"It needed some work," Unger recalled, but enough contributions came in for the
flivver's restoration.
His "sky
flivver" actually worked, but production was stopped when some stupid pilot died in an accident.
When his "
flivver" was in the shop (often), they took buses or cabs, which Sam called city transport.
Tom Petty, Highway Companion (American) *** This is supposed to be a road record, one you pop in the
flivver's CD player as you indulge in the great American pastime: drivin'.
Then, instead of writing a timeline-driven narrative that followed Ford along his journey, Watts divided Ford's life and impact on the world into sections--"The Road to Fame," "The Miracle Maker," "The
Flivver King," "The Long Twilight"--and subsections "Emperor," "Father," "Bigot," etc.--that focus on the many and conflicting roles and personalities the man possessed or created.
After driving it a few times, my friends with later-model cars called it "The
Flivver," and the name stuck.
Came the eight-hour day, the finance company (after old Italian masters), the
flivver, the radio, TV, and the atom.
Physical damage insurance followed soon after; in one unusual claim in 1904, the Boston Insurance Company paid $9,500 to one of its own vice presidents whose
flivver's gas tank had exploded on a trip from Boston to Worcester.
The anti-Semites of corporate America considered Roosevelt to be a crypto-Communist and an agent of Jewish interests, if not a Jew himself; he was routinely referred to as "Rosenfeld," and his New Deal was vilified as the "Jew Deal." (17) In his book The
Flivver King, Upton Sinclair described the notoriously anti-Semitic Henry Ford dreaming of an American fascist movement that "pledged to put down the Reds and preserve the property interests of the country; to oust the Bolshevik [Roosevelt] from the White House and all his pink professors from the government services ...
Instead of God overseeing the universe from heaven, brave new worlders envision Our Ford superintending their affairs from his "
flivver," a slang expression for a small, inexpensive automobile, hence a decline misrepresented as apotheosis.
The horse managed to hang on to a part of the "mass market" for another decade or so, until Henry Ford's low cost
Flivver literally put it out to pasture.
One particular personal favorite is the Mickey Roadster ($60), with Mickey and Minnie Mouse at the wheel of an old-fashioned
flivver. The famous mice form the lid, lifting off so that the body of the car can be filled with cookies.
A dispatch to the Toronto Star Weekly, March 18 1922 began: "The luge is the Swiss
flivver...on a bright Sunday you see all of Switzerland from old grandmothers to street children, coasting solemnly down the steep mountain roads, sitting on these little elevated pancakes with the same tense expression on all their faces.
"Those workers and peasants sleep three in a bed and something bit me, and the only make of car they know's a
flivver....
No fewer than 66 companies were now venturing from the horse-and-buggy era into the uncertain age of the gas
flivver. Hopes ran high that a mass market awaited genuine mass production and that this revolutionary method of transportation would not backfire.
