Whoops, I see harrylentil got there first. Anyway, to make it up, Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive list of Banks’ shipnames .
Most apropos?
You May Not Be The Coolest Person Here.
Personal favourites?
Now Look What You’ve Made Me Do
God Told Me To Do It
GSV What Are The Civilian Applications?
GSV Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall (see the bottom of the list for why)
Bosca, huh? :dubious: 
Careful, that’s the command to open the Rancor pit in Jabba’s Palace! 
Nah, it’s just a tank on steroids. Even with the MetalStorm tanks attached to its deck. And it’s a very lightly armored tank to boot.
Ukulele Ike writes:
Not to mention the coolest thing about the Albatross – it’s built of lightweight composites, fer cryin’ out loud. Not canvas and wood. Not aluminum (which Verne knew as a good strong lightweight metal – he built his lunar spaceship out of it). Composites, using fibers for strength, a filler for body, and a binder for strength, all assembled and cemented together under high pressure to produce ultra-stronmg and ultra-light structure.
It’s one of Verne’s most impressive predictions. I don’t know anyone else who proposed composites for aircraft construction that far back (Verne drew on examples used for railway wheel; hubs, which is pretty amazing in itself). Even aas late as the 1960s reviewers didn’t realize what he was talking about (one calling it “a kind of plastic”), because it still wasn’t commonly known. I’ve looked in books on Aeronautical engineering, and none of them acknowledge Verne or anything as early as this for the first proposals for composite aircraft structures.
The limo/jet from Team America. Yeah it doesn’t shoot anything or go into space. But it’s a limo and it turns into a jet!
Hey, the ship I mentioned has organs. Boobs!
My first thought was Thunderbird Two …
Of course, Gerry Anderson had dozens of them, from Supercar onwards. How about the SkyDiver from UFO? A submarine whose front end flies off and turns into a supersonic jet fighter … that’s what I call style.
Someone else already mentioned the Hooded Swan, too … a starship nimble enough to fly through a maze at 1,000 c.
Blake’s Seven’s Liberator had a certain style, a certain grace, and stonking enormous neutron blasters.
At the other end of the scale, the least cool SF vehicles, I think, have to be the moon rovers in Moonbase 3, grey, shaped like potting sheds, with dinky little wheels … the science fictional equivalent of a second-hand Morris Minor.
Well, many of the vehicles I was going to name have already been taken.
So instead I will nominate the Argo from Star Blazers. I mean, that ship could get seriously messed up and still would kick ass.
Besides, it had a Wave Motion Gun. And very retro styling.
Runner up: the SDF-1 from Robotech: Macross. It also had a super gun, and it had an entire complement of veritechs.
But for some reason I like the look of the Argo more.
And SDF-1 is just a bleh name.
The ARGO isn’t just a retro design: is is in fact the original Imperial Japanese Battleship Yamato, sunk towards the end of WWII, sitting at the bottom of the ocean until Desslok bombed earth and the water dried up, so thisship was refurbished inside and out to be a spaceworthy battlecruiser.
I think it was the Argo that also shows up (or at least, what’s left of it shows up, as a shipwreck on a distant planet) in the movie Galaxy Express 999, which had crossovers with two or three other series that the guy who made them was responsible for.
Also meant other things. There’s an old folk song I once heard on a Kingston Trio (or maybe Chad Mitchell Trio) album, “The Unfortunate Miss Bailey”:
A captain bold in Halifax
Who dwelt in country quarters
Seduced a maid who hanged herself
One Monday in her garters
His wicked conscience spited him
He lost his stomach daily
He took to drinking rataffia [sp?]
And thought upon Miss Bailey
CHORUS:
Oh, Miss Bailey!
Unfortunate Miss Bailey!
One night betimes he went to bed
For he had caught a fever
Said he, "I am a handsome man
“And I’m a gay deceiver!”
The candle just at twelve o’clock
Began to burn quite palely
A ghost stepped up to his bedside
And said, “Behold Miss Bailey!”
CHORUS:
Oh, Miss Bailey!
Unfortunate Miss Bailey!
“All’s well that ends well, I suppose…”
Kingston Trio, Here We Go Again, 1959.
That looks like an even older version of Gay Deceiver that meant a Cad or “Love 'em and Leave 'em” type guy.
I think Heinlein meant the Bra Stuffings as I think it related to Hilda. Besides can you imagine a Heinlein hero taking pride in being a “Love 'em and Leave 'em” type guy.
Jim
:dubious: Yes.
Cite please, I am drawing a blank apparently.
I beg to differ. Check out post #33 in this thread.
Sorry.
Heinlein heroes are more of the “Love 'em and they are so enthralled with his manly virtues that they hang around forever and freely share him with every other female that comes within the same planetary system, because he is so manly and all.”
I meant specifically about the Sleeper Service.
But now that you’ve redirected me to that post, I’d have to pick the nit that Orbitals aren’t really vehicles - they are in stable orbits and nothing in the books I remember seems to indicate that they move out of them (although, being the Culture, I’m sure it’s technically possible for them to)
My take:
Gay Deceiver was so named because of how cars sometimes show an aspect of their owner’s personalities. Zeb was a most wanted, but a most ‘not gonna be tied down,’ bachelor until he met Deety (and stereotypically fell head over heels for her). Zeb was a Gay Deceiver, so he named his car that.