Dumb car names

crimsona

Monsoon the speaker company wasn't bad. They were fairly well respected. Unlike BOSE, they weren't made fun of for pretending to be high end in every audiophile forum out there.

odie6l

wasn't leprosy the nickname of the VW Thing when-ever it went over a nasty pothole and started droping it's parts everywhere.

Odie
Odie's Carspace

nvbanker

Why name an suv after a barbaric saharan tribe that sometimes deals in slavery? Toureg.

I agree - to me, this is the dumbest name out there, not only for what it represents - but nobody can spell it, as indicated above.....

te1963

I think I had a 1983 Chevrolet Leprosy....parts kept falling off. Oh wait....that was a Celebrity. Talk about a dumb name. Anyone every see a celebrity driving one?

nvbanker

I had an 83 Celebrity, and frankly, I liked it. It was very comfy, zippy, fuel efficient, and pretty modern for GM at the time. You're right about the interior though, stuff just fell of everywhere. Window switches, the ash tray, glove box door, everywhere. Was a real dog inside, but mechanically, not bad at all. IMO, it was the best line of compacts GM ever made, the Celebrity, 6000, Ciera and Century lines of the 80's.

Also, the Chevrolet division was into a lot of alliteration at the time, and all the Chevy cars were moving to C names, Celbrity, Citation, later Cavalier, Caprice.

te1963

I'm glad you had good luck with yours. I owned mine for one year, 87-88. It was a complete nightmare mechanically. I had the 4 cyl, which seemed real underpowered and was in the shop a total of 6 times in the year we owned it. I've heard the 6 was much better suited for the Celebrity. The interior was as bad as yours it sounds like. A friend and I fixed a door handle with a old erector set! What can I say? We were young and poor When we traded it off in 88, we prayed it wouldn't die at a stoplight while the dealership appraised it!

john_324

My first car was a hand-me-down '85 Celebrity station wagon ("Eurosport"...ha!), and gotta say while it certainly wasn't the sort of car that excites a high school kid, it was dependable and decent...

Mine had the V6, so was mechanically pretty sound. I don't remember any major problems with it; it was mostly little build-quality issues that dogged mine...misaligned interior panels, exterior door handles that didn't always function, etc.

rockylee

Chevrolet Leprosy :confuse:

Bumpy, Lemko, Andre, anyone, what in the heck is a Chevy Leprosy ? :surprise:

Rocky

odie6l

I originally said about VW's Thing having the nickname of Leprosy and it went from there. It started with disaster names that GM had used on it's vehicles. Click back one page and you'll find it.

Odie
Odie's Carspace

rockylee

Okay, thanx........

Rocky

spoom

Aren't those the little sprinkles on cookies & donuts? BTW, I couldn't help laughing when I saw an Avalanche that had slid off the road and down into a ditch. I mean, isn't that what Avalanches are supposed to do?
¿

uplanderguy

When I first saw the title of this thread, I myself right away thought, "Celebrity". It was as middle-of-the-road as a car could get, and they named it "Celebrity"! And "Eurosport"? Well, not very imaginative.

John 324 mentioned having a Eurosport wagon. I actually thought that was one of the best-looking wagons around at that time! Being a Chevy guy (I admit it, still am!), an '85 Celebrity Eurosport was the only new car I ever actually ordered. I wanted a coupe, and I had to have the aluminum wheels (very similar to Citation X11)--I couldn't stand the standard steel Eurosport wheels. Ordering data indicated the aluminum wheels were on backorder. I told my salesman that if the car came in without them, I wasn't going to buy it! I was also forced to buy the 4-speed automatic, despite advice from a friend's Dad who was a Chevy service manager elsewhere, to avoid it. I believe GM did this late in the model run to get their CAFE numbers up (I ordered the car March 3).

I ordered the solid plum color outside (hated the plum over silver you always saw), with matching bucket seat interior.

Three months later, it came in. Was supposed to take 4-6 weeks. Every Monday the salesman got an update or orders in process and I'd call him. He was very sick of me by delivery time. The car was ordered with floor mats and didn't have them when I picked the car up, and he acted all grumpy when I pointed this out to him ("Did you order them?")

Anyway, it was a tight, good-handling, peppy car for the time with the Multi-Port 2.8...like a low-buck 6000 STE.

At 37K I had no third or fourth gears. Dealer charged me $100 (deductible) and put in remanufactured unit in, which lasted until I traded (60K).

