And the “Maverick,” one of which pieces of shit I once owned.
It’s been a quarter century, at least. I had a 1999 323is with a 2.5 litre engine.
That generation of the 3-series started with the 318 and 325. After a while they increased the size of the larger engine and it became the 328. Then they changed the base engine to the 2.5 litre inline-6. My guess was the they didn’t want to piss off the buyers of the earlier 325, who had ponied up the bucks for the bigger engine, so they called the new version a 323.
Is a maverick a horse? I thought it was an unbranded cow.
MG used letters. After Z they started over again. The MGC was the last model sold in the States, but I think there was an F, or higher, in England. They occasionally broke with tradition and used names, always starting with M, like Midget.
That’s when the MBAs took over at BMW…
(50% joke, 50% not)
“Unbranded range animal,” which is usually a cow, yes. The logo on the 1970s Maverick had the stylized head of a longhorn.
Then they went for birds: Hawk & Lark.
Dodge also had a Royalty/Nobility theme in the Forties & Fifties: Coronet and Royal in the US; Kingsway, Mayfair, and Viscount in Canada.
Then there’s their early days, when they used Types rather than names. For example:
Type 1 (“Beetle”)
Type 2 (“Transporter”, “Kombi”)
Type 3 (“Fastback”, “Notchback”, “Squareback”)
Type 4 (same nicknames as the Type 3)
Type 181 (“Thing”)
Type designations were still used, at least internally, as late as the Eighties: the Golf Mk 1 was Type 17.
Porsche still uses 3 digit codes that some small percentage of the general public is aware of. I believe all car manufactures have some internal designations for their platforms. GM has had a few naming schemes, including Greek letters.
Jeep models have a very vaguely Western theme:
- Wrangler (basically a ‘cowboy’ for horses)
- Compass (hey, Lewis and Clark used compasses)
- Gladiator (the only one that really doesn’t fit)
- Cherokee / Grand Cherokee (Ok, the Cherokee were mostly in the SouthEAST, but who’s keeping track? ‘Cowboys and Indians’-- what’s more Western than that, right?)
- Wagoneer / Grand Wagoneer
Hyundai has the Kona, Santa Fe, Tucson, and Santa Cruz. So…warm U.S. cities?
It looks like all current Skoda SUV/Crossover names start with an ‘E’ or ‘K’ and end with a ‘Q’.
- Enyaq
- Elroq
- Kamiq
- Karoq
- Kodiaq
- Kylaq
- Kushaq
All their other models end in ‘A’ except for the Superb.
- Octavia
- Slavia
- Scala
- Fabia
Surprised that I’m the first to post this (maybe because the brand doesn’t exist any more…)
Pontiac had a lot of “race” names
- LeMans
- Grand Prix
- Grand Am
- Trans Am
- Bonneville (OK, not an actual race, but the Bonneville Salt Flats have had a lot of speed records set there)
Hmm. Now that I’m actually looking, there ain’t that many “racing” names. No wonder no one else mentioned it. Never mind.
Plus, GTO (an acronym for a particular race car certification).
Didn’t Ford in England use titles for a while? I know of the Ford Consul and Ford Prefect; were there others?
So decades after first reading the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I finally understand the origin of Ford Prefect’s name.
You see, nicely inconspicuous!
Checking Wikipedia, it looks like there was a Squire as well.
Ford sold the Country Squire deluxe station wagon in the USA through much of the 1960s.