What’s In A Name?

aka WayTooFurious

Car makers can spend untold thousands of dollars on market research to come up with the right name for their cars. One old trick to avoid this is to have a competition to see if someone can come up with an exciting name for a new release. Take Alden Giberson; working as a car designer back in 1954, he won a competition to name a new Ford product, and so the Thunderbird was born. Not bad, but the fact that all he won was a suit and a pair of pants kind of sucks–you think they�d at least have given him a car for his efforts! Nearly 60 years later, Pontiac is doing the same thing with their G8 Sport Truck. Come up with the right name and you could win a new Ute when it hits the streets in 2009. Car makers should do this more often–after all, why spend a fortune on market research to wind up calling your latest model the Mazda Bongo (pictured) or the Daihatsu Naked, when the public could probably come up with something better. Personal names for cars are an entirely different matter: I’ve heard of a guy who has called every car he ever owned "The Beast." I have never given my cars names, however if I do christen the Plymouth it will be "Honey Rider." What do you call your car?

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Posted at 10:38 pm in Australia, Dispatch From Down Under, Pontiac, Ute

Comments

valek
Apr 4, 2008 at 5:00 pm

“lil’ coupe” because that’s what it is, simple as that.

retroman
Apr 3, 2008 at 7:11 pm

My buddy changed the nameplate on his Taurus to read “Taurtus”. I forgot to mention the slew of cars we had when I was growing up. all were EPA nightmares so we just called out the color followed by bomb. (Ex. Blue Bomb, Brown Bomb, ETC.)

ALAKRANERA
Apr 3, 2008 at 6:32 pm

MMM…MINE ARE PRITTY MUCH BASED ON THERE COLOR (IN SPANISH)!! EXEPT FOR THE DENALI BUT I JUST CALL HER “NALI” LOL

Highspeedhijinks
Apr 3, 2008 at 1:20 pm

1984 Caprice Coupe….. Boxy Brown
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2000 Pontiac Grand Prix GT….. Roxy
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1970 Buick LeSabre Custom….. Bu-Hog
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1985 Pontiac Parisiene…… Annie

Skullmonkey17
Apr 3, 2008 at 5:15 am

I named my gutless wonder Tempo the “Gimpo” …even changed the badging to say that (check it out on my page).

Also me and my friend in our high school days had this 1970’s Dodge truck that we beat the hell out of that we called the “Ghetto Stomper”

retroman
Apr 3, 2008 at 2:22 am

I’m a big Gone in 60 Seconds fan, so I kept it simple and gave my cars girls names. My Spirit R/T is named Lana(partly because of the Roy Orbison song of the same name, partly because I also watch Smallville) and her base model sister is named Cristina(because I knew a slow bumbling girl with that name and also because of Stephen King’s car Cristine. Cristina really does seem to have a mind of her own. I gotta fight sometimes to show who’s boss.) I’m currently looking for a Ford Festiva as my new daily driver. I’ll probably name her Renee after the Left Bank song “Just walk away, Renee”. Since most Festivas are slow fuel sippers, I thought it fit. When I get a Stang someday though, can you guess what I’ll name it?

Jake
Apr 3, 2008 at 1:48 am

While generally refering to my two cars as either “big car” or “little car” (try and figure out which is which), the Fiero is rapidly earning its new nickname of “Fiasco”

I’ve also been considering branding the Monte with the nickname of “Big Black” though, for obvious reasons.

cknarf
Apr 3, 2008 at 12:51 am

EARTHDESTROYINGDEATHMACHINE- Birds fall from the sky when it’s started.

NobiZero
Apr 3, 2008 at 12:35 am

Problem child. Because every time I fix one thing, 8 other things go wrong.

GTwildfire
Apr 3, 2008 at 12:22 am

My Firebird would have to be “Stormtrooper” because I realized a recent mod makes the rear remind me of them. Purely unintentional. Worse yet, I plan to get blackouts for the tail lights (for occasional use) which isn’t going to distance the resemblance.

My Grand Prix? I guess “Wildfire”, cause I based my user name on that ride, which had inspired me to join CarDomain to show it off. That ignited more mods and spread to the purchase of the Firebird. The fire is hard to contain…