Taxonomy
Apocrypha — denied at the gate
12 entries
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Book VI
SSC Tuatara
The last survivor of a lineage that split from the snakes a quarter of a billion years ago
The tuatara is not a lizard. It is the only surviving member of Rhynchocephalia, an entire order that split from the squamates — the lizards and…
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Book VI
Chevrolet Corvette Stingray
A cartilaginous fish with a venomous barb. Venomous — but not a snake, and not even close.
The most commonly misfiled car in this entire subject. It is venomous, which fools people. It is a fish, which settles it.
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Book VI
Wiesmann — the Gecko
The closest miss in the entire book. A genuine cousin, refused at the door on a technicality.
Wiesmann puts a gecko on every car it builds, because a gecko sticks to things. Geckos are squamates. Snakes are squamates. This is the nearest…
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Book VI
De Tomaso Pantera
The mongoose gave up and became a cat
Having named one car after the cobra’s natural predator, Alejandro de Tomaso named the next one after a big cat and sold it through Lincoln-Mercury…
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Book VI
Gardner-Serpollet
The most snake-sounding name in automotive history means wild thyme
Léon Serpollet built the finest steam cars in the world and set a land speed record at Nice in 1902 in a machine shaped like an egg. His name…
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Book VI
Plymouth Barracuda
Beat the Mustang to market by two weeks and has been losing the argument ever since
Launched in April 1964, sixteen days before the Ford Mustang, and comprehensively out-sold by it for a decade. A fast, toothy, ambush-oriented fish…
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Book VI
Abarth — the Scorpion
Venomous, arachnid, and chosen because of a birthday
Carlo Abarth was born in mid-November and was therefore, by the reckoning of newspaper astrology, a Scorpio. He put the animal on the badge and it…
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Book VI
Hudson Hornet
Venomous, arthropod, and the best-handling American car of its decade
Hudson dropped its floor pan below the frame rails, called the result step-down construction, produced the lowest centre of gravity in America, and…
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Book VI
Bolwell Nagari
It sounds exactly like the Sanskrit for serpent. It is not the Sanskrit for serpent.
Bolwell, an Australian glass-fibre specialist, named its Ford V8 sports car Nagari. Every reader of Indian mythology stops dead at that word. The…
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Book VI
Iso Grifo
A griffin: eagle in front, lion behind. Both halves eat snakes.
Giugiaro drew it, Bizzarrini engineered it, Chevrolet supplied the V8, and the name is a mythological composite of the two animals most reliably…
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Book VI
Opel Manta
A ray that does not even have the venom
The manta ray is a filter feeder with no sting, no venom and no interest in you. Opel named a coupé after it in 1970 and Germany turned that coupé…
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Book VI
Monteverdi Hai 450 SS
Swiss, Hemi-powered, and named “shark” in German
Peter Monteverdi built a mid-engined supercar in Basel with a 426 Hemi behind the driver and called it the Shark. Almost nobody has ever seen one.