Sure you should name your car. Or any vehicle. I had a 1969 Vespa named “Virgil”. I spent nearly as much time picking myself up as I did riding it! It was replaced by “Benjamin”, a 1979 BMW motorcycle. Benjamin has never crashed (except when my brother-in-law hit a dog) because it costs too much to repair! Virgil was passed on to our youngest son to ride at college but Virgil got “killed” by a hit and run driver. Better than hemlock, I guess. Benjamin still travels around.
I heard your program the other day about naming your car, and I wanted to reply to this because my dad had an old truck he called old Betsy. He really enjoyed that old truck and took good care of her, but I have no idea why he chose to name this truck; he had 3 trucks after this one and none of them were named. I would never bother to name a car, but I have no problem with those that do. I really gave it no thought until your program, and decided to put in my 2 cents about car naming.
Absolutely!
I learned to drive just a few years ago (I’m in my early 50’s) and my friend taught me in his car, which I subsequently bought from him. It was a 1993 Mazda 626 which I immediately named Baby Boo. My friend was aghast. He had never named his car in the 10 years he owned it. Well, ever since I had Baby Boo, he always asked about her. By name. He has since named his Honda Accord Hal (for the on-board voice prompted GPS)
Baby Boo gave her life for me when an SUV came out of nowhere. I walked away without a scratch, but done she was.
I have since had a 1985 Olds Cutlass Brougham - The Dutchess, a 1986 Toyota Corolla named Sistah TC and currently have a 1998 Ford Escort named Camille or Cammie for short.
I ALWAYS say Good Morning when I start to drive and thank you when I arrive safely at my destination.
And yes, I do believe that insentient beings are beings and do have souls.
I think every car deserves a name, but not everyone is attached to their cars as I am. All my cars have a special meaning to me. I have a 92 Toyota Celica GT that I’ve named Eleanor. Shes actually Eleanor the third, the past two were a 92 Olds Cutlass Ciera with a 3800 supercharges swapped in and a 95 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP, both totaled by people that need to learn how to drive. Funny thing is I was using the name Eleanor before the 2000 Gone in Sixty Seconds, I got it from the original. My other 2 cars are a 2000 VW Golf I’ve named Mary (as in Bloody Mary) and an 88 Nissan Hardbody 4x4 I’ve named Dixie. Like I said every person differs and I’m kind off odd anyway, heck Eleanor doesn’t leave the garage if the weathers bad.
I am flabbergasted there is even discussion regarding this issue: I have named every car I’ve ever had, and of course they have gender!
PJ (for Pride & Joy): 1957 Mustang Red T-Bird
Horace: 1967 Porche 912
Olaf: 1970 Volvo Station Wagon
Willard (after his battery): 1974 Volvo Station Wagon
Dottie Hopper (1976 bright green Datsum B210 with black stripe)
U2 (after the plane, not the rock band) 1982(?) black Nissan 200SX Turbo
Claris (my favorite)1998 black & white Nissan Maxima (manual tranny) whose vanity tag was Moof (only old Macintosh people will understand). Claris gave his life to save mine when some brainless idiot turned in front of me and I had no time to brake. Claris dropped his engine, crumpled his front end and the passenger compartment was unharmed. Thanks, Nissan! RIP, Claris!
Hi, for Hi Ho Silver (yeah - stupid) 2005 Silver Nissan Maxima (manual tranny)
My husbands’ Nissan Frontier is Barney and his Toyota Prius is Ziggy.
I also talk to my cars…
I have never named my cars. However, when I bought my bright red Jeep Cherokee Sport in 1997, my brother-in-law named it Blackie, and the name has stuck…
Martha MacIlvaine
Waldoboro, Maine
In the late Eighties, my Dad had mid-sixties decrepit Dodge Dart or the Chrysler equivalent that he used for car-pooling to his rocket-scientist job, named, “The Blue Bullet”. His Speedster was just called, “The Beetle.”
My sister had a motor-home named, “Marge”.
