I’ve always named our cars and trucks. We merge with the vehicle and become its brain and eyes when we drive it, so why not give it some personality, too? Our latest vehicle, a black Buick Rendesvous SUV, I named Angus because it is big and stocky like a black Angus steer and we live in Texas. I named the first car my husband brought to our relationship, a Ford LTV, “Spook” because it was white, made creepy noises and seemed to vanish in parking lots. In between them we’ve had several other cars and truks all named. Why not? Life is what you make it and I like to make it as much fun as possible.
My comment is less about naming a car and the fact that cars really do have personality! I’m convinced VWs are the worst. Had a Beetle that ran like a champ…that is unless my girlfriend was riding in the car. Invariably, the car would have a malfunction when she was in the car.
The car was JEALOUS! I know it and have only been further convinced based on years of different experiences with them.
Naming a car is like having a funeral. We don’t do it for THEM, we do it for US!
I use the Engine size to name my cars. If it has a Manly V8 Engine, Gets a man name. If it has a unisex V6, It can get a wimpy boys name or a over powering womans name. If it has a girlie 4 cylinder, then it gets a girls name.
I have named every one of my cars…like others have said above, they carry us around everywhere in all weather. The names come from different places: my first car came with a weird rejected vanity plate RKR9 so we named her Rosalia K. Rodriguez (aka Rosie). We had her 11 years. After that we tended towards the alliterative: Teri Tercel; Sally Sentra. Later came our Subaru Forester who our 2 year old dubbed “Big Blue” since it seemed so big compared to our other cars. Now I drive “Fernanda” (the adventuress), my beautiful 14 year old faded red Honda CR-V…favorite car ever! I do think I take better care of them when they are named. In 30 years, we have had 5 cars total.
They get genders more than names. Based on their personalities. Most of these vehicles belong to a man.
Lets see the list of the cars I know…
1997 carolla - male, The Carolla, usually said with discust.
1987 mersedes diesel wagon - is female, commonly refered to as The Benz
1995 Jimmy - is male, and called Jimmy… he has an attitude problem
1999 BMW E36 M3 - Is “M” and female.
1980 BMW 6 something - was called Grandpa
2000 toyota carolla - male, commonly called “my carolla” to the tune of "my sharona"
1989 isuzu pickup in bright blue, - she is Suzi the izuzu (yes spelled wrong on purpose), and she gets called by name a lot due to the peptalks it takes to get over a drawbridge on days where the milege is over 200 miles on the tank of gas cause thats when the silt in the gas starts messing with the fuel filter, yes it is a new filter, its just the gas gage doesnt work, so betwen 200 and 250 miles you should get gas, not really sure how far she will take me but who really wants to risk it.
There are more… so many more.
i have never understood people who name their cars (or any other inanimate objects for that matter). anything without a heart (a.k.a. “alive”) is a THING not a HE or a SHE. just makes absolutely no sense to me. 
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It might help to remember that the B29 that carried the atom bomb to Hiroshima was named the Enola Gay, after the pilot’s mother. A woman’s name can denote strength as much as a man’s name.
1stCav, thank you sinerely for your military service.
I don’t name cars, but my wife has a habit of giving nicknames to animals and things dear to her. Our little terrier dog crossbreed is called the “fuzzball”. She named the 1977 Dodge Colt the “pee pot” because of its small size and low power, her silver 1994 Nissan Sentra the “silver bullet”.
A narcotics detective friend named their 1969 Plymouth Valiant “Old Betsy” because of its reliability. That’s a carryover from the horse and buggy days.
My first car was a '69 Plymouth Valient - sky blue paint with about as much shine left as primer. All my other friends and family were driving little foreign compacts at the time, so I felt like I was driving Battlestar Galactica. My friends christened my car “Babe the Blue Ox”.
My husband bought a pickup truck, a stripped down fixer-upper, about 15 years ago. I think it was a 74’ GMC - I try not to remember too often as it was a pretty expensive and futile process. We named it Lazaro (Lazarus) because we were resurrecting it. The name stuck - we ended up resurrecting it on a regular basis. After 5 years in which we spent more time underneath it than actually driving it, we sold it to a friend - who called us from the next highway exit to be rescued. There were no more resurrections after that - Lazaro was unceremoniously taken to the nearest junkyard for burial.
Giving a vehicle a name makes it an accepted part of the family. It doesn´t necessarily mean you will take better care of it - do you treat your brother better because he has a name?
As for the male/female issue - since the word used for vehicles happen to be masculine in the Latin languages (Spanish in our case - el carro, el vehículo, el automóbil, el camión), my husband tends to give them masculine names.
