Re:Spider, DHC, Cabriolet, etc

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

In AD7-593 Lawrence Gowin asks about criteria that define a car as a drophead
coupe, roadster, and cabriolet (etc) and mentions the mounting of the
windscreen as one of the variables.

It depends on the era, the country, the company, fashions, and conventions. I
grew up when Ford (the only company that counted- ) built four different
ragtops: roadsters, convertible coupes, phaetons, and convertible sedans. For
that company, country, and era the convertibles had wind-up windows, fairly
weathertight tops, and were thought of as closed cars which could be opened,
while the roadsters (two doors) and phaetons (four doors) had side-curtains,
appreciably less weathersealing, and were thought of as open cars which could
be closed to some degree. The distinction had formal ramifications; the open
cars had a rolled top on the doors which flowed across the rear of the cowl,
with the windshield visually separate as well as physically, with plated posts
as well as plated frame, while the convertibles had windshield posts which
were continuous with the cowl visually as well as physically, painted rather
than plated. The windshield was not the defining element, however; some
convertible sedans (Auburn, for instance) had folding windshields, and some
cowls and door-tops were treated to seem more roadster-like when the roof was
down.

Most of the traditional names for body styles date from the eighteenth century
and earlier, although some are later. In England (where commerce was a good
century ahead of the rest of the world) craftsmen, merchants, and
manufacturers had books of style-sheets to take to show clients, rather than
merchandise in stock; if you wanted dishes from Wedgwood, chairs from
Chippendale, or cut steel jewelry from Boulton (or shoes, clothes, or
carriages) you picked the shapes, the patterns, and the colors (or other
variables) from the style-book and the stuff was made to order. Some books of
style-sheets were commercially published and widely circulated; there were
books of colored lithographs of carriages, and you will find the same
lithographs, with the same names for the carriages, with enough subordinate
information in other languages that it is clear that such style sheets,
originating with the British carriage trade, circulated widely on the
continent.

The names that were applied were sometimes derived from family names (like
brougham, from the Baron of Brougham), sometimes from mythology (like phaeton,
from Phaethon, the son of Helios) often from place names (like sedan from
Sedan, berline from Berlin, limousine from Limoges, landau and landaulet from
the German city of Landau) and some from fanciful allusions, like spiders and
torpedoes. The torpedo name, popular in France as well as in Italy for our
phaeton, predates the naval weapon by many centuries; it was a common name for
the sting ray, which is where the weapon got its name. Spider exists in French
as well as in German and Italian, but in France it is a rumble-seat on a
cabriolet. Cabriolet is also from the animal kingdom; it is French, from the
Italian capriola, caper, from the capriolo, roe-buck; the same word extends to
both a particular furniture leg form and a particular ballet leap, all
originally suggesting something light and graceful.

So, the words evolve and the meanings change, as fashions will, but a critical
part of the international dissemination was almost certainly from the
eighteenth-century style-sheets of the English carriage trade.

John H,
Raleigh, N.C.

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