I had a blue VW beetle. That was the only car I remember naming.
The current car (2003 Focus ZX3) is The Cosmic Rollerskate. Don’t ask, it just came to me on day and it stuck.
The motorcycle is Little Bastard. I share a birthday (and university) with James Dean and I like tempting fate.
Do you remember what you named it?
And are you going to tell us?
“The Corolla”, “The Nova”, “The Goat” (common nickname for the GTO, I didn’t come up with it)
So no, I don’t name my cars. I drive a '98 Corolla but am a total car nut and love driving - I’m maybe an anomaly because I value a reliable, economic & efficient vehicle for everyday use almost as much as I value a large loud fun vehicle.
I’ve never named any of my cars. Not the '66 MGB, not the two '77 MGBs, not the Porsche 924, not the Chevy Sprint or Sprint Metro, not the Porsche 911, not the '48 Willys, not the '46 Willys, and not the '99 Cherokee nor any of my motorcycles.
Until recently.
The '63 Triumph Herald is a spiffy car. It’s spiffy, and it’s a Herald. So it’s called ‘Spiffy Harold’.
Heh my sister and I shared a Shitbox as well, only it was a Corona. A couple of my friends called it Toyota White because when one of them asked what car I drove I said “It’s a Toyota … and it’s white”.
My fiance’s current car is a black MX-5 (I think you guys call them Miatas) and we named it Kyoto Junior because it’s black and small like our cat.
The only unfounded generalisation I can think of is when I see middle-aged guys driving 4 seater convertibles. I always assume that the guy wanted a fun, sporty, head-turning car but his wife made him buy one that would also fit her and the kids.
I named my first 2 cars Bullet and Magic (Bullet - 86 Taurus with bullet-hole-shaped rust; Magic - 98 Escort, the first car I had with “magic” remote keyless entry)
I waited 3 years for my Escape to tell me its name, but it never came to me. Then, when my friend took it on a drive to Boston, I told him to let me know if the car gave him a name.
Apparently, “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” came on the radio during the drive, which is by Rupert Holmes…thus, my car is now named Rupert.
No one’s mentioned a stereotype for hybrids yet. Is “pretentious treehugger” too obvious?
I have a Toyota Prius that my grandson named “Miss Priss.”
I don’t know where he got the name, b/c I’m about the least prissy person on earth! But he wasn’t naming me, was he? He’s a creative little lad. A couple years ago he named one of our cats “Purple” and another one “Stone Evan.” (/proud grandma)
We used to have an old old Honda Civic that my daughter named “Otto.” :rolleyes:
That’s a great book. And that nickname reminds me of the period when I lived right off the rez in Montana and drove an old used red Chevy Suburban we called the Red Horse. When we had two cars, a Ford Explorer and a Ford Excursion, they were nicknamed Beauty and the Beast, respectively. (None of these were our cars, btw – the school we worked for loaned them to us.)
My own car is a little maroon Toyota Corolla named Nelly. Before that I had a Honda Accord named Friedrich Lieu-Song (the latter is a Chinese name, IIRC, not Korean, but I was in high school when I named him and didn’t know better). I’m strictly an A-B type person and tend to drive like I’m cruising in a tank. Or that’s what I would pretend when I had to take DC’s Beltway to work. In Nelly, who’s a total nelly when there’s over 1/4" of snow on the ground.
I name all my cars. Current car: The Deerslayer. (Named that by my Dad after I hit and killed 2 deer in an 8 week period 4 years ago.) Honda Civic.
Car before that: Yolanda the Honda. Also a Civic.
Car before that: Jean Claude Grand Am.
When I got my 1991 Honda Accord, I named it Bilbo Baggins, as it seemed like a quiet little hobbit sort of car. Now, however, I’ve renamed it Lurch, because… well… That’s what he does now.
I always name my cars after the vehicles in Final Fantasy.
Thus, my parent’s tan Bronco II was the Tiny Bronco, my mom’s Dodge Caravan was the Buggy (believe it or not, I’ve taken that thing offroading), my second car was the Highwind (and damned if my little 1990 Mitsubishi Mirage hatchback hadn’t earned that name), and my current car, a red 1988 Bronco II, is named the Ragnorak (because it’s the same color as the Ragnorak from FF8). The only car I’ve had that I didn’t name after something from Final Fantasy was my first car, a white 1979 Dodge workvan, that I named the White Dragon.
