No! No! No! In the vernacular of my 11 year old son, that is sooooo gay. No car of mine ever had a name and although I love my current ride it does not sport a name or any other … goofy anthropomorphic stuff. Anyway my ex husband names his cars and everybody knows he’s a nut case.
Vehicles should be named. My 2003 Subaru Outback is Duchess; my 1993 Honda Civic is Marguerite. Both run like tops. Our vintage Ferguson TEA-20 tractor, Emma, runs with dignity despite having been rolled and abandoned for years (we’re working on fixing that neglect). On the other hand, my husband’s nameless S-10 runs like the expletives we hurl at it, regardless how much money we pour into it.
Boats are named; horses are named. Why not cars? Can you imagine “The Night Before Christmas” without named transport? Where’s the charm in that??
If it’s worth buying and taking care of, it deserves a name. Don’t most of us talk to our cars when they are having mechanical trouble (especially while we are driving)? How can your talk to a car if you don’t address it with a name? Even ships have names, don’t they?
Yes. If it’s worth buying and maintaining, it deserves a name. If my car starts making new noises while I’m driving, I talk to it. How can one talk to a car, if it doesn’t have a name?
I’m on the side of naming your car, although, like a cat, you can give it name, but you shouldn’t really say it much… at least not to the cat. But it does have some value in being able to reference the vehicle when speaking to other humans that know you already.
I started naming the cars I owned when I got my first Saturn in '93. We like to call it “joining the cult.” It was a gold SL2 so I called it “Goldie.” When I traded that in 1997 for an SC1, I called it “Blue,” partly because LeAnn Rimes had that hit song of the same name at the time.
Blue, unfortunately, (see, how I can make that reference so easily?) met an untimely passing only 5 weeks after I took possession, in the infamous “HumpMan’s Midnight Easter Bunny Hop.” The replacement was another SC1, but with a Gray interior instead of Tan, so I called it, “Gray.”
[The Easter Bunny Hop was an unfortunate flipping of my car at about 50mph early on an Easter Sunday morning in order to avoid: a rabbit. I figure it must have been the Easter Bunny.]
My current Saturn is a 2003 Vue in Orange, so I named it, “Clementine” since that is also the name of a variety of the colorful fruit.
So, yes, I think cars should have names, just as dogs and cats have names. But perhaps the more significant question: “Should cars have gender?” I have been careful to use the “it” pronoun in this discussion, but is is acceptable to refer to cars as “hims” and “hers?”
That is the question.
My husband is the original owner of a 1966 TR4A (a British bucket of bolts as my husband often tells me). She runs beautifully and is lovingly cared for. When we had 3 cars and a one car garage, she got the garage. When she had some restoration work done a few years ago, we went to visit her weekly in the car hospital. She is appropriately called “The Queen” because she gets (and deserves) royal treatment.
Donna
Depends on the vehicle. I don’t see vehicles as he or she–not to say that they don’t have personalities and quirks like humans and animals. The 85 EXP ended up called SCREECH, as so many animals and bad drivers seemed attracted to running out and trying to hit it. The 89 Ranger was just THE TRUCK, though much trusted, well taken care of, and still much missed. The prairie tan 97 Ranger proved unworthy of a name other than GOLDEN GUZZLING GAS HOG. The 98 Contour SE, is simply MY CAR. The 2000 Contour SVT is MY SVT. These names carry very territorial implied messages to the spouse to never touch my vehicles again.
Bua Glas.
It is Gaelic for “The triumph of the green”
My car? Why, A British Racing Green 1972 Triumph TR6, of course!
You should always name your car so you have someone to talk to while waiting for the tow truck.
Cadillacjeff
I have named only one car and that was a ways back (70’s). I had a '68 Volvo 123 GT and named him Victor. Seemed fitting.
I’d never thought about naming cars until I went for a road trip this summer. I named the 93 Toyota station wagon “Yoko” before realizing that “she” has a stick shift… but the name stuck. I actually had to take her in to get the exhaust worked on while I was on that trip, so it was nice being able to say “we have to go get Yoko from the shop.”
Once I got back home, my dad decided it was a good name and that we should name the new Civic, too, since names reduce confusion among the three cars at our house. The Civic is now known as “The Secretary of Transportation,” or just Mr. Secretary, which is a nod to the TV show Futurama (the Secretary of Transportation is a headless zombie that carries Nixon’s Head around).
Also, it’s helpful if you have someone visiting with the same make of car, then you can distinguish them as Mr. Secretary and Calculon.
Absolutely! I have had several cars over the years…All Toyota’s. First Corolla’s then as my income increased (and my girth) I moved up to the Camary’s. All my Camary’s have been BLUE! Hence the name BIRD…For Blue BIRD of Happines and Financial BURDen…Thought you might laugh at this. plf
A soulless mechanical device? Tell that to my '76 Pacer. It had a soul made straight out of Hades! It had a name which no one would dare utter lest my aunt, the Mother Superior, would here and banish us to the sidewalk, where we would kneel in short pants on the hottest day in July.
Yes, the beast had a name, a personality and an agenda. It had a particular dislike for donut gaskets and exhaust manifolds in general. But it had a wonderful appetite for gasoline, oil and any other consumable it could semi-contain.
Thankfully, Kakhi, my '01 Pathfinder, has graced my life and put all of those torrid memories behindme. She has a healthy appetite for petro as well, but she uses it wisely.
Name your car? Yeah right! Maybe I’ll name all the inanimate objects around my house.
Let’s see- my favorite pair of shoes- Fred and Ethel, my toaster- Mr. Sparks, my coffeemaker- Mr. Bean, …
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My wife has a lovely red 2002 Thunderbird roadster she calls her “Baby Bird” because she seldom takes it from its nest in our garage.
I had a car buddy (who favored Studebakers, Saabs, Borgwards, and other automotive oddities) who once sniffed derisively at my big RWD 1996 Cadillac Fleetwood and forever christened it the “Cadisaurus” for its ample proportions–a name the grande dame of the open road (and double parking spaces) still wears proudly.
CadillacJeff
Oh yes. All my cars and motorcycles have had names. Currently, I have a Toyota ECHO that’s green and named Frog, A Toyota RAV4 that is the Run Amok Vole (get it? RAV?)and a Suzuki V Strom 1000 named Earl (The bike is Grey, so it’s for Earl Grey)
To have a care is to have a whole body experience. A person and his/her car are a unity! I call my red Altima “Scooter” because she does. My last Grand Carivan, which I loved, was called “Linus Limo” because I was always carting people around due to its being able to hold 7 people at at time.
I’ve had some cars I’ve called Pieceashit, but it wasn’t a name just an opinion.
Some cars just need to be named. I had a green 76 pinto hatch back that I called my “pinto bean” back when I first graduated from high school. It fit the car. Man, I miss that little thing, great gas mileage! Next it was on to the “getto cruzer”, full size chevy caprice classic, then the Mazda 323 standard on the floor, my “WeWe” (and it was)a tiny thing that I could turn around with ease in a two car gargage. On to the Mercery Topaz (this car was a dog!) but was call the “paz”. I had a newer Honda Accord that I named “Rhonda the Honda.” And my current love, my 98 Mazda 626, that I call “DA”. I got my husband into the routine now.
His last two cars, an old duster or because of its shape the “ruster”, and an olds 98 the “lead sled”. His newer Lumina he has not named simply becuase the newer cars, he feels, do not lend themselves to naming like the older cars do. Oh well, I’m working on that.