One power window would cut out occasionally, and I had GM replace the steering rack due to hard steering when cold (chronic to those cars). Dealer offered to pay for half until I told him I heard others were getting the repair free after warranty. He agreed.

The car did look pretty nice. By that time I thought about ordering a Citation X11 (same car basically, less cost) but thought I'd take a hit at trade-in time so I went for the Eurosport instead.

Thanks for the memories!

Bill

andys120

No sooner does Caddy dispense with their historic nameplates like DeVille, Seville and ElDorado and substitute dopey initials (ETC/DTS/STS etc) than Lincoln decides it has to play me too and come up with MKZ for the Zephyr. :sick:

fezo

I hate what they are doing with the Lincoln names and have done with Caddy. I have to think about what the car is supposed to be. I can't believe that's good for marketing.

I was at a classic car gathering the year Chrysler was dropping the New Yorker name. At the time it was the longest still running nameplate around. I was talking to a guy with a late 40s or early 50s New Yorker. He was livid.

As far as teh Eurosport I guess they decided it sounded better than the Ohiosport.....

nvbanker

I actually like names that are real, like
Celebrity and Eurosport better than the made up names, like Camaro, although that one developed it's own definer over time.

spoom

Maybe "New Yorker" is being divided up into "neighborhoods" Sombody (forget who) already has the Tribeca, maybe they'll do the SOHO, Bowery, Chelsea, or Battery Park, too :shades:
¿

nvbanker

Don't forget Park Avenue

stv187

mercury marauder
"maraud -- to roam about and raid in search of plunder..."

crazyb02

I think Lucerne sounds like the name of a heavy-set woman; wallowing and waddling as she walks.

au1994

I can't get past Lucerne. If you have Safeway's or Tom Thumb's in you area, Lucerne is the store brand for their milk, butter etc.

spoom

"You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucerne"
as sung by Kenny Rogers

boomchek

Haha, so right about Lucerne.

That car reminds me of milk and cottage cheese.

I agree about the Celebrity too. Decent car (I had one) but odd name. Sounds better than it's counterpart Pontiac 6000.

What exactly is the 6000 supposed to stand for? Does having a 4 digit number make the car sound upscale? Same as the Pontiac T1000. :confuse:

Another one is the Kia Optima, which is called the Magentis in Canada. I can't help thinking og meningitis when I see that car. And about 5 years ago I went to a Kia dealer and told them I wanted to see their Kia Meningitis (as a joke, but with a serious face). :P

More oddballs:

Toyota T100 - sounded like some kind of a heavy duty terminator machine (maybe that was the intention).

Subaru Impreza: Impreza mean party in Polish.

Current European oddballs:

Charade is still around
Hyundai Getz: gets what?
Mitsubishi Space Star: sci-fi comic book van
Peugeot 1007: odd name, ugly car.

Skoda Fabia: sounds like a body part
Chevrolet Tacuma: they spelled Tacoma wrong
Renault Kangoo: kangaroo? or Kandoo for kids
Ssangyong Rodius: say what?

xrunner2

Within last couple of years, remember Autoweek magazine having a story and picture about a new European sub-compact by Ford named the "Ka". So, if you live in Germany and have two of these in your garage, what do you have?

m1miata

DTS as a renaming of the DeVille. You never rename a ship ya know.
The FiveHundred, which is dumb enough to use, is now the rental car, the Taurus. Ya know, Taurus is literally the bull. STS used by Cadillac, sounds like a disease .

m1miata

If you have but one, that is in Ka plete ?

Loren

m1miata

Often wondered how they keep those Kia's out of the rain. Won't they all grow hair if left out in the rain? Around Christmas time, you see the ad for those plants.

lemko

Well, having a Ford Ka wouldn't seem so strange in Boston.

xrunner2

Well, having a Ford Ka wouldn't seem so strange in Boston.

?? Would this have something to do with kerry or kenedy?

rorr

"?? Would this have something to do with kerry or kenedy?"

No, it has to do with Bostonian's dropping their r's.

As in, "Don't pawk the Ka in the yawd after dawk".

spoom

or drive afta a potty, or ya might end up inda haba Folks in Boston get confused by the term "potty training"-you can't teach someone how ta potty :P
¿

m1miata

Yes, that is what an Avalanche does. Then to get out of the ditch and back on the road, you need to Escalade.

Loren

rockylee

Rocky

m1miata

By gosh, one must Escalade a lot to reach the height of Denali !
Of course, if you are in the Tundra, all is pretty cold, and you have a long way to climb yet.

Aspire was one of those all time dumb names. Well at least on a car which aspired to be a real car when it grew up.

