If you do, please, pretty please, would you name your car and call it Vlad.
As good a name as any I guess. My boss drives an Impala. It seems like a pretty good car. She drives the hell outta a car, so it must be. I’ve rented a couple of Impalas on business trips and I’ve always liked the way they handled and such. So, is the car red? Does it have vampire teeth? Does it have a tendency to impale pedestrians? If yes to any of these is the answer, then Vlad is a good name.
Hadn’t seen it used before, but wouldn’t be surprised if the idea was old.
Anyone have other good (better) names for cars?
Now Vlad would’ve been a much better name.
I drove a 1974 Impala in college. Yeah, I was cool. :rolleyes:
19’ long and nearly 7’ wide (I measured it)…and yet, it was a sedan. Biggest PITA to drive and park of any thing you can imagine.
It was just The Beast.
HATED that car. HATED it. Bleh. Had it only 2 years, and half that time it wasn’t driveable. Cracked a gasket head just a few months after I got it. Then there was the starter. And the fan clutch and assembly (the engine fan CAME OFF while I was driving on the freeway, bouncing around under the hood and making a helluva noise). And the carburator. And the…God, I hated that car.
We had an Impala about the time Ruffian had his but it was probably ten years older. It was one of a series of cheap, make-do used cars we had around then. I think it died within a year of our getting it.
We kids liked it though. It’s still one of our favorite cars from our childhood. It was black on the outside and red on inside and had mid-sized tail fins and cool chrome accents. If I remember correctly, it was the one that had this ledge above the glove compartment that protruded several inches out from it. Just the right height to crack you hard in the face if the driver had to stop really suddenly. Not safe but I still miss styling like that. My Dad did the driving, naturally, so I don’t know about the handling.
If I had a Kia, I’d name it Pet. K-K-Kia!
Umm…“About the time Ruffian had hers…” 
For the record, I had that jalopy in 1995. I was sooooooooooooooo cooooooooooool, baby. I have to officially like the car, though, because I needed something for my senior internship. Dad found it and bought it for about $1000 when I was out of town…I have to be happy and grateful because crap, he got me a car! I had just planned on borrowing my mom’s Volkswagon (she had intended to let me).
So officially and publicly, I love that car. Really.
But…God I hated that car…
I had a '67 Impala. It was my first car, a hand-me-down that went from my Grandfather to my older brother, and then to me. It was almost a wreck. I did my own brake job on it to get the brakes working (and which damned near killed me since I did it wrong), and the thing was always breaking various pieces. But it was a great first car, because it taught me a lot about how to look after a car and how to do my own repairs, and it was the same car I drove around in as a little kid, so it had some special memories for me.
It also taught me how great it is to own a car that can make it across town and back without throwing a rod, dropping a tie-rod onto the pavement, havin the electrical system die without warning, or having the universal joint come through the floorboards…
That’s a good one Bippy!
And yep, had one, a decade ago. Gold Impala that made a nice brrrrubbb brrruubbb engine sound. This brings up the memory of the fine friend bought it from: Joe Wood, a wonderful writer who disappeared/died oddly some years back.
Shit, the Impala memory brings back the Joe Wood memory. I can still see him driving that big car around Mississippi. He woulda liked to name it Vlad, too, I suppose, being astute and all.