When I was a kid, my sister drove a beater Plymouth Valiant. She called it Bertha the Pig, or just Bertha, for some reason.
When Wife and I refer to her car, we’re too lazy to say “the Prius”. That’s 3 syllables; leaves you tongue-tired. We just call it Pip, short for plug-in Prius.
I have a VW Golf. It’s boring white, quiet, kinda dorky looking. It also has a 350 horsepower engine, and other high performance features and modifications. We call it Clark, after the dorky Daily Planet reporter.
The only one I can think of was a very used 1959 Plymouth Suburban station wagon. I was stationed on Adak Island at the time, and these beaters had been there for years with little maintenance and hard use. I called it “Tank”, as it was a great snow car, just plowing through the stuff, no matter how deep.
My father named a couple of his cars. The '54 Ford was “Lizzie”, and the '57 Ford was “Betsy”.
My first car, a hand-me-down Chrysler Newport, made a distinctive high-pitched whine. I named it Screaming Mimi, or Mimi for short.
I had a higher-level Ford Taurus. It was very well appointed, ran like a bat out of Hell on the highway, and had a back seat big enough that my three kids could sit without fighting. I named it Studebaker, after my father’s favorite car.
I bought a Chrysler once in 1977, turned out to be a lemon deluxe - because of its color I called it the “Brown Bomb.” Traded it in for a Toyota station wagon, it lasted 20 years.
The first car which I personally owned was a yellow Plymouth Reliant. My dad, being the wit he is, got me personalized license plates that read “A LEMON.” I named that car Jack, for “Jack Lemon.”
I have a brand-new Nissan Altima. I haven’t named it yet. I am waiting for it to grow a personality. Right now I just call it “red baby.” Once it starts to develop one, I will name him(her?) appropriately. I must say the baby appears to be growing into a girl, though.
The only cars I’ve had that had enough personality to warrant a name were, without fail, pieces of fertilizer. With the exception of Orange Blossom. 1970-something 4 wheel drive International Harvester Pick Up Truck. Loved ol’ Orange Blossom. She was huge, and sexy, built like a brick. She survived a catastrophic axle failure with a full load of firewood, despite the broken transfer case(hit a rock whilst off roading at night) she was tough enough to still haul us out to the hinterlands for hunting. Being painted a gorgeously faded Blaze Orange, she was perfect for it too, couldn’t lose her unless you’re my brother walking down a ridge in the fog.
I was given a sandy-colored Toyota Tercel that was previously named Chanterelle, but I didn’t use the name – I just called it the Tercel.
10 years ago or so I bought a very used red Pontiac Grand Prix. I unimaginatively named it Ruby. I bought a second Grand Prix (after selling Ruby) some years later that I named Ophelia, after Hamlet’s girlfriend. My current car is a grey Honda Civic. I wasn’t going to name it but my wife came up with the name Sasha, which has stuck. Thankfully nobody has asked me why I gave that name to my car.
My wife drives a copper-colored Chevy HHR, which she named Merida after the Disney character with similar colored hair. That is the first car she’s had that she named.
Two. Both named by my girlfriend-now wife. The first was a Pontiac Fiero with one stuck retractable headlight dubbed “Blinky” and a VW Bus named “Hildagard”. When I asked her why Hildagard? she said “because it has one less syllable than VW.”
The Volvo C30 was a cool car. Very zippy, and that cool hatchback should have been copied by every carmaker. I was ready to buy one, until Wife rightly convinced me that we needed a 4 door.
Two have had names. Back in the day, when we didn’t have much money, we bought a cheap second-hand Vauxhall Astra. Bad idea - it was a money pit on wheels. So we called that one Des.
Des Astra - geddit?
Nearly 20 years ago I inherited an old Nissan Proton from the in-laws. God, I loved that car - the only car I’ve ever loved. It had no technology, kept going with stubborn resolve, and had a habit of shedding bits - which earned it the name Clownie, short for Clown Car. I was playing cricket at a low level back then, and was one of the designated drivers for adolescent players. They all loved the fact that they could pile into Clownie without even removing their spikes. Occasionally one would approach apologetically with a chunk of trim, nervously explaining that “It just fell off”, and would be bemused when I shrugged and told them, “Sure, just throw it in the back!”