Mazda6 is kinda confusing, when it has an i4 engine. Should that not be the Mazda4?

LaCrosse I don't get. If the LeSabre was so wrong, and it wasn't, what is so right with the LaCrosse ? I guess it is a name to stick with.... oh that's bad


Loren

boomchek

Even though MB used their letter/numbers designations for their cars, it got kinda confusing though the 80s, and 90s when they were changing it all around.

Even now it's sorta confusing but because I'm exposed to the new cars I have it figured out.

urnews

At the opposite end of the bad name spectrum would be good names. I always thought three Studebakers had great names: the Champion, the Commander and the Hawk (golden or silver). Aztek was an OK name but an uglier than ugly vehicle.

m1miata

I owned an Achieva. People would ask what car I owned, and I would say, Achieva. They would say, sorry about that cold, as they thought I was sneezing. ...... OK, I made that up. I did own one though. The old days when the cars were starting with an A and ending with an A. As in Aurora.

Loren

lemko

...but obviously trying to cash in on the cachet of the Honda Accord name was the Plymouth Acclaim.

guss

The old days when the cars were starting with an A and ending with an A.

Well at least we still have the Altima.

I had an Aurora, an the rumor was that Olds liked the name so much they were going to change their company name to Aurora.

lemko

How about Acura?

m1miata

I do like that name. Acura is short and sweet. And as the name implies, the cars are very accurate. Too bad the Achieva was not much of an achievement.
Oh well, the car I had did have fewer problems than the Olds 98 once the initial seven to eight problems got solved.

Loren

fintail

I knew a girl who has an Achieva. It was an unreliable car, and this was way back in the 90s. I called it the "Underachieva"

xrunner2

No, it has to do with Bostonian's dropping their r's.

As in, "Don't pawk the Ka in the yawd after dawk".

Would "after" be afta?

And do Bostonians pronouce their city name as Bah-stin?

On topic, always thought that Volvo sounded nasty. Almost like a naughty body part.

anythngbutgm

Yup

Pahk the cah in Havahd Yahd... If you've seen "The Departed" you'll get a kick out of Matt Damon's exageratted accent. The kid is from here and yet he acts like he had to learn the part :sick:

Absolutely awesome movie otherwise...

Volvo? Yup, sounds a lot like Volva, just like you said.

boomchek

Not sure if it's supposed to boost or lower your self esteem when driving one.

nvbanker

I can't get past Lucerne. If you have Safeway's or Tom Thumb's in you area, Lucerne is the store brand for their milk, butter etc.

Indeed, I can't get past it at all.....

fezo

How unfortunate. Not the image I imagine they were looking for.

Happy to see action again in here.

It's getting tougher in here. All the low hanging fruit has already been nabbed....

I actually think Chevy is in better shape in terms of name than in decades past. Impala and Malibu, while not being the modern equivalents of their old names, are positive names to the public. This is as opposed to Citation (a classic bad name!), Celebrity and Lumina....

nvbanker

I liked my Celebrity....and when the ash tray fell out of the dash, I just threw it away, and when the glove box cover stopped latching, I just let it hang open.... What the heck.

210delray

...it means "I roll" in Latin. Same route word as for "revolve."

The Washington, DC Volvo Club's newsletter was called "Volvamus," meaning "we roll." My kids changed the title into something unprintable here. :P

fezo

Hey! My buddy's Citation was like that, too!

I always thought Lumina was a pretty lame name as well. Somewhere between aluminum (which it mostly made of?) and luminous, which it wasn't unless you set fire to it......

Actually I had Lumina rentals a couple of times, They were a perfectly acceptable rental - a Taurus without the style.

m1miata

Hey, I doubt a Lumina used very much aluminum, as the price of such is pretty high. Compared to Taurus, I bet ya got much better MPG with the GM over the Ford.

Lumina is indeed a pretty lame name. But then again, just how uninspiring is the name General Motors. Not that it lacks getting the point directly to you that they buy motoring vehicle companies. Many of them in general. Generally speaking, Oldsmobile became the, dare I say it, most old sounding name. Ah alas they are gone. And a bit ironic is that the division had a lot of the new ideas for the company in general. And to think that the Cutlass Supreme was voted by mechanics as the most solid car to buy around the mid-seventies. Seems like things went from bad to worse as the last of the RWD met the era of the first FWD endeavors. Citation was the kick-off car. And in some ways a good base for the new platform. There is one parked a couple blocks from where I live -- still running.
Loren