GT 86 Shooting Break
Discussion
spreadsheet monkey said:
It's a solid no from me.
y2blade said:
kambites said:
Captain Muppet said:
There is good ammunition here for both sides of the break/brake argument. My favourite bit being "The term brake was initially a chassis used to break-in horses".
Yeah I've read that before and pondered why it would have been spelled "brake" if it came from the term "break-in". 
I think the simple answer is that both spellings are valid.
For example: http://ukshootingbreaks.com/
Spot the country boy
Game shooting used to be pretty much a country pursuit, where the local landowner would simply shoot his own land. However, during Victorian times, Prince Edward was a shooting and socialising fiend and suddenly game shooting became de rigueur and the done thing so lots of townies started turning up at estates to shoot. It was around this time that the working carts were press ganged into a means of transport to essentially enable fat, unfit townies to be shifted between stands. Plus, the heavy tweed attire needed to keep warm while standing still got long periods of time actually made walking any distance very difficult.
Various estates then started having their estate brakes retrofitted with actual carriages to keep the occupants dryer.
Then in Edwardian times, various estate owners motorised their shooting brakes and chassis from Rolls had carriages attached to them. And that is really the beginning of the application to motor vehicles.
At the same time, most of these estates also ran general cars for practical duties and these coined the phrase 'estate car'.
Two terms for pretty much the same thing.
What happened after the second war is that the term Estate Car got devalued by being applied to models from plebeian marques, like the words 'executive' or 'luxury' have come to have no value meaning in our modern society. As a result, the more pretentious marques desperate to differentiate themselves from inferior car manufacturers went looking for a different term for 'Estate' and they stumbled across the pretty much defunct term of shooting brake.
Since then it has been applied by English marques wanting to segregate themselves from the riffraff. Until we reach the point today where it is randomly applied to plebeian German minicabs and has pretty much, like all pretentious words seized upon by marketing team, become meaningless. Today it is just a term added to anything in the hopes of screwing a bit more cash out of a mug punter.
The origins of the word 'brake' as an estate carriage, like many of our more upper class words, stems from French but was Anglicised to give our spelling. All shooting diaries dating back as far as can be found support this.
If anything, the misunderstanding in spelling stems from Anerica where they have historically tended to retain the original spelling of colonial French and English words of the time. So you tend to find Americans spelling it the original French way of Break.
The last genuine shooting brake made before the term was seized by marketeers was this:
But once the likes of Bentley and Aston hijacked the term to poncify their new money products then the original meaning is long since gone and today it is just an offensive term used by ponces because they haven't the real heritage or confidence to use the term 'estate'.
Subaru might lobby for it to go ahead, they have history with sporty rear-drive 'wagons and it could be marketable for them.Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff