Word: flivver
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Aviation Editors last week that the development of a $700 plane had not materialized because the $500,000 allotment promised by PWA had been withheld as a result of the activities of an aircraft manufacturers' lobby. Many light plane manufacturers believe Mr. Vidal is "chasing rainbows," resent his "flivver plane" program because they feel it causes sales resistance to the present product...
Since the early Spring of 1934, he has campaigned up and down this state driving his own flivver, speaking two and three hours at a time then hurrying to some other locality for another speech, and he has charmed and thrilled the masses with his scintillating intellect, his wit, and humor, his Irish pathos, and his dauntless determination to serve his fellow countrymen. He has had arrayed against him nearly every newspaper, practically all the wealth, and influential politicians of the state. ... I dare say, his victory in this campaign will go clown in American history as the very greatest...
...Administration allotted $500,000 for its development (TIME, Dec. 18). How his department would use the money, Director Vidal was not ready to say beyond repeating that the Government would not engage in manufacture. Best guess: a new company which would be formed especially to design and develop the "flivver" plane for mass production and in which the whole manufacturing industry would be represented...
...went out to my father's ranch . . . and got some rope for the hanging. Then I went all over the town in my flivver roadster and passed out the word: 'We're going to have a lynching at the jail at 11 o'clock tonight.' . . . Mostly I went to the speakeasies and rounded up the gang there. That is why so many of the mob were drunk...
Startled by the boldness of the move, the industry scarcely knew whether to cheer, scoff or suspect. Was the Department of Commerce about to hand out $7,000,000 contracts to favored manufacturers? Was it going to solicit R. F. C. money for production of the Vidal "flivver?" Would it prescribe its ideal plane design for manufacturers to follow? Director Vidal hastened to squelch all such notions. His Department would simply look for customers for a $700 airplane, drop its findings into the industry's lap, let the industry do the rest. He added: "If favorable response...