Absolutely! Boats get named don’t they! And while you are at it big vehicles should have their Port of Residence printed on the stern (trunk I mean.) Our 31’ RV is called the “Tsunami” because no way are you going to stop it once it gets going! Our Civic is called the “Toad” because it is often Towed behind the Tsunami! The boat is called the “Dina Moe Humm”
Rob (From the Conch Republic)
Boy, logging-in was a hassle. I called my mechanic Guido, and even he couldn’t fix it. So what’s new with that I ask? He’s been working on my cars for years, that’s why each year I buy new ones.
Anyway, about the Fiat, you have a place in heaven for keeping that going! You should be proud…but not too much.
I think it’s name should be “Moratelli,” because it moves like a rock and there’s always “more to tell yah!”
Why not? We name our cats, homes, weapons, boats, and even children.
YES you should name your car. My 2005 Honda S2000 is named Road Goddess.
You need to call your car something. Even if it’s “the car” that’s kind of a name. If you do name it, it should be named after driving it for a little while and really getting a feel for the car. And every driver may have a different name for it. For example, my sister named her Subaru Forester Capirnicus. My mother calls him Nic for short, my sister calls him Capi and I like to call him by his full name. And having a name for your car will make it easier to refer to. All my friends have named their cars and refer to them by their names and everyone knows what car is being talked about.
She has a cruel sense of humor.
Her name was Fleur and when she was in a good mood she purred like a kitten. She was a little rough around the edges but she smelled good and when she was compliant she gave a good ride. That counts for something. Not without her own peculiarities, to be sure, but sometimes that’s part of the charm. She got me through some hard times and never gave out on me when I really needed her.
1990 Dodge Ram Van. Painted yellow with housepaint. A little rust showing through. When I first bought her to be my farmers’ market van, I thought that perhaps I should name her Lemon due to her hue and her questionable temperament. But with the double entendre of vehicles and lemons, I thought better of it. She never forgave me for the thought, or else it was prophecy.
She hasn’t run much in the past year, though I’ve poured money into her like she was a demanding gold-digger. I talked sweetly to her, cooing her name, "Fleur, please. . . " to no avail. She has a temper and she can read minds. When I cooed she could hear through my voice, read my real thought of “Lemon.”
Upon the last trip to the car doctor, I had finally decided that this would be it. I would get her running and send her on her way. Do whatever you have to do, I had said, just get her going. Which they did. For six miles.
I got her home and tried to drive her one more time, and she became cantankerous with me, pouty, and with her final temper tantrum, died on me as I was driving to teach class, pushing time to the last minute as usual. She spit and died at almost the crest of a hill. I cursed. I thought “Lemon!”, unable to help myself. I tried to at least push her off the road, but pushing a 1-ton utility van off the road on an incline is not such an easy thing to do. Fortunately, I live in a place where strangers come to your rescue. A man pulls up in a little red truck, turns off his truck, and gets out. “If I can just get her off the road,” I say, and before I finish the sentence we’re pushing together. “Where you headed?” he asks. To the high school, I say. “Get in.”
His name is Lucky. I kid you not. Lucky has a lazy eye and a large cup of cold coffee he’s still sipping. I guess today’s my Lucky day.
He drops me off, still sweating more than I’d like to before going into my class full of high schoolers. High schoolers get nervous around sweat if it’s not sport-related. I don’t know why that is.
I get her towed back to the farm and there she sits in my field next to the pumpkins and the compost pile for about 3 months until one day my landlady says “I can’t stand it anymore. Get it out of here and until it goes, you’ll owe me $5 a day for having to look at it.” $5 A DAY??? I gulp. I say okay.
I have this way about me that says if you ignore it, maybe it’ll go away. While I know that to be a fallacy in reasoning, I still find myself adhering to that philosophy sometimes. But Fleur did not go away. She just sat there, a glorified shed, holding 2 x 4’s, my seeding wheel, old tractor oil that I needed to recycle, about 50 pounds of cover crop seed, and some fluorescent lights for the greenhouse. For $5 a day.
The day finally came. I wanted to check it off my list. I called the man who’d offered to take her away the day he came and towed her with AAA. That was the day I was ready to just drive her off the cliff, but since I’d just sunk $600 into her, I thought at least I could try to get some money from her. Not one person had answered the ad I placed, so I called him back. Come and get her. We’re through.
