Well… that’s what my Irish/Cajun great uncle calls a camera. 
I thought this was going to be a pit about the new Ford Fusion.
Sunspace pretty much nailed the reason why they’re named they way they are. Less chance of a negative association, you can brand it however you want, and it’s trademark-able.
And in the interest of not being pitted, I’m not admitting to how many of names mentioned so far are my fault.
I dunno. I’ll still take a car with a name, however odd or meaningless over the letter-and-number-combinations that so many cars have nowadays (RS-300, S-class, 5-series, J-30, etc.) That’s just lack of imagination! And considering how these types of cars are high-end models, you’d think they could afford to pay someone with imagination to give them a real name!
As to silly names, I found it amusing a few years ago to find the Shadow, the Mirage, the Charade, and the Stealth all for sale at the same time. What were they trying to say? The cars were actually imaginary?
It’s what granny uses to take photy-graphs at the Grand Old Opry!
Camry is an anagram of “my car”.
If you really MUST know, if it will allow you to sleep better at night…
The original Honda Civic(think late 70’s) was called the ‘CVCC’. Quite a crappy name for a car if you ask me. They obviously took ‘CVCC’ and inserted a couple of vowels and made it into the closest thing they could without completely renaming the vehicle.
Sam
After looking at Lorinada’s links, Honda says ‘CVCC’ was the engine type. The Honday my cousins had never, ever, had a tag on it that said “CIVIC”. The solitary nameplate was the cvcc branding. :shrug:
I’ve always thought Ford’s “Probe” took the prize for the dumbest model name.
Yaris sounds like a Puerto Rican or Cuban baby name.
Nope, sorry. CVCC was one engine that was available for a Civic. Not all Civics of that era had CVCC engines.
CVCC stand for
From Honda’s history pages
CVCC engines were also used in Accords.
I really don’t mind the nonsensical names.
I do like to laugh at names like Outback, Explorer etc. These tend to be used for vehicles whose primary purpose will be taking the kids to school and picking up groceries. Most of them will never be driven off road at all (and a lot of them couldn’t anyway).
Exactly. Whenever I see one on the road, I think of it saying (in a thin little high-pitched metallic voice: “I aspire to be a car.”
Undoubtedly there are vast sums of money being paid to consultants to think up car names - the same sort of people who after much deliberation came up with the (now defunct) tourism slogan: “New Jersey - we’ll win you over”. :dubious:
The poet Marianne Moore wrote a very amusing prose piece about being asked for suggestions for Ford’s new then-in-design-stage model. After offering about a dozen suggestions (some of which, to be honest, were pretty stinky themselves…“The Intelligent Whale”?) Ford went with an in-house suggestion and called it the Edsel.
‘Mitsubishi Masturbator’ has a nice ring to it though.
Looking at the car, it could be a contraceptive!
[quote=J. Gelert Well, Toyota’s used some rather odd car names in the past:
Camry (what the hell is a camry, anyway? Does it mean anything?)
[/quote]
‘Camry’ is the anglicised pronunciation of the Japanese for ‘little crown’.
All of the ads I remember seeing when I was a kid said ‘CVCC’. All of these cars I saw had ‘CVCC’ on them. But that’s going from childhood memory, and you’re the Car Guy.
Exactly what I think.
‘Mitsubishi Masturbator’ has a nice ring to it though.
Looking at the car, it could be a contraceptive!
‘Camry’ is the anglicised pronunciation of the Japanese for ‘little crown’.
All of the ads I remember seeing when I was a kid said ‘CVCC’. All of these cars I saw had ‘CVCC’ on them. But that’s going from childhood memory, and you’re the Car Guy.
Exactly what I think.
Don’t forget the Mazda Laputa, which thankfully is not marketed in Spanish-speaking countries.
Actually, a tercel is a male falcon, so that one makes some sense. However, in falcons, like most birds of prey, the male is smaller and wimpier than the female, so the name may not quite convey the intended image.
