Alternative New Year's Message - Quiz - Answers

We live in an age when at the tap of the screen-based finger-touch keyboard the answer to nearly everything can be obtained. Yet, like the modern 'hook-ups' of Tinder App users, such readily available immediacy whilst providing an immediate satisfaction, ultimately leaves a person bereft of the enticement of curiosity, anticipation and discovery.

The previous short quiz deliberately exemplified the best of the 1950s precisely because of the then slow pleasure era – before smart-phones moulding not so smart people – when nuance and delayed delight were the norm in life, from general knowledge quizzes to the flirtation of romantic relationships.

But of course, very few have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Hollywood cinema, and so a few scant red-herrings were used to momentarily delay the electronically sourced answer; the multi-coloured silk hat-band (so inferring a colour film) and the addition of a second 'n' in the stated location name, and likewise the absence of the background musical “leit-motif” of 'La Vie En Rose'.

Of course, the answers were:

1. 'Sabrina' - 1954 Paramount Pictures.

2. Audrey Hepburn and William Holden (and Humphrey Bogart).

3. The Nash-Healey Mk2 Roadster .

As previously mentioned, the car itself the result of cross-continental commerce to crystallise a new politically unified Trans-Atlantic age; though only lasting in all four years between 1951 and 1954, by the Nash-Kelvinator Corporation.

(The company itself was a merger between Nash Motors and a consumer/commerce appliance firm, with the aim of procuring larger volumes of sheet and bar steel and to better deploy the costs of management and engineering staff; to realise improved economies of scale across the board.

The IL6 power-unit and drive-train of the car were shipped from Kenosha, WI, USA to Warwick, UK where it was received by Donald Healey's company (famed for his prewar and immediate post-war rallying prowess and its niche manufacturing) for the addition of an aluminium cylinder head, alternative intake and outlet manifold, provision of SU and Carter carburettors, and vitally, fitment into the racing-embued, much altered, “Silverstone” chassis.

[NB Healey had styled and also built, from aluminium, the Mk1 body, but the Mk2 saw Italian involvement to add greater prestige – with manifest front-end, rear-end and body-side feature-line restyles, including subtle tail-fins - so as to better substantiate the high retail price with a premium associative 'sub-brand'].

Once assembled, tested on the track and further fettled, each rolling-chassis was then shipped to near Turin, Italy for its new body. The contract given to the famed carrozzeria of Pininfarina, who had over the past two decades secured strong styling and body-building stature. Not only did they style and build the new Roadster but also gained the avant-garde styling work for the larger saloon and wagon model-lines.

[NB Done so to compete with famed Loewy's competitor designs – both later believed as too stylistically advanced for the period – removing the visual importance of the wheels by way of near fully enclosed fenders – and with competitively under-powered motors compared to Ford and GM V8s].

Thereafter the cars were transported back to Nash HQ back in the USA for quality control and onto Nash dealerships. However, the target market of well-healed East Coast weekend Cads from old families, and the less flambouyant Euro-aspirational set of Central Coast California, were not convinced. The 'mongrel' pedigree and high price seemed mismatched, even if ironically wholly representative of their own oft Euro-American backgrounds. For that money (over $5,000) they could soon buy cheaper (Corvette and Thunderbird) or wanted status assured European pure breeds.

[The commercial failure of the 'mongrel' or 'jigsaw' business model would be seen again in later decades with the likes of Iso, Bizzerini, de Tomaso, De Lorean and Vector; though the cars themselves have since obviously become collectible. Interestingly - and hardly coincidentally - the name Vallelunga was both model name for de Tomaso and a side-actor in Hepburn's 'Breakfast at Tiffany's']. 

The inclusion of the Nash-Healey in the 1954 film 'Sabrina' was undertaken as an obvious form of product placement for a by then struggling auto-maker, with even the name-dropping use of Bentley and Mercedes by Holden's fiancée character to draw a notional perceived parallel to the Nash-Healey. The producers going so far as to have Hepburn wear an haute-couture white head-cap to subtley mimic the white helmet worn by a racing-driver in the Roadster's PR photos. (Thankfully no reference to any religious garb).

But the combination of Nash-Kelvinator's declined revenues, its 'unbalanced' balance sheet and the reality of unobtainable projected cost-savings (in part because of the additional costs of part-funding the post-war “GI Bill” - which itself supported a new generation of American engineers) took a massive toll. Ultimately leading to merger with likewise ailing Hudson and so the creation of a supposedly rational-based American Motors Corp.