The day he was scheduled to come, I was cleaning her out. Sweeping the seeds out, getting all the old farmers’ markets reports out, rearranging 2 x 4’s in another place where they’ll sit for a while until I need them. For a lark I decided to just turn the key. Just to listen to her not start. But this is where Fleur’s cruel sense of humor comes in: she started right up. After having sat for 4 months. After breaking down on me on the way to school. After $600 of work that didn’t work. She purred a little athsmatically, but she was running. What could I do besides laugh? I just sat there in the driver’s seat, laughing and laughing.
Fleur, you got the last laugh. I’ll never so much as think of calling another of my rides “Lemon.” I promise.
I think that naming cars is just ridiculous.
What’s the point, anyway?
Kris
1 Like
If you feel a compelling enough connection to your car. . . name away. It will only make that bond stronger. In the mid 90s, I drove an 84 Plymouth Reliant K, and it’s name was scrappy. (take off the “s” and it’s just plain . … hmm, well, you get it)
I have a 1996 F-250 Pickup with a 7.3 L Powerstroke diesel and 143,000 miles.
I named it “Jim Brown” because it’s old, black and still tough as nails!!
Dear Click and Clack,.
I have always named my cars, and since I am of Greek descent - they all got Greek names.
For example - my old Saturn is named Agamennon, my daughter’s Neon is Athena, and my new Honda CRV is named Pericles, However our VW van was called Ludwig - but I’m sure that there is a Greek root to that name somewhere.
When I bought the Honda, I informed my sister-in-law of the purchase and described the car to her. I also mentioned that I had named him Pericles. I did this because frequently he/Pericles needed encouragement to go that extra mile to wherever we were going. So, you see this is not just a "chick-thing.? It?s also a "rooster-thing.?
Apparently, that part of the conversation “…I named the car Pericles…” did not register with her, but she did get the rest of the Honda info, or so I thought.
A few days later, she went to a Honda dealership, in Seattle, and asked to see the Honda Pericles that her brother-in-law had just purchased.
The dealer told her that there was no Honda Pericles, but she insisted that’s what I had purchased.
After feeling somewhat foolish, she went home and called me and stated that there is no Honda Pericles. I agreed and told her that model was a CRV, and that I had named him ?Pericles.?
Well, needless to say that little experience made the rounds of family-dom and friend-dom and a good laugh was had by all, especially me, and also my sister-in-law.
Thanks for providing entertainment and oh, yes, knowledge as to what people should do when
their beloved cars need to go to emergency and get their health taken care of. That’s why cars are named - they?re part of the family) -
You always make my Saturdays, and for that I thank you again.
Sincerely,
John Coutsoubos
Battle Ground, Washington
For years I’d named my car. My first car was a 1964 carver convertible, named by a friend, Nadar’s Revenge. The only new car I ever own was called Deacon Blue(…“I need a name when I lose…”). This was followed by a succession of “beaters” named Love Machine, B-52, known as the Bomber, The Tank (1983 Dodge station wagon) and The Pansy Tank (1993 Taurus station-wagon). Now I’m driving the car of my dreams, 2001 PT Cruiser. After a year and a half I have yet to name it, nor can I get the AC to run. Maybe I need a name for it. Any suggestions?
Of course cars should be named. Why not? We name ships. My 1989 Ford Escort station wagon was named Dick. I bought Dick in 1996 to drive back and forth to work rather than put miles on my Camaro (named Cammie) Dick was the best car. He went on camping trips and all sorts of adventures. We’d always yell, “Run Dick Run!” Dick’s death was a real heartbreak. He was hit in the rear by an inattentive driver.
When I bought my 2001 Toyota Tacoma I immediately new I wanted to name her. I wanted a name that reflected how driving her made me feel. I chose Calliope after the steam organ musical instrument usually used at carnivals, circuses, etc. I felt that it reflected how she made me feel like singing and driving her was like being on a carnival ride!
Naming your vehicle is perfectly natural in my eyes and a lot of fun!