Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also fliv) a failure, disappointment or something cheap and inferior.

1910		Wash. Times (DC) 4 Nov. 8: A ‘flivver’ is theatrical parlance for a failure [...] therefore ‘flivver’ best describes the invasion of the meeting [...] by a band of militant suffrgettes.
1912		G.R. Chester Five Thousand an Hour Ch. vi: There’s a thirty-five-thousand-dollar day almost gone. All I can credit myself with is a flivver.
1914		Ade ‘The New Fable of the Scoffer who Fell Hard’ in Ade’s Fables 253: As an Exponent of the more advanced Play he was a Fliv, but as a Matchmaker he was a Hum-Dinger.
1915		S. Ford Torchy, Private Sec. 67: Give him my regards when you get back [...] and tell him Torchy says he’s a flivver.
1920		Ade Hand-made Fables 187: The certain Prospect of Juicy Contracts which would convert the Fliv into a Baby Doll.
1928		J. Callahan Man’s Grim Justice 284: When it came o cooking I was an awful flivver. I couldn’t cook.

2. in attrib. use of sense 1.

1919

A. Baer Two & Three 5 Apr. [synd. col.] Fight bugs would rather pipe a good ballyhoo with a flivver verdict, than a flivver scuffle with a good decision.

3. something or someone that has a negative influence on others.

1915

H.L. Wilson Ruggles of Red Gap (1917) 230: He’s the human flivver. Put him in a car of dressed beef and he’d freeze it between here and Spokane.

4. (also fliv, fliver) a cheap automobile, spec. a Model T Ford.

1910		W.A. Fraser Red Meekins (1921) 22: You wouldn’t get five hundred for it. You stick to me an’ you’ll be travellin’ ’round the country in a flivver .
1917		W.Y. Stevenson At the Front in a Flivver 🌐 Explanatory IT WAS A ‘FLIVVER’!! Just a plain ‘flivver’ with an ambulance body the after overhang of which gave the outfit the graceful aspect of an overfed June-bug.
1920		F.S. Fitzgerald ‘The Jelly Bean’ in Bodley Head Scott Fitzgerald V (1963) 211: I haven’t seen his silly little flivver in two weeks.
1921		N. Putnam West Broadway 56: ‘I and Rollo done it in the flivver. It's a bird of a trip, dearie, and be sure to take four pair of chains with you’.
1921		N. Putnam West Broadway 92: There was the Peterkins family flv, which had thrown a loving front wheel around our hind one.
1932		A. Huxley Brave New World (1955) 45: Ford’s in his flivver [...] All’s well with the world.
1946		Sat. Eve. Post 14 Sept. 14: A hot rod is a hopped-up, stripped-down flivver used by teen-agers to terrify parents and frustrate the police.
1952		G. Meek ‘Station Days in Maoriland’ in Station Days in Maoriland 10: The bush road to Little Valley [...] Is to-day a spanking highway, sealed with some new patent tar, / And the flivvers scoot along it, like a frantic shooting star.
1955		B. Appel Tough Guy [ebook] [H]e was sitting at the wheel of a flivver inside a rutted side road.
1957		D. Niland Call Me When the Cross Turns Over (1958) 205: The flivver, packed with holiday gear, rattled away over the red sandhills.
1970		‘Red’ Rudensky Gonif 102: Some fliver, eh Red?
1977		(con. 1949) J.G. Dunne True Confessions (1979) 262: Sweet little Mexican thing with a gold tooth. Had a flivver. NDS 465.