I think that’s the answer. I was thinking that big cities might turn off people living in other places, like half the country wouldn’t buy a Los Angeles and the other half wouldn’t buy a Dallas. Maybe, but I bet you’re right that people buy cars thinking they’ll be able to escape their boring city life and explore some new unknown places. (No coincidence that escape and explorer are also car names.)
Ford’s Mercury line had the Milan, Monterey, and Montclair.
Increasingly, car names have to useable across the world, and not mean something rude in any language.
So… no Chevy “Belgium?”
I’d buy the Chevrolet Belgian Waffle.
Coincidentally, so do i. But i don’t get your joke.
Sierra and Savanna are models from GMC. GMC is also known as Jimmy.
(At least, that’s what I think is the joke.)
The story of the Chevy Nova is all Urban Legend, but carmakers have changed names- the Mitsubishi pajero is one example, but the other name changes I found were just for marketing.
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GMC has/had a truck model called the JIMMY. That’s the joke. OK, maybe not a cereal-spitter.
O my. I knew the Pajero name had changed but assumed it was just because, not because reasons! Some wanker really screwed that one up.
Not really- you can not be expected to know what every word means in local slang. The word literally means someone who works with or sells straw (paja). But Mitsubishi named it after the Pampas cat- Leopardus pajeros, i.e. “cat who lives in the grass”. In some Spanish speaking nations it is a slang term for a plumber!
I suspect in Tacoma’s case it had something to do with it being easy to pronounce in Japanese.
But do you consider 200k a small town?
I dunno 'bout that. In the early '70s, Datsun (Nissan) made both the Laurel and Bluebird. Ever heard a native Japanese speaker try to say either of those?
No, but you can Google a word nowadays and find out about ones that are that common.
I did google it, and until I added the word slang, I did not get any bad translations. YMMV.
Huh. I did, right away. Go figure!
Google keeps updating itself. That may be the reason, maybe we 'fixed" Google. 