flivver

flivver

slang An old, beat-up vehicle. Oh geez, that flivver won't make it down the street—you guys are better off walking!
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

flivver

(ˈflɪvɚ)
n. an old car. (Once a nickname for the Model-T Ford.) Whose flivver is that parked out in the street?
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • cabbagehead
  • beetlebrain
  • dinghead
  • dipwad
  • chowderhead
  • blockhead
  • dimwit
  • corny
  • cry Ruth
References in periodicals archive
"It needed some work," Unger recalled, but enough contributions came in for the flivver's restoration.
MICHIGAN'S UNIQUE HIGH SCHOOL MASCOTS
His "sky flivver" actually worked, but production was stopped when some stupid pilot died in an accident.
From sky flivver to Hydropolis: what happened to the science-fiction future?
When his "flivver" was in the shop (often), they took buses or cabs, which Sam called city transport.
Tenth Avenue TKO
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'.
Carousel corner
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.
THE SAGE OF DEARBORN
After driving it a few times, my friends with later-model cars called it "The Flivver," and the name stuck.
Open road was no match for 'The Flivver'
Came the eight-hour day, the finance company (after old Italian masters), the flivver, the radio, TV, and the atom.
Fifty years ago in ETC: war words and tired symbols
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.
Transportation history and insurance
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 ...
Profits uber Alles! American Corporations and Hitler. (Review Essays/Notes Critiques)
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.
Aldous Huxley's Americanization of the Brave New World typescript
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.
End of the ICE Age?
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.
HOUSEWARE AND FOOD FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM
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.
HEMINGWAY IN THE SNOW
"Those workers and peasants sleep three in a bed and something bit me, and the only make of car they know's a flivver....
FROM THE FUTURE TO THE PAST: THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF JOHN DOS PASSOS
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.
Automania