When a car was only sold in the US it was pretty easy to ensure that the name didn’t mean something inappropriate, but if you sell it around the world you have hundreds of languages to worry about. And you have to decide whether or not to translate the name. The Japanese seem to like English names on cars. Even numbers present problems. You will seldom find a 4 in a product name if it is to be sold in Asia. In Japanese (and some Chinese languages, possibly) the number 4 is pronounced the same as the word ‘death’. 4 is considered a very unlucky number there and is often skipped over.
Chrysler has a history of using numbers for their cars. No problem there. And I agree with @MarkM. Trying to find a name that doesn’t mean something bad in a foreign language is difficult. The Yaris is called the Vitz in Japan. But it will never be called that in most of the rest of the world. Vitz means joke in contemporary German. Would you really buy a joke of a car?
Quite a few people thought Ford blew it with ‘Probe’. Not a great name, but it didn’t bother me. I’m still bugged by made-up names that sound bad. I still hate ‘Camry’ after all these years.
Sometimes circumstances require a company to change the name of the car…or even the company itself. Jaguar use to be known as the SS Jaguar. But WWII kinda forced Jaguar to drop the SS from the name.
And if Jag hadn’t dropped it, Chevy wouldn’t have been able to pick it up. There are rare cases of two companies using the same name without permission. Enzo Ferrari was not happy about the Pontiac GTO. Usually when a name gets used again you can track corporate ownership back to the previous owners. The new Buick Encore is a rare exception. I don’t know how GM got permission to use a name last used by Renault.
If you are shopping by car name, you are lost, remember the name has little to do with the car itself. Now I like the Chrysler 300, Is a galaxy 500 better? Not necessarily.
My brother from LA owns a new Chrysler 200 “hardtop” convertible and he was in for a visit back in May. I don’t know much about the rest of the vehicle but I loved watching the top go through the motions when it was let up and down. It reminded me of my Uncle Don’s '57 Ford hardtop convertible which fascinated me as a child.
Good luck trying to keep them all straight anyway. I gave up. Numbers or names, its just as confusing. What the automakers don’t seem to realize is that a cow pie by any other name is still a cow pie, and a rose is a rose. So call it a D-215-3 or a dingle, I don’t care. Won’t make me buy or not buy any more or less. But put a pearl paint job that doesn’t shine on a $60,000 car is stupid.
“Quite a few people thought Ford blew it with ‘Probe’. Not a great name, but it didn’t bother me.”
And then GM blatantly ripped off Ford’s idea with the Pontiac Vibe! 
The number-names are nothing but a rehash of old names for the domestics. Back in the day domestics were named with numbers also.
I do not know how all the numbers related to domestics but imports, typically European makes relate to engine size or body style.
For example older Volvos like the 245 meant 2 second production design, 4 four cylinder, 5 five door as in station wagon.
I agree that the numbers can be boring and mean nothing. A bunch of guys sitting in a meeting room more interested in fishing or golfing took a quick vote so they could leave early.
Put me in the group who really does not care what the vehicle is called. How it suits my needs and how it functions is all I care about. I will admit that Fiat X/19 did seem to fit.
Wow never inserted sexual connotations into car names, but my eyes are opened, sadly so, remember a photography teacher recalling a girl that could not put the proper curly ending on an ice cream soft serve cone, failing the end of a proverbial reference to a breast he said.
Yes DQ (a Minnesota company) is very particular with how the curly Q thing is but when I did non-DQ soft serve, you could just let the end flop wherever. I always wondered why the car hops were a little red faced when handed the cones to deliver to the cars. Especially the large cones.
“And then GM blatantly ripped off Ford’s idea with the Pontiac Vibe! ;-)”
I’m a little confused here because the “Vibe” was based on the Toyota Matrix.
Camry isn’t just a made up word…well, not completely. Remember the old Toyota Crown from the 70’s? Well the new updated sedan was named after that car. The Japanese word for crown is kanmuri. Say it quickly and Americanize the pronunciation and it becomes Camry.
Um, “Probe”, “Vibe”, get it? If you’re going to be in Mass this weekend, you can swing by the Mens health car show for a free tune up that may include the probe.
Volvo, that was actually the Fiat X1/9, as in one ninth. And yeah, the name really fit. It was about one ninth of a real car.
The car was actually fun to drive, like driving a street legal go-cart. I test drove one in my younger days. I went tearing through the gears, winding out the motor, and felt like I was doing 100mph… of course, I was only doing 40. Then when I tried to get out, the door pull broke off in my hand (brand new car). Cheap potmetal casting.
Just some trivia but one time at a service school it was pointed out that the word “Subaru” is generally never pronounced correctly.
They’re usually called SOO - bah - roos with the accent on the first syllable.
They’re actually Soo - BAR - ooze with accent on the middle.
The best mechanic I’ve ever worked with referred to them as something else and his delivery of the term after hacking and spitting to the side used to crack me up every time.
To use a polite (?) term on this forum, he referred to them as “Excrement Sponges”… 
Interesting, mid engine with fuel tank right behind the front seat. That would be fun-no smoking.
There were actually a few different attempts to make an affordable mid engine roadster over the years, and I think I tried them all. The Porsche 914 was another. I liked the looks (looked like an electric razor on wheels), but the car itself didn’t live up to its potential performance-wise. I loved the old budget roadsters, but every time I considered actually buying one my common sense won out. I should have had more courage. I would have had more fun.