I recently got into a long discussion with several folks at work, and we pretty evenly split into two factions: 1) Those of us who, throughout our history of owning vehicles, have given those vehicles nicknames and 2) Those of us who never saw the point in doing so.
For those of us who fell into Group #1, we got some interesting stories out of folks. Thought I’d check in on my fellow Dopers and see which side of the fence you all fell on.
So, what nicknames have you given your vehicles and why?
Roll Call:
Lucky the Wondercar (1984 Buick Century): This was my first vehicle, and calling it “used” doesn’t do it justice, considering I got it in 1991. I put this car through it’s paces, including have a fire start within the dashboard due to an improperly wired radio and accidentally shifting into reverse going 45mph. Through it all, Lucky survived unscathed.
Sparky (1992 Geo Metro): Toward the end of my ownership, this little red car would give me a sharp shock of static electricity everytime I got out of it and touched the top of the driver-side door.
CJ (1996 Geo Prizm): Stands for “Curb Jumper.” More a testament to my driving ability than anything else.
Granny - a late '90s Corolla bought solely for commuting.
Skanky Jane* - A big tour bus.
And an old company truck:
Big T, because it had a faded paint mark in the shape of a T on the hood.
*Which always reminds me of a girl I dated for a bit, who [del]affectionately[/del] came to be known as Shaggy Maggie.
My car is a jellicle car. It’s proper name is Pocket Venus, because it’s a cute, gold Saturn coupe. Its nickname is Sweetie Pie. Its third name is known only to itself and other cars. My father, however, calls it the mankiller, because it’s so hard for him to climb down into.
His Suburban, long used for towing the sailboat, moving my brothers and I to college and back, and any other heavy lifting needed, is called the Tuna Boat, in reference to its size.
The station wagon that was driven by my older brother and I in high school was called the Shitmobile, for it was worn, ugly, and disrespected.
Before my parents married, one of them drove an MG coupe named Yankee Dog, so called because they’d seen a movie on one of their dates where a Japanese soldier screamed “Die, Yankee Dog!” at his wholesome American opponent. The MG rattled and coughed after it was turned off, refusing to die, so . . .
When I started driving, my parents had an old 1978 Plymouth Voyager Van. It was used when they need to haul lots of stuff, people, or stuff and people. But, since it only got about 12MPG, they drove their smaller cars when they didn’t need to haul much.
So, if I needed to borrow my parents’ car, I always got the van - and, of course, had to pay for the gas.
I don’t know how the name came to be, but the van soon became known as Otis. And not just to me either. At first it was between me and my brother and our mutual friends. Then it was all of my friends and all of his friends. Then, my sister’s friends.
Otis became famous throughout our town. My dad commented told me that he always got waved at when driving Otis…
Ah, the saga of Otis is really too long to tell in this thread without further hijacking it. Let me start over.
I had a 1978 Van named Otis because he looked like an Otis.
In high school, I drove an old Jeep Grand Cherokee, named “The Beast”. I’m not quite sure why.
My sister got the suburban with 200k+ miles and on it’s second engine. It was named “Chuck” so she should tell it “Up, Chuck” when she drove it up the driveway.
“Bill” — 1993 Dodge Shadow. Way back in high school my best friend and I decided our cars needed nicknames one day, and we wanted to come up with something really creative. So my car got “Bill,” and hers was named “Ed.” Pretty creative, huh?
“Lola” — 1998 Plymouth Neon. Her nickname was Lola because she was a showgirl.
“The Barbie Car” — my 1999 New Beetle. A close friend of mine first called my car this, and it stuck. If you know me, it’s funny.
My current car, a 2003 Pontiac Vibe GT, is usually called Baby Car, but when we use her for hauling, she’s Pepe, the Little Mule (from Romancing the Stone). The car I had before that was a 1993 Plymouth Sundance hatchback, which was given to Queen Bruin and The Highwayman to use as a transportation car. I had called it The Millennium Falcon [Princess Leia] You came in that thing?! You’re braver than I thought! [/Princess Leia], but they soon bestowed the name Frankencar upon it, as it would die and be brought back to life several times. QB even wrote a hilarious eulogy for it one of those times, but I can’t link to it, as she has made her blog private.
My first car, a '74 Opel Manta, (which I bought used in '86) was missing the last “a” on the badge on the back, and it had two radio antennae rising up out of either side by the front windshield. It pretty much named itself.
Imagine my joy upon watching the movie Matinee a few years later and seeing the name of the horror movie within-the-movie.
I had a 1968 Karmann Ghia when I was in college. It was named Mermsey, which was taken from an old Pogo cartoon - one of the characters is running for office and a frog-woman is offering up tadpoles for him to kiss, the first one “name’a Mermsey.”
Never named any of my trucks by my Triumph Tiger motorcycle has been called Tiggy for years. It’s not quite a Tigger from Whinnie the Pooh, but a Tiggy.
Real humor is when I put on the fuzzy suction cuped tiger ears and tail on my helmet on the dragstrip…
I’ve never named one of my cars, but I’ve owned two cars that had names. I currently have a Chevy that was originally named “Skipper”, but I only use that name with family members who also knew the original owner. With my friends, she’s just “the '78 Malibu”. When I was younger, I had a '64 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 4-door sedan that all my friends called “the Queen Mary” or, more colloquially just “the Queen”. As in “hey, there’s a horror triple feature at the 66 Drive-In, let’s all go in the Queen!”. Of course, the reference was to the ocean liner, not the personality. The car was like a living room on wheels, with a trunk capacity the mafia would have loved.
I’ve got Karma, because when we found it it was new, despite being a couple of years old. It had been lost on the lot and they were trying desperately to sell it.
My mom’s old car was Zelda. Her new one is Suzie Q. I don’t know why, but my mom is kinda weird anyway.
My first car, a 1986 Ford Escort (which I got in 1996, so…yeah. It was pretty freakin’ old by the time I got rid of it…), was named Lovey the Egg Mobile. The egg mobile part was because of its color, a weird sort of beigey brown that looked like one of the paler shades that brown eggs come in. Lovey was because I thought it would listen to me better when I was patting its dashboard, pleading with it to go uphill, if I called it by a name that was a term of endearment.
I have not found a good name for my current car, a 1994 Chevy Corsica. It’s red, though, which I enjoy.
