EVO ENCYCLOPEDIA
Our motoring A to Z reaches the end of the road, as Richard Porter dispatches his final batch of automotive definitions
This month we look at X-Y-Z
X
Letter used to make car names more exciting, especially in the 1980s, e.g. Ford Escort XR3, Nissan Sunny ZX, Subaru WRX STI.
X engine
Properly bonkers internal combustion configuration in which four banks of cylinders are arranged in an X shape when viewed from the front, with a common crank in the middle. Insanely large and heavy, and hence only ever seen in aircraft and tanks, though it’s entirely possible that Ferdinand Piëch at the height of VW engineering hubris tried to make his team come up with one that would fit in a Lupo.
X-spoke
Abbreviated way of describing crossspoke alloys. X also features in attempts to remove brake dust from such a wheel design, as in: ‘Why can’t I get these fxcking wheels clean?’
Xenon
Type of car headlight that works by creating an arc between two contacts within a chamber of xenon gas, the ionisation of which creates the bright blue-white light for which these lights are known. Also known as High Intensity Discharge or ‘Argh, is that a police car behind me?’ lights.
XJ
Long-running name for Jaguar’s large saloon cars, although originally it was an internal code for models under development and stood for ‘eXperimental Jaguar’. Hence the original XJ6 was confusingly codenamed the XJ4.
Xylophone
Percussion instrument based around tuned wooden bars which are struck with small, spherically ended mallets. Nothing to do with cars, but all alphabetical guides have to have one in their X section because not much else starts with X. Sorry.
Y-junction
Like a jazzier version of a T-junction. Not to be confused with a ‘why junction’ such as the inexplicably half-arsed way most roads in around our Pune HQs meet.
Yank tank
Old fashioned and somewhat disparaging tag for an American car based around traditional size, weight and indeed handling characteristics of such machines. Might still apply to the Cadillac Escalade or Ford Expedition, though rather harder to pin on, say, the Corvette C8.
Yaw
The rotation of a car away from an imaginary front-to-rear line when viewed from above. Hence electronic ‘yaw control’ in which a car’s stability systems may be used to manipulate the yaw characteristics to improve turn-in. Not to be confused with popular children’s cartoon Paw Patrol, though you can sing the former to the theme tune of the latter and now you probably are.
Yellow
Primary colour often regarded as resale death on cars, unless they are Lamborghinis or the Fiat Cinquecento Sporting.
Yellow box
Type of marking on some road junctions into which you must not drive unless your exit is clear (or unless you are turning right and waiting for a gap in oncoming traffic). Also known as a ‘moron web’.
Yellow flag
Universally understood motorsport signal requiring drivers to slow down because there is a hazard ahead (unless you are Mika Häkkinen, in which case you may give the person waving the flag a cheery wave of acknowledgement thereby giving the impression that you are acting appropriately while not actually lifting off at all).
Yellow lines
Brightly coloured street trimmings, the number of which denotes how bad it would be to park there anyway with your hazards on because you’re a lazy berk with a BMW X6 and you want to use the cash machine.
Yield
Weirdly old-fashioned sounding word for ‘give way’, written on inverted triangle signs in some countries like the USA, and which sounds amusing if you roar it in the voice of a villain from a campy science fiction movie.
Yikes
What a cartoon character might say upon coming around a corner and seeing the new BMW M4. Once they’d finished vomiting.
Yump
A small jump, usually in rallying. Possibly derived from the way drivers from some countries would say ‘jump’. Although you never hear them refer to a Harrier Yump Yet.
Z axle
BMW’s label for its multi-link rear axle first seen on the Z1 and short for Zentralpunktgeführte Doppelquerlenker or ‘central point guided double wishbones’. Obviously.
Z car
Colloquial way of referring to various
Nissans, some more sporty (370Z), than others (1983 300ZX). Not to be confused with Z Cars, the black and white TV series in which police people sat in a windowless Ford Zephyr in front of an unconvincing back projection, and created by the man who later wrote The Italian Job.
Zastava
Serbian armaments manufacturer that also built vehicles in the 1950s and did so continuously until the war in the Balkans in 1999 when the US Air Force, possibly failing to read up on what was made where, blew up the car factory.
Zebra crossing
Ubiquitous type of pedestrian crossing, so named because it is at risk of getting savaged and eaten by the less commonly seen Lion crossing.
Zero emission
Claim sometimes made of electric cars, causing a certain type of bore to start huffing on about power stations.
Zetec
Name used by Ford to unify a whole range of (sometimes unrelated) engines. Originally ‘Zeta’ but changed after a firm legal *cough* from Lancia, which owned the Zeta name, to the chagrin of Welsh actor Catherine EcoBoost-Jones.
ZF
German car component firm responsible for myriad parts in numerous cars, most conspicuously that really good eight-speed automatic gearbox that everyone uses. ZF stands for Zahnradfabrik Friedrichshafen (‘Gear Factory Friedrichshafen’), although these days they refer to themselves as ZF Friedrichshafen, which technically makes the company ‘Zahnradfabrik Friedrichshafen Friedrichshafen’. Tch. Bet they say ‘PIN number’ as well.
Zinc
Protective coating given to metal parts to prevent them from rusting, hence why cars don’t go conspicuously rotten in modern times (apart from the Ford Ka and the W210-shape E-class).
ZZ Top
American beat combo famed for naming an album after a customised 1933 Ford, and for being hirsute to the point of ridiculousness (apart from the drummer, Frank Beard). ⌧