Word: flivver
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...made 7,400 units and millions in profits from every branch of the armed forces. With peace both companies faced some agonizing reappraisals. Beech wanted to merge with Cessna. Dwane Wallace refused, doggedly set about finding civilian markets once it became crystal-clear that the day of the flying flivver had not yet quite arrived...
...cult of anonymity," bald, grey-eyed Careerman Caccia is a walking file on British policy problems, works quietly and effectively behind scenes, is quick and droll at the conference table. When the Russians accused the British of building a bomber base in postwar Vienna ("It was really only a flivver strip"), Caccia said that he would deliver a case of whisky if they could land a twin-engined plane there, added: "You pay the funeral expenses." The Russians dropped the complaint. Speaks French, German, Italian, Greek and a little Mandarin Chinese, likes shooting and tennis, sometimes takes a whack...
...White House, might easily have heard. Its hood was propped open to keep the motor cool, its rear end listed to one side under an uneven burden of piled-up duffle in the back seat, and its muffler was all too obviously missing. A sweating cop whistled the flivver to a stop, and out popped Wayne Morse. Characteristically, Mrs. Morse stayed in the car and said nothing...
Adolf Hitler, who promised to put a "people's flivver" (Volkswagen) in every German garage, collected $112 million in public subscriptions to build a big auto factory in Wolfsburg. About all it ever turned out was jeeps, and the only ride most Germans got for their money was a one-way trip to the battlefront. During World War II, Allied airmen smashed the plant...
Most airmen thought that the future lay in liquid-cooled engines, like the Hispano-Suiza, and in flivver planes. But Rentschler staked his poker player's bet that the future lay with big engines, big military and commercial planes and air-cooled engines. An engineer named Charles L. Lawrance began experimenting with an air-cooled engine in which the Navy was interested, but he was having trouble with production bugs. Rentschler bought out Lawrance, eliminated the bugs and perfected the engine as Wright's Whirlwind. By 1924, he was making engines for both Army & Navy planes, and Wright...