exploring for the first time the revolutionary possibilities of anti-lock braking and all-wheel-drive. Nevertheless, the performance did impress, a top-speed of 143 mph (230 km/h) being reported although it was noted that Monteverdi’s even bigger and heavier 375/4 limousine had been clocked just a little faster and it used the 440 with only a single four barrel carburetor. Still it was fast enough and nobody complained the SP lacked pace.
What did elicit complaint was the manner in which that speed sometimes arrived. The tremendous delivery of power at full-throttle was praised but the lack of predictable response lower in the rev-range attracted criticism, the additional carburetors kicking in sometimes unexpectedly and not always when the car was heading in a straight line. Issues with hot-starting were also apparent and even the otherwise much admired multi-louvered bonnet was found not the be without fault, the slats apparently changing either the properties of the metal or the reaction of the shape to the fluid dynamics of air-flow; at speed, the bonnet would “slightly shiver, almost as though improperly fastened” and testers, used to the cocoon-like stability of the Interceptor and FF, found it disconcerting. While none of the reviews were damning, nor were they much more than polite.
Worse was to come as customers started reporting problems, the first being the issue of under-bonnet heat. Although a big machine by European standards, the engine bay of the Jensen was smaller than anything to which it’d been fitted in the US and, even with the louvers helping to ventilate the space, it got very hot in there and this quickly affected the carburetors which had never before been exposed to such extremes; parts warping as the metal heated and then cooled, causing air-gaps to emerge, making accurate tuning, vital with multiple-carburetion, impossible. The factory was soon receiving reports of engines which refused to idle and, due to the inherent nature of the Holly 2300 carburetor design, engines would run too rich after a week or so of nothing more than normal driving.
For a small company like Jensen, it was a major setback. The company had built the Interceptor's reputation on reliability and ease of ownership essentially by piggy-backing on the back of the bullet proof Chrysler V8s and TorqueFlite transmissions it had begun using in the Interceptor's predecessor, the CV8. The approach, adopted by many in this era, appealed to buyers not sufficiently seduced by the bespoke charm and mechanical intricacies of the continental competition to wish to deal with the cost and inconvenience of the more demanding maintenance schedules listed by Ferrari, Lamborghini & Maserati. Like the MGA Twin-Cam (and for that matter the later Jensen-Healey), the SP was a classic case of insufficient product development and testing, examples of which littered the post-war UK industry. Perhaps there was complacency because (1) multiple carburetors were nothing new to British manufacturers and (2) the Six-Pack Magnum had a good record of reliability in the US. However, three Hollys on a big-block Chrysler turned out to behave differently to three big SUs on a Jaguar XK-six.
The occasional quirk of the Magnum Six-Pack was not unknown in the US but there the nature of the thing was well-understood; it was a hot-rod engine bought by those who wanted such things, most owners young, male, mechanically adept and often anxious to tinker under the hood (bonnet). The Jensen buyer was a wholly different demographic, mostly older, affluent men who either had rarely seen under a bonnet or hadn’t looked for many years and their expectations of a car which was twice as expensive as Jaguar’s V12 E-Type were very different to those youthful Californian baby boomers had of their hotted-up taxi cabs. Used to the effortless, if thirsty, behavior of the Interceptor, some found their SPs, the high-performance of which most could rarely explore, were behaving like brand new, very expensive old clunkers.
Weeks of testing and experiments with all sorts of adjustments proved pointless. In Jensen’s workshops it was always possible to produce a perfectly running SP but, after sometimes as little as a week in the hands of owner, it would be back, displaying the same symptoms and in the end, Jensen admitted defeat and offered the only solution guaranteed to work: remove the triple induction system and replace it with the Interceptor’s faithful Carter Thermoquad four barrel carburetor. That alleviated all the drivability issues but did mean that having paid their £6,976.87, a premium of a thousand-odd pounds over the anyway expensive Interceptor, the emasculated SP became an Interceptor with a vinyl roof, an eight-track cartridge player and a vibrating bonnet. The factory’s records suggest between a quarter and a third of buyers opted for the Theromquad fix and some refunds were paid to the especially unhappy.
Although Jensen had known, because the Magnum Six-Pack was out of production, the SP was not going to have a long life, it had been hoped it would fulfil its role until the new F-Type was expected to be released in 1973. However, having built 208 SPs, Jensen didn’t take up their option on what remained in Chrysler’s Canadian remainder bin and, once the stock already delivered was exhausted, the SP was allowed quietly to die. Between September 1971 and July 1973, 231 Jensen SPs were completed with one final example built in October, a special order from someone who really wanted one.
It was
the start of a run of bad luck that would doom also the Interceptor and the
entire company: (1) Development issues would beset the F-Type which would never
see the light of day, (2) the Jensen-Healey (1972-1976) sports car which had seemed so
promising turned into an expensive flop and (3) the first oil shock in 1973
rendered the Interceptor and many of its ilk suddenly big, thirsty dinosaurs
and not even the release in 1974 of a much-admired convertible version could
rescue things. Bankruptcy loomed and by
1976 the end came. However, in the way
flawed but charismatic English cars have often, decades on, enjoyed second
acts, the SPs are now much prized and there’s a small industry devoted to
restoring them to their six-barreled glory, modern materials and techniques of insulation &
cooling now able to transform them into something as well-behaved as any Interceptor.
The magnum’s place in the hierarchy of Champagne bottles.
Lindsay Lohan with Magnum backdrop.