I firmly believe that my cars all have a personality (even if created by mechanical problems). They do not necessarily reflect my personality, because I’ve never had the money to choose a car I’d love, but they have a personality all their own. For instance, the Highwind would occasionally just kick into it’s passing gear for no reason - it was it’s way of saying “I wanna go fasterrrrrrr!!!” And the Ragnorak will flash it’s dashboard lights at me when it’s late at night - as if to say “Go to bed! It’s too late to be up!”
~Tasha
You didn’t mention Frankencar?!
This was a 1993 Plymouth Sundance that my ex-husband originally bought to commute to nursing school, that was forced on me when he sold my beloved 1988 Volkswagen Jetta (unnamed) to pay taxes on his business :rolleyes: . I hated that car; I actively tried to kill it by denying it basic maintenance except for gas and tires. I ended up driving it for almost 9 years, including a merchandising job that required traveling over 200 miles a week (without a working radio, no less). It was an outright gift to Queen Bruin and The Highwayman when I remarried and my husband gifted me with my 2003 Pontiac Vibe GT (Baby Car), which I’m driving until it dies. It’s almost 5 years old now, and has less than 30,000 miles on it (the Vibe, not the Sundance).
Oh, and my nickname for the Sundance was: The Millenium Falcon [Princess Leia] You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought! [/Princess Leia]
Well I’d already mentioned Frankencar/The Bruinmobile before. (I still have it, the towers never came for it. Damn thing refuses to go!)
I nicknamed my father’s old pickup the B-52, since it seemed huge an miles in the air compared to my car.
Mine was a tiny little Ford Festiva. I never named it, but my friends at college named it The Starship Festiva since my own name draws comparisons with Capt. Picard.
Even though it’s a Pontiac, I grinned at that one. 
We’ve always had names for cars - our’s or our friends - it just seems proper to name the ones with such character.
In high school, one friend called her ancient push-button-transmission Plymouth “Gandalf the Wanderer”. It had a tendency to wander about in the road. Another friend drove a turquoise 1964 Ford Galaxy, The Shark. That thing had a hood on it big enough to play ping pong on. And a 390 V8, with a 4-bbl Holley carb. sigh. My car then was a '74 Beetle, called the Killer from a wreck I had (ran out at the stop sign and hit a preacher).
The last truck my Hubby had, we called Spot. Well, the paint was peeling. Currently he drives an '87 4 wheel drive Silverado, referred to as Raider. I have two cars, my old reliable 1990 Civic Wagon, Turtle, and my ‘good’ car, 2000 CRV “Snowflake”.
One of my daughters has a '93 Camry she named Bandit (she practically stole it from the dealership). My other daughter’s car is Ruby (maroon 1995 Accord).
Oh, and my first husband called his 80’s era Monte Carlo “Hitler”. Dunno where that came from. He also has Leapty the Jeepty, a 40-es era military issue jeep, and Blue, a '57 Chevy two-door hardtop (beautiful car). There’s more! Bonnie is an old suicide-door fat fender Ford, and Uddn-uddn is my old red-an-white '66 Ford pickup (I let him keep it).
A friend of mine in college had a yellow-and-white Ford F-100. “Banana Thunder”. I always liked that one
I have a red and grey (from scratch marks) 96 sonoma that is called “The Bitchslapper.” I also have an 83 jeep cj7 with the diarrhea color scheme, but it has no name.
I think just about all the cars our family has had have obtained a nickname at some point or another. My car currently bears the nickname “Half-Pint” because of its strong resemblance to a half-pint o’ Guinness/Black-n-Tan/Other dark beer. (It’s a '95 Miata with a black body and a tan top/interior.) My Mom occasionally will call it “Pee Wee” to tease me, and I usually respond by pointing out it hasn’t wee’d since I got the water pump fixed.
<< Never, EVER, throw a fireball in a closed room! >>
- I nicknamed Mr Johnson’s 93 Talon the “Angry Talon”. It’s black, has faded paint on the hood, and a big intercooler up front which I think looks like an angry grin.
- My 91 Talon is called “the old school Talon” or simply “the silver car”
- The 93 Rx7 R1 we had … I usually referred to her as “the other woman”.
- Mr J’s uncle’s Montero is known to us as “the space truck”! It’s a big, silver and curvy SUV.
I rarely use it, but every now and then I’ll refer to my (red) 02 Ford Escape as ‘Red.’
I think I have a much closer relationship with my bicycle than I do with my car. She is Daisy, and I call her by name all the time.