Cars - what's in a name?

This post has got nothing to do with the Riviera, apart from the fact that it was written here. However, everybody's allowed to go off on a tangent now and then, so there you go. I hope it makes you laugh!

I’ve always been fascinated by car names. When I was a little girl, we had a car called an Isis. It was black and had red leather seats, and there was enough room for three in the front and three in the back as well as two cats. Isis – it doesn’t matter whether named for a goddess or a river – the name and the car oozed femininity. She was solid but rounded, dependable but comfortable. Her name suited her perfectly.

How do cars get their names – is there a committee whose job it is to come up with the perfect name? If there is then sometimes they get it spectacularly wrong. I seem to remember some embarrassment with General Motors and the Nova, or is it the no va. That’s the problem with names, accent or language can change the meaning, and what sounds wonderful in one language can be laughable in another. Equally what can be appealing to one sex, can be ridiculous to the other.

A few years back, I was staying with my sister in California. Walking through the suburbs of Saratoga (actually, it is all suburbs) I saw what looked to be a new car dripping in bright blue paint. I couldn’t read the name, it was covered in paint, and being English, I feigned disinterest. But I did see a woman holding a large empty can of paint and screaming abuse at a man who was looking bereft as he tried to clean off the paint with a handkerchief.

Even though I was ignoring the scene, it was clear from what the woman was saying that she thought the man a total dickhead who cared more about his penis extension of a car that he did about her.

Life in the burbs. I continued on my walk

But the following day, everything became clear. My brother-in-law’s tennis partner, Dick (yes, that really was his name) was coming for lunch with his wife. He turned up in his new car which I realised was the same model as the one I’d seen the day before. When he got out, with barely a word of greeting, he started on about his car. How he was so excited, and look at how long the bonnet was, and it really went, and it was so comfortable, and it handled like a dream. Curiosity got the better of me, so I asked him what it was called. “It’s a Probe”, he said proudly. A Probe, well I just cracked up. That’s also when I formed my theory that car owners get to resemble the name of the car. My car’s a Rav 4, but I can’t decide whether it’s because I’m ravenous, ravishing or raving mad. And for the those of you gentlemen who drive a BMW and thought it stood for Bayerische Motor Werken, well you’re wrong – actually it’s Be My Willy.

Hilary Spronken, February 2007.