OLD RUSTY CAR

Last crawled date: 1 year, 9 months ago

In North American slang jalopy, clunker, heap, rust bucket and bucket are also used. So too are beater—a term especially favored in Canada—and the American urban hooptie, which gained some popularity from the humorous song "My Hooptie" by Sir Mix-a-Lot.
The word jalopy was once common but is now somewhat archaic. Jalopy seems to have replaced flivver, which in the early decades of the 20th century also simply meant "a failure".[9] Other early terms for a wreck of a car included heap, tin lizzy (1915) and crate (1927), which probably derived from the WWI pilots' slang for an old, slow and unreliable aeroplane. In the latter half of the 20th century more coarse terms became popular, such as "shitbox".
The origin of jalopy is unknown, but the earliest written use that has been found was in 1924.[10] It is possible that the longshoremen in New Orleans referred to the scrapped autos destined for scrapyards in Jalapa, Mexico, according to this destination, in which they pronounced the letter J as in English.[10] Another possible origin is the French "chaloupe" which refers to a "motorboat" and could reference the sound an old car would make.[11]
A 1929 definition of jalopy reads as follows: "a cheap make of automobile; an automobile fit only for junking".[12] The definition has stayed the same, but it took a while for the spelling to standardize. Among the variants have been jallopy, jaloppy, jollopy, jaloopy, jalupie, julappi, jalapa and jaloppie. John Steinbeck spelled it gillopy in In Dubious Battle (1936).[13] The term was used extensively in the book On the Road by Jack Kerouac, first published in 1957, although written from 1947.
The Georgia Institute of Technology, an engineering school in Atlanta, takes pride in the practice of engineering students maintaining antique cars, and the school maintains the Ramblin' Wreck, a popular mascot of the school. Their college radio station, WREK, is also named after the iconic car.
The term was also used throughout the history of Archie Comics, specifically referring to Archie Andrews' red, open-top antique car.
In 2009 the term "clunker" was heavily used in reference to the Car Allowance Rebate System in the United States, which was also known as the "Cash for Clunkers Program".
Decrepit cars used on Indian reservations in the United States and Indian reserves in Canada are often referred to by their owners as reservation cars or rez runners for short.[14] The culture of the rez car was explored in the documentary film Reel Injun,[15] and also figured briefly in the feature film Smoke Signals. Keith Secola (Ojibwa) recorded the song "NDN KARS" describing such a vehicle in 1987. Originally appearing as a cassette release, it was used in the Native critically acclaimed film Dance Me Outside. It is on his album Circle (AKINA Records, 1992).[16] Activist Russell Means's humorous poem "Indian Cars Go Far" (1993) also describes the "Indian car" as a decrepit vehicle.