Unless you count “cute little Saturn”, no I don’t.
My brother used to drive “speedbump” (or “snowdrift”)–it was a white Corolla? maybe?–small, white, sat behind Dad’s car in the driveway, so Dad labeled it “speedbump”. Brother was not amused.
A couple years ago, my brother and his wife had (according to their then 2-year old) Mommy’s car and Daddy’s Car. Then Mommy’s car was involved in a car accident, and was replaced with “My Mini-Van”–again, point of view of 2-year old. For the next six months or so, she’d mention Mommy’s car every now and then, like she was expecting it to come home sometime. (It had been totaled. It wasn’t coming home. Even if the insurance company had declared it worthy of being repaired, I think it wouldn’t have come home. )
As a teenager, Mr. McQ had an ancient VW bug named the REO Speedcookie. We also had a Geo Metro that we affectionately called ‘Car-Car’. I had several unnamed cars since then, and my current Honda Civic is the Red Hot, named after the paint job, general shape and zippy performance.
I don’t name my cars as a rule, but I did own a a Triumph Spitfire that had a license plate UNA 509. My college roommate saw the plate and told me that in Canterbury tales Una was the personification of truth.
So my Triumph became the personification of truth. As in do you want to hop in the personification of truth and go get a pizza?
I had a friend in high school and beyond that had a 1957 Taunus 17M deluxe that was bright red. He called it the abortion. Sometimes the red abortion.
Anyway I was at college with my car, and his was still at home in LA. He went to a college that was a few hundred miles further away from LA than mine. I did not have a phone in my room, and he called on the phone in the lobby to see if I was free to drive him to LA to get his car.
The phone call went something like this
Me: So when are you going to LA to get the abortion?
Me: Sure I would be happy to drive you to LA to get the abortion.
Me: No problem, I’m happy to help you get the abortion.
Me: You are going to chip in for gas aren’t you?
:: Finish phone call and turn toward the lounge area in lobby. Several females are sitting there:::
Audience: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
One Female: I think that is horrible
Me: WTF? What is so horrible about my telephone conversation?
Female: You are taking your girlfriend for an abortion and making her pay for 1/2 the gas.
Me: You misunderstood, that was my male friend that has a car that he nicknamed the abortion. It is in LA and he wants me to drive him down to get it.
Female: :dubious: Sure if you say so.
I used to drive very cheap el-junko cars. People who didn’t know me probably thought I was a lot poorer than I actually was. A friend of mine started giving nicknames to my cars. Most of the names below are from him.
“The Bondo Bandit” - This was an old Nissan pickup truck I used to own. As the name implied, it had a few rust problems over the years that I fixed with bondo, but never bothered to sand down and make pretty. My friend used to speak at length about how he refused to park next to it because some big chunk of something might fall off of it. Once it got over 200k miles I refused to do any further maintenance on it, including changing the oil. Despite going without an oil change for a couple of years, the darn thing refused to die. It didn’t even burn oil. Finally it developed a minor problem with the fuel pump and I used that as an excuse to junk it.
“The Bronze Bomb” - A bronze/rust colored Buick. At one point I just had way too many cars in the driveway and tried to give it away. No one would take it. Off to the junk yard it went.
“The Uncle Buck Car” - This car wasn’t named by my friend. Instead it got its name from Mrs Geek. If you’ve ever seen the movie Uncle Buck then you know what she’s talking about. It’s the only car I ever had that she actually refused to get into. Note that she had no problem getting into the Bronze Bomb or the Bondo Bandit, so that’s saying something. It was a blue/green/gray/kinda rusted/kinda primer colored Chevy Monte Carlo. I was going to have a contest to guess the original color of the car, but I myself wasn’t sure of the answer so I couldn’t do it.
“The Red Rider” - A red Toyota Camry. Used to be my mother’s car. It’s actually in pretty good shape. I drove it into work for a while. Mrs Geek drives it now. I suspect that Mrs Geek talked me into buying my caddy so that she could have this car.
“The Blueberry” - My current Dodge Dakota pickup truck, so named because it’s blue.
Nobody has come up with a nickname for my Cadillac yet.
Many, many years ago, I had the “Markmobile” which was an Oldsmobile delta 88 that I paid a whopping $800 for. It was my first car. It got me through college and taught me a lot about auto mechanics along the way. My roomates in college named it.
