The other day I passed through a one horse town in IL and the local body shop has an old Dodge Power Wagon sitting there.
I always thought that was one of the coolest car names badged.
So my thought was, Power Wagon, Mercury Marauder, Jeep Commando.
Who has the neatest, coolest badge?
Plymouth Fury?
Ferrari California.
Lamborghini, any model, they all have cool names. I am partial to the name Aventador though. But if you restrict me to domestic models, then it has to be Avanti.
Lamborghinis are all named after legendary bulls from the world of bull-fighting. Those of us in The US are almost always unaware of these bulls.
And, even though I am a lifelong Studebaker fan, I have to wonder whether “Avanti”–which simply means, “forward”–is really the coolest badge.
For whatever reason - perhaps because I’m a pessimist by nature - I started thinking of the worst. Like the Ford “Aspire” - I have no idea why anyone decided to try to advertise that it’s only aspiring to be a car.
The the Chevy Nova always cracked me up - its kind of cool in English. The funny part was if you tried to market it to Spanish speaking folks.
If I have to be an optimist and go for the coolest, I’ll go for the car that only almost existed: Tucker Torpedo
The coolest name that I can think of for a vehicle is the Corvette Stingray. Some of my least favorite names are the “Ford Probe”, “Datsun Fairlady Z” and “Mercury Montclair.”
“the Chevy Nova always cracked me up - its kind of cool in English. The funny part was if you tried to market it to Spanish speaking folks.”
Cigroller–I can’t believe how many people–like you–believe that fable.
Take a look at:
Regarding the Tucker, while most people call it the Tucker Torpedo, the official name–as far as I can determine–was, Tucker 48.
That being said, I do think that the Tucker had a lot of potential, and it is a shame that the entire enterprise came to such a quick end. Yes, it had its flaws, but if it had gone through a full cycle of development, it is very likely that its flaws could have been conquered.
In no particular order and for no other reason than for the images they conjure in my head, my favorites are:
Satellite
Capri
Zephyr
Mark III
Marauder
Galaxie 500
Riviera
Laguna
One of my least favorites is the Gremlin. It sounds like it comes off the assembly line with “gremlins” built in. Which, in fact, it DID!
The Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust naturally
VDC, I’ll save my pedantic side for threads with OBD II codes in them.
@ the same mountainbike
Funny thing about the Gremlin. It was a dumpy looking car but the Gremlin X did not look bad. IMOO
Lancia Beta Zagato
@FoDaddy…the name is cool but the vehicle looks like it was built by 3 drunk guys in the dark.
REO Speedwagon
@missleman that’s because it was
Hornet . . . don’t get stung
Swinger . . . not exactly the healthiest lifestyle
Firebird . . . . or was that Firechicken?
Thunderbird . . . makes me think of the cheap booze
Excel . . . exactly what did it excel at?
Duster . . . isn’t that what cowboys wear?
Demon . . .well, that’s actually a pretty cool name
The comment about the Ford Aspire made me think of what the Ford Festiva lived on in the UK as up till the late 90’s, the Kia Pride.
In the truck world, numbers are cool. Just say f150
Toyota tried to do the same and cash in on this idea with the T100, which was OK…but where where do they to go from here but run into Ford with bigger models. GM just added an extra zero. 1500 vs 150 and jumped over Ford with their other models.
The most ridiculous truck name IMO, is Super Duty…huh ? Sounds like something Superman would own.
Initially Toyota got hung up naming eveything early here with a “C”, Corolla, Camry, Cressida…then probably ran out of names.
It seemed to me anyway that Toyota, Honda and Nissan wanted to break out of the Asian sounding names for their upscale models so the wealthier among us could pretend they were buying American name plates… Asian companies got the message. Lexus, Acura and Infinity.