We name all our cars. I’m an English professor, so my grey Prius is named Dorothea, after the do-gooder heroine of George Eliot’s Middlemarch. My daughter drives an elderly Honda Accord named Stella (we’re not sure why). Years ago, we let our 2 year old son name a green Jeep Cherokee, and he came up with Humphrey Humphrey Humphrey. Then there was Eric the Red Jeep… when we were living in France we had a red Renault 4 called Rufus, and then a Fiat Panda named Tiphonse. My husband’s tiny VW GTI doesn’t exactly have a name, but my son calls it the Clown Car, because that’s what it looks like when 4 people get out of it. Sometimes I’m even tempted to name rental cars (like the newer Panda in Italy last summer that I thought of as Chummy). We realize this is absurd but we just can’t help ourselves.
I’ve named my cars since a 1972 Honda Civic Coupe which states, “Oh, it doesn’t have automatic transmission, air conditioning, and a 400-horsepower engine. But which would you rather have? Automatic transmission, air conditioning, and a 400-horsepower engine? Or Michelle and Tammy and Allison? The Honda Coupe. Under $1,700. It makes a lot of sense.” And the names are always female. I drive 'em hard and I take good care of them. And, except for a 65 TBird and a 74 Gremlin, they’ve all been Hondas.
I have never named a new one, they are just called by their model: the Corvair, the Bug, the Bus. But the odd ones get names. The '54 MGTF is Florida because the three yellow letters in the black California license plate are FLA. The '67 Riley Elf is Emma because the previous owner in South Carolina told us she was named after her emerald green color. But that’s it. I think it comes down to: we name the keepers.
I have only named one of my cars, my first car, which was a 1958 Porsche 356A coupe. It was shaped like a whale, so I named it Moby Porsche. And I agree with the person who said that some cars have “soul”, and that Alfa Romeos are one of them. I discovered “soul” when I met the 1958 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Veloce Spider (convertible) belonging to my college boyfriend. It was robin’s egg blue, so of course it was named Robin. (The Porsche, by the way, did not have soul.)
My daughter is now 22 and has named all 3 cars she has ever driven. In high school, she had a bright blue jeep wrangler with a black soft top (that she took off religiously every spring) that she named Petrey. I thought it was because that thing held gym clothes and leftover lunches fermenting all the time - but she’s no fan of science and didn’t name it after a Petri dish. She said it just looked like a Petrey. Several years later, her younger brother inherited the jeep (and never called it by name) and she went to college with a 2000 red Pontiac Sunfire. She said it looked fast, so she named it Krypton. I’ve inherited that car and never call it by name - sometimes I call it the Red Rocket, though. She transferred to a different college and took a black Hyundai Tuscon with her because it snows there and she feels safer in a front wheel drive higher up off the ground. She named that one Jacoby. She spent the year previous to that living with two black girls and she learned lots of new names - this one she thought was appropriate for the car. Love your show!
NASA engineers seem OK with naming a vehicle. The current Mars rover is named “Curiosity” is referred to as a female. Here is a recent quote from NASA, as reported by CNET News:
“We’ve been on the surface of Mars for about a month and Curiosity continues to be very healthy and continues to surprise us with how well she’s doing everything we ask of her,” said Mission Manager Mike Watkins.
How can you NOT name your car? All cars have personalities, and the sooner you make friends with them, the better off you’ll be. But I think different cars have different genders. My first car, a 1964 Chevy BelAir, was named Thendis, an androgynous name, because I never did decide on its gender. (Thendis was a misprint for Theodis, I learned later, but it seemed suitably ambiguous at the time.) I had a happy relationship with Claudia Jean, a two-toned Toyota Corolla. Likewise for Stella, a light-colored Chevy that I proposed to name “Blanche,” until my husband reminded me that Blanche was unstable, and we should name the car after Stella, who was more reliable. We had a black-and-tan Sebring named Guinnes (for obvious reasons); a Sterling named Rochester (suitably British and elegant); an Audi A6 named Katarina, after skater Katerina Witt who, like our car, was beautiful but had a low, wide center of gravity; and Jane Honda (again obvious). Currently we drive a 1994 Volvo (the staid Lars) and my zippy, turbo-charged Joan Jetta.
The only car that ever caused major problems was Rochester, and I submit that it was because we were not on a first-name basis with him. (Couldn’t have been my husband’s annoying penchant for buying untried, first-model year cars.) So I ask again, given this track record, how can you not name your car?
I’ve never named a car. And I’ve owned cars fort 45 years+.
However, since this thread has reached 70 pages, allow me to suggest that we let it die a natural death.
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I don’t think it has to be a female. I have 3 cars, Rozie Too (female) she was my first car she is a 1992 Ford Tempo GLS and is a show car believe it or not, a 2002 Subaru WRX (male) named Revolution (Rev for short, play on words there) and a 1970 Dodge Polara convertible which is nothing, and doesn’t have a name and I think I might leave it that way…
and I am female, but I have known males that named their cars.
I had a car I called Bob, but that’s because the shocks were bad.