At least random numbers and letters sounds somewhat, well, model-like. Maybe more “cheap vacuum cleaner” than “prestige car”, but still.
Then we have cars like the Isuzu Mysterious Utility Wizard. We still don’t know what it does.
And what better way to get your daily greens while driving than the Mitsubishi Lettuce.
Ninja’ed!
Thank you for that! I’m a big fan of James Lileks, particularly “The Institute of Official Cheer”, but I had not seen the Dorcus files before! It must be a relatively new addition. The Institute doesn’t update very often, so I don’t check it very often.
And I have to concur that “Wow! Whatta Dorcus!” is one catchy slogan for a line of men’s clothing! 
Slightly off topic, but my big manly man car, a double cab Toyota D4D pickup truck just has that, “D4D” as the name.
My kids named my pride and joy, the extension of my manhood… “Sarah”.
In the UK they’ve just brought back the Capri name from the 60’s/70’s. And Vauxhall brought back the Viva name a few years ago.
In all I enjoyed Lileks’ place decades ago when I first stumbled onto it. It feels very dated to me now. Static and musty and old-timey. But at the same time pleasantly nostalgic in all its non-dynamic, non-ad-cluttered Dad-joke glory. It feels like reading a 1960s copy of e.g. Time magazine, but with Reader’s Digest humor bites.
I can’t recall when I first learned of them, but early 2000s is a good guess. The site was quite extensive already when I found it, and promptly devoured every page of it. The Dorcus Collection was there back then too.
Renault gave up years ago - ‘Le Car’.
Not to get too far off topic here, but though I never thought of it that way I think that’s a very apt description. The article on the “Gobbler”, a once luxurious motel that was eventually abandoned and fell into a state of disrepair and is now gone forever is a kind of metaphor for us all. Sigh!
I can’t understand how I could have missed the Dorcus Collection all these years. I blame senility. The best I can figure is that I saw the link but skipped over it because it didn’t seem like it would be interesting. Au contraire – between the stuff allegedly written by Dorcus himself and Lileks’s quips, it’s one of the highlights of The Institute!
It was kinda cutesy in its lack of pretension, quite appropriate for a low-end economy car. There have certainly been far worse car names.
and Ford “one-downed” it with the Ford - Ka
once mildly interesting concept, but the aestethics did not age well…
whichs ugliness reminds me of another odd-ball:
Or the Nissan Leaf.
There’s always the “hire a poet” option:
In 1955, while attempting to find a name for their hugely anticipated new car, Ford decided to approach the most unlikely of people to assist in the matter: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Marianne Moore. Moore, who was known by the wife of one Robert Young, an employee in the car manufacturer’s marketing research department, was soon contacted by letter—she agreed to help and over the coming weeks proceeded to supply them with numerous lists of delightful names, all of which are compiled here, ordered chronologically (every word, including those in parentheses, is Moore’s own). Her final suggestion, sent to Young on December 8th, was the amazing, “Utopian Turtle-top”.
Incredibly, Ford ignored Moore’s sublime ideas. Instead, they named their new car, “Edsel”. It flopped.
Ah, another with an astronomical name. No doubt I’m missing some, but I can’t find a lot of those. Well, there’s three makes that have astronomical names (Mercury, Saturn, Subaru (Japanese: Pleiades)) and that seems like plenty for them, but astronomical model names seem to be in short supply. Or maybe they’re not rare but I don’t know about them. Anyway, here’s a list off the top of my head:
ETA: add Polaris to the list of makes.
Knew I’d think of more astronomical names after posting:
Polestar (make)
Pulsar (Nissan)
Vega (Chevrolet)
The “4” used a stylized font, so I thought it looked like an A. I called the car the “Xrati”, with the X as in Xerox.
It was called the Amigo in the US. A coworker had one. I think “Mysterious Utility” is a cool name, though.
It’s better, though less alphamale, that the TRD (Toyota racing development) which I pronounce “Turd”.
A perfect metaphor. I thought the Dorcas collection “tried too hard”. That it was the first sign of Lileks’ decline. 9/11 really messed him up, turned him into a scared little Republican.
Aside from the already mentioned Ford “Maverick”, once a compact car, now a compact truck, Dodge has the “Hornet”, which used to be the name of an AMC car. Unlike Ford, who steals from themselves, Dodge steals from dead companies. Dodge also has the Daytona, once a 1970 Charger with a wing designed for Nascar, then a sporty compact, then a Ram pickup, now full circle back to a Charger.
Quite so. Some brands have a specific identity pattern (e.g. Toyota’s crown references, Mercedes’s “classes”) and others just seem to pick them at random from whatever sounded good in the focus group.
Some brands keep some specific names forever regardless of the evolution of the actual vehicle model e.g. Toyota has been selling something called Corolla and Honda something called Civic and Accord in the US market for 5 decades, and there’s been a Chevrolet Suburban since the New Deal was new. So that compensates for many shorter-lived plates that come and go to maybe be reused some day or in some other market like Echos, Previas, Preludes, Monzas and Berettas.
Ford recycles names tho not likely the Edsel.
It was strangle moving to Australia and seeing Falcons about.
The Edsel models were Pacer, Ranger, Corsair, Citation, Roundup, Villager, and Bermuda. Pacer was later used by AMC, Ranger by Ford, Corsair by Lincoln, Citation by Chevy, Villager by Mercury. Bermuda was previously used by Willys.
Nothing new under the sun.
There’s the Peugeot RCZ, or as I like to call it the ''Arsey Zed" - because, look at it - it’s undeniably a bit arsey.