Ding! When I was a wee lad in the mid seventies my uncle used to drive around in a Toyota corolla, and we just called it the Pisspot. This is getting spooky :eek:
I studied math and live in an older house, small but classy. I used to stargaze. I do drink wine and listen to jazz. And, I enjoy my classy life on a modest income and don’t care about new cars or homes in the suburbs.
Now, I drive a Subaru. A lot of your description would still pertain to Subaru drivers. I like to think that a lot of Subaru drivers are people who don’t care about keeping the outside of their cars clean.
My 1976 Ford Pinto station wagon (purchased by me in 1995) was named the Boogermobile because I acquired it around the same time I got my cat Booger (whose naming is a separate story).
One of my co-workers called it Old Yeller, which worked too.
Oy, asking for automotive stereotypes on a forum full of Corolla and Civic drivers is like asking for dating advice at a Star Trek convention. The only one who chipped in was Argent and I know he doesn’t even like modern cars! Generally, the shorter and sweeter the stereotype is, the better … but since they were based on real people and quite amusing, fair play to you, Argent.
There’s undoubtedly an eclectic breakdown of rides amongst Dopers, with very few of them being late model vehicles. Cheap, worn-out, compact economy cars. Reliable old trucks. Antique roadsters. Classic Detroit steel. I can’t say I’m surprised. I always try to picture what the average Doper drives, and this cross-sampling fits the bill of eccentricity. Not a luxury or sports car to be found!
I was hoping for more unfounded stereotypes to add some judgmental humor to the thread, but the focus was all on car names. I second Kalhoun’s post above in response to Eve about ‘Helen Keller’. Now see, that’s the kind of name for a car where you don’t need to know the make or model, it’s just too funny. Other greats: Jodi’s “Jean Claude” Grand Am, Nightsong’s “Half-Pint” Miata, and Musicat’s duo of Italian bellas (Fiats “Sophia and Gina”).
Shame on those of you with some generic term of disdain for an unloved econobox. Seriously, calling it by some derogatory term is just calling it what it already is and shows no imagination, much less any passion, for the car. Yeah, such a car isn’t worth getting passionate about, but by the same token, would you also get some pet you didn’t like and name it Shithead too? :dubious:
I just don’t get that. Cars have feelings too. Just ask Pixar.
Mine is Royal. It’s an evergreen Civic, and Roy Orbison has a song “Evergreen”. Plus my grandpa’s name was (Le)Roy. Plus Almanzo Wilder’s brother’s name was Royal and it sounds handome.
“The Blue Nova” (also a 1972 model, but with a 307 automatic instead of the straight-6, three-on-the-tree like the Brown Nova, which met an unfortunate end) would give me troubles if it heard me discussing the latest issue of Car and Driver. No other cars were discussed in the blue Nova! Had a girlfriend call it Christine because she was convinced the car didn’t like her. Well, she put it a little more strongly than that, actually. Passenger door wouldn’t open for her, somehow the button stuck when she tried to get in. After I got her in and safely belted up, the seat belt latch didn’t always release so she’d start to panic and would be yanking on the belt trying to escape… This is not conducive to a successful second date, by the way (seeing Christine probably wasn’t the best idea for a first date, in retrospect)
It was over when she badmouthed my ride. “You love that car more than you do me!” “Well, yeah”
The first car I ever named was my 2000 blue Honda Civic Si. I named it Bruce Lee, because it was a lightweight ass-kicker that didn’t need the brute force of the v8 guys…
Then my wife bought it right after I traded it on an S2000, she renamed it “Chelsea”.
I fired her. (not divorce, just fired her. it’s a personal joke that can only be understood through observing contextual use)
Then I bought a 92 Corolla; I named it Cory. It seems to fit, and took no imagination to come up with.
Now I’ve got a Jeep Cherokee; I named it Johnny. Johnny the Jeep. Yes, the originality is waning…
The wifey believes that all machines are inherently female, because men make them out to be “sexy”, and they get “hard-ons” while driving their “sexy” machines. I can understand the logic, but a female Jeep just don’t seem right…kinda like a chick with a mullet and a plaid shirt just don’t seem right.
WTF? What is so horrible about my telephone conversation?
