The earliest incarnations of the Datsun Fairlady–back in the '60s–were known in The US as the SPL-310 and the SPL-311. If “SPL” was supposed to be an abbreviation for “special”, then they should have been prosecuted for misrepresenting that awful bomb of a car.
Trust me…I know. My brother owned one.
Gremlin, and hornet come to mind.
RE. Ford Probe, Ford acknowledge misgivings about the name, used it anyway. Glad they did not go with what some in Ford wanted-Mustang.
Well, even though AMC had kicked the clearly-superior technology of Hudson to the curb, their purchase of Hudson’s intellectual property clearly gave them the right to use the Hornet name on a vaguely warmed-over, totally-pathetic Rambler model.
As to “Gremlin”, I have to assume that those AMC folks had a rather ironic sense of humor.
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As for the Studebaker Dictator. Dictators were admired by a sizeable portion of the German-American and Italian- American ethnic groups in this country in the 30s. German -Americans were the second largest population group in America and there was a lot of sentiment among many groups for staying out of WWII.
My next colonoscopy is next year
I go every 3 years, as per the doctors
Seems kind of frequent, but I’d rather be safe than sorry
As for car names . . . I’m sure some of you guys remember this one
The car doesn’t make me think of some blood-thirsty carnivore, though
Being that I run, I always find the Nissan Sprinter name odd. Almost implies to me that I should not be driving a car, rather sprinting from point A to B.
I have never seen one, I believe Mercedes-Benz still uses the “Sprinter” name for its delivery/utility vans.
You are right, it is the MB, I guess it just looks like a Nissan to me; makes it even worse 
I remember bringing an entertainment center home, strapped into my pickup truck, on a mildy gusty day, I cannot imagine how these handle in the breezes.
Look OK to me. Functional, which is the important item.
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No worse than this:
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I wouldn’t argue that “Insight” is not a ridiculous name for a car.
;-]
Considering what kind of cars they were (there were two distinct “Insight” models), and who they were marketed to, I can think of much worse names.
The first generation Insight was rather revolutionary. I often wish I had bought one. One of my colleagues still drives his first generation Insight. The second version wasn’t all that insightful; it was just a less-reliable clone of the Prius, but it was marketed to the same group of consumers, so I can see why Honda went with it.
Yes, the Datsun Fairlady roadsters. I don’t recall anyone having major problems. Of course they were sort of Japanese MGBs and many people seemed to have trouble with MGs.
Trust me…MGBs were paragons of reliability in comparison with the Datsun Fairlady//SPL-310/SPL-311.
They rusted out w/in 1-2 years, their assembly quality was atrocious, and certain aspects of the basic design made it somewhere between difficult and impossible to access the parts that needed to be replaced.
After ~3 years, my brother seriously considered pushing it off a cliff.
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HA. My worse car for reliability was a 73 Toyota (RWD). After about 25k miles, I was on my second differential, one cylinder had low compression, one of the poles on the alternator was dead, and the body was showing rust from the inside.
Pontiac built the Aztek just for you, Bill.
Did anyone mention Aztek? I don’t think so. It’s @BillRussell’s favorite car, to doubt. 
The Ford Aspire didn’t aspire to much; ironically, the Kias built today seem to be better.