Fascinatin' Rhythm, you've got me on the go! Fascinatin' Rhythm, I'm all a-quiver! What a mess you're making! The neighbours want to know why I'm always shaking just like a flivver. - Opening lyrics by Ira Gershwin, 1924
Flivver is a slang term referring to an inexpensive, low-quality, and poorly-maintained vehicle, usually a car or small aircraft, such as the Ford Flivver. Synonyms include junker, lemon, hunk of junk, jalopy, death-trap, bucket o' bolts, beater, clunker, wreck, junkheap, boneshaker, banger, hooptie, Tin Lizzie, rattletrap, and scrapgather.
Etymologists speculate that the term originated in 1919, either shortly before or in Tad Dorgan's comic strip Judge Rummy, in reference to a Ford Model T.
The term gained more traction during the 1930s, after Charles Lindbergh tested the prototype Ford Flivver aircraft and characterised it as "one of the worst aircraft I ever flew," and test pilot Harry J. Brooks famously died in a Flivver crash over the Atlantic Ocean near Melbourne, Australia. These events led Henry Ford to discontinue all prototyping of light aircraft, lending the word "flivver" the weight of a true death-trap conveyance, and not merely one which has a dilapidated appearance.
Iron Noder 2022, 25/30