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The noted obvious reaction to the weblog quiz came from Jay Leno and his Garage production team.

This done with his subtle yet prosaic showcasing of a 1971 240Z / Fairlady Z; with the accoutrement of the 'subway handle' attached to the rear tow hook. In a typical Japanese subtly referential manner to the reverence of Hepburn - since she embodies the Japanese way of courtesy above all to display honour - it both mimics Ms Hepburn's pronounced circular earrings as seen throughout 'Sabrina', and infers that the passengers of such cars should "Hold On".  

As may will know, the Z was given its “Fairlady” name for the Japanese market by a senior Nissan executive because he was so impressed by the Hepburn-Harrison film 'My Fair Lady' and believed the then Nissan-Prince-Datsun corporation to be like Eliza – going through a massive learning curve to become a new competitive force in the global auto industry. First was the original 1959 IL4 Roadster, then applied to the 1969/70 IL6 Coupe.

Another interesting parallel was the way Eliza became as independent (in Prof Higgins words) as “a consort battleship”, when it is rumoured that much of Nissan's sheet-steel in the 1960s and 1970s came from recycled battleships, and instigated the belief that the new Coupe must include independent rear suspension to be 'best-in-class'.

That Datsun 'retort' was followed-up by the appearance of Mike Simcoe – relatively recent new Head of GM Design, kindly providing sight of the renowned (Harley Earl era) 1953 concept cars : by way of Firebird I and III.

That cross-country transportation to LA in a way paid homage to Earl, since the city itself was the starting point for Harley Earl, who himself began in theatre and film set design).

The subtle pun was that Australian born Simcoe himself started at GM-Holden, at the Fisherman's Bend Engineering and Design Centre in Melbourne; with obvious namesake to the Sabrina co-star William Holden.

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The point of that short quiz, was to promote the idea that we should all return to the values of a bygone age – albeit even if overly romanticised - when prosaic yet obvious subtlety in all forms of life took civilised precedence over overt 'empowered' aggression and nasty passive aggression, as so often seems the case in the oft poorly advanced and societally misdirected 21^st century.

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Since we seem to live in an age which because of identity politics and tribal member affirmation many believe themselves to be intellectual superwomen and supermen – the ability to 'connect the dots' making them the supposed modern equals of Professor John Nash.

This especially seen in the self-referential entertainment industry, and so because of media saturation, all too often in broader society, which itself is media now wholly saturated by formal and informal media-feed.

A pertinent example herein being Madonna's cross-referencing of Sabrina content in her 2015 'Rebel Heart' show.

The spiral staircase seen in the film is used as a centre-piece as is the inclusion of the song 'La Vie en Rose', with a supposedly subtle reference to Nash Motors' Rebel model. But in today's milieu all subtelty is lost and what was a depiction of less is more (as seen with Hepburn's ankle on her ascent of the spiral staircase), the 'empowered' hyper-liberal crowd are instead fed the old tropes of BDSM, bare breasts and a phallic-crucifix stage disguised as a heart and cross. Hence Madonna's celebrity still reliant upon the supposed shock of sex, today tied to a new generation with sexuality based LGBTQ identity politics.

Sex itself (especially when mixed with alcohol and drugs) has always been the easiest social currency to manipulate the masses, even if they believe themselves to be of greater intelligence than past generations of the overtly conventional middle-ground.

Whether true or not, in the film 'A Beautiful Mind', Professor John Nash deploys an example of everyday Game Theory, with his observation that competitive male participants in the dating game are better off avoiding the obvious self-absorbed Marilyn-esque peroxide blonde, so as to achieve a fair and satisfactory mutual outcome.

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The lesson for life....instead become 'empowered' by the words of the Audrey Hepburn...

“Nothing is IMPOSSIBLE...the word itself says I'M POSSIBLE”!

“Merci beaucoup” Sabrina, and “Hartelijk dank voor alles” Audrey.

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And lastly throughout 2018, when possible, so as to think critically for ones-self, periodically avoid the internet and broad media and regain unfettered reality amongst authentic people and places – away from the all too common slave-like 'social actors' (who think themselves 'in the know' but just in fact other's pawns) - to places in the mind, heart and soul within this world where the tentacles of the now near ubiquitous 'web-octopus or web-spider' or cannot reach.

We can't all retreat to the heights of the Swiss mountains as Audrey did to avoid the Hollywood 'Rats Nest', but we can regain our all too rapidly declining higher consciousness if we choose to do so.