Here is a good name for a car:
“Car”.
Oh, Renault already did that.
Well, Cayenne is also the capital of French Guiana, a former penal colony composed almost entirely of rain forest. So the model name fits the pattern established by such “exotic lands and peoples” SUV names as Outback, Yukon, and Touareg.
What about the Toyota Scion? (Warning, requires Flash Player). According to dictionary.com, scion means
So this is an heir to some vehicle line or another? It looks just like all the other anonymobiles out there - so I suppose it could be an “heir” to all the other vehicle lines out there.
I’ve always assumed that the folks responsible for naming cars flunked out of “name the next wonderdrug” school…
OK, that makes some sense, but how many people think “Capital of French Guiana” when they hear “Cayenne.” Why not use Paramaribo, at least that doesn’t hold any other meaning to English speakers.
I have a Suzuki Vitara, which is a good little 4x4 and cheap to run. However, every time I approach it from the back I see the huge “VITARA” lettering on the spare tire cover and always, always mis-read it for a moment as “VIAGARA” 
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“Scion” is usually used as “heir” only in reference to heirs of royalty or heroes. So you can think of “Scion” as Toyota’s baby, and Toyota as the king.
Beats the car names of old, like the Chevrolet Fleetmaster, Chevrolet Styleline, Buick Special (I don’t recall them ever making short school buses :D), Chrysler Airflow, Chevrolet Salesman, and Desoto Firedome.
Personally, I think the strange new car names are a direct result of running out of good animal names.
Following are excerpts from my and a friend’s now defunct website in which we reviewed nonexistent cars for the pupose of making fun of car names:
Ford Gerbil
The gerbil is a peppy mini compact that has as much zip as its larger cousin, the Marsupial, though not quite as good as the Hyena. The main problem our drivers found with this car happened in stop and go driving and the fact that it is too tiny for average sized adults to fit into.
Chevy Tick
Chevrolet is trying to compete with Ford’s Gerbil, but I’m sorry, this car doesn’t make it. The lack of power is particularly annoying, as is its small stature. The Tick is so tiny it can be taken into an airplane as carry on luggage.
Plymouth Bulimia
This is a nice first car for the young person going away to school, although the vehicle we tested had a tendency to hurl oil.
Lincoln Incontinental
Fuel goes thro ugh this car like you wouldn’t believe. Our drivers were always making pit stops when they test drove the Incontinental. So it’s big, so it’s luxurious, the Incontinental doesn’t hold water when compared to the Coupe D’Etat.
Geo Spasm
This is a car that does not handle well, even when parked. Our driver felt that he was never quite in control of the vehicle, which exhibited a jerky response to pressure on the accelerator. We concluded that this would be a good car in which to mix James Bond martinis – shaken, not stirred.
Dodge Insipid
The Insipid, while adequate mechanically, is simply uninspiring, boring and has nothing in the design to get excited about.
Pontiac Enigma
The Enigma, with its smorgasbord of symbols and toggle switches on its enormous instrument panel was just too confusing, with nothing functioning in any way similar to any other vehicle we’ve ever seen. We never did figure out where to insert the ignition key.
Dodge Tourette
This is another one of those cars that just doesn’t work right. Billed as a small touring car, the one we tested had some kind of major electrical problem. Lights, horn, stereo, alarm, and fan would all go on and off for no particular reason.Toyota
Toyota Rectum
In the past, there has been almost universal agreement that you can’t go wrong with a Toyota, but the Rectum is a really sorry attempt to produce a low-price subcompact. It runs bad, it looks bad, it handles bad and it even smells bad. We’d rather have a Tick.
Isuzu Cadaver
This sports utility vehicle is a stiff. Steering and handling are unresponsive, there’s no life when the accelerator is depressed, and the so-called lumbar support kills your back. Not recommended for anyone with an ounce of life left in them.
Honda Potato steering wheel
Chevrolet Urethra
This car was not reviewed by press time.
Actually, this would make a pretty good game for MPSIMS.
How about the Volkswagen Touareg? They even made a commercial showing people butchering the name. Why not pick a name that people can PRONOUNCE??
Visiting the website, I see that they also have a Phaeton. Sure doesn’t look like any phaeton I’ve ever heard of or seen.
What, nobody’s taken the opportunity to Godwinize this thread with that?
Myself, I can’t hear “Subaru Outback” without mentally appending “Onblocks.”
There was a similar thread somewhere on here a while back, but I can’t find it on search. One post in the thread suggested taking car names and adding “anal” before them.
Try it. It’s fun!
Anal Probe.
Anal Contour.
Anal Armada.
(I was at a shiva call shortly after I read that earlier thread. I quietly mentioned the game to someone, who could not stop laughing. People kept coming over to see what was so funny. Ultimately, there was a crowd of very somberly dressed elderly folks who were absolutely in stitches, shouting out “Anal Explorer!” “Anal Excursion!” “Anal Expedition!”)
A Touareg is a member of the Berber people and has a history of being nomadic.
Then again, neither is this '79 Cadillac, right?
That name at least sort of made sense to me, as in “a car for tooling about in the city”, in the sense of ‘civic’ meaning ‘of the city’.
I think the worst offender is probably Kia; their names usually seem to be ordinary words, names, or allusions with one letter changed.
“Sephia” – Would be “Sophia” if the ‘e’ were an ‘o’
“Sportage” – Sounds vaguely like a drug reference, as if the person who named it went to college in the late 1970s and used to call pot “spliffage”.
“Sorento” – Would be just like an Italian city except the real name has two R’s.
“Amanti” – WTF??
“Optima” – Didn’t that use to be a Nissan model?
The name Phaeton for vehicles goes way back and was used for some early automobiles, in the time when cars were a luxury restricted to the rich. I imagine that the thought behind it was that whatever the Sun chariot was that Phaeton tried to drive across the sky, it must have been pretty darn spiffy and impressive. The VW Phaeton is intended to be a luxury model, utterly top of the line. I wonder how much success they’re having marketing a VW that sells for the far side of 50K. Judging by the number of Phaetons I’ve seen on the street, probably not very much.
Yikes, they start at 66K!
My first thought upon reading the OP was Uncle Herb yelling “People don’t want cars named after hungry old Greek broads!”
I went through perhaps a quarter of my life (fortunately, one of the younger quarters) thinking the Honda Civic was named the Honda Civet. Which would actually have been a better name for a car.
The Civet is the diesel version.
I bet Richard Gere would drive one! 
We can all thank Pontiac for giving us the GTO, whose name inspired other car makers to simply slap combinations of letters and numbers on their vehicles. (Though Packard did refer to a number of their models by the wheelbase.)
I’ve always thought that the 6000 SUX in RoboCop was inspired by someone who owned a Pontiac 6000 and was less than satisfied with the car.
My friend had one of those back in the late 80’s. I always wondered why my ass hurt everytime I rode in it!
I gotta vote for the Daewoo Leganza. It just looks too much like “Lasagna.”
