vLane Blog

Cars: What's in a Name?

From chrissy coleman, Featured Contributor
Posted on May 20, 2008

Filed under Industry

People who name their cars and what those names reveal.

Some people laugh when I tell them the names of my cars, starting with the current one I drive ("Goldmember," an efficient gold Honda Civic) followed by the monikers of my beloved past cars that now only exist in pictures and mostly loving memories inside my head. But I found recently that there are a lot of other people who name their cars, and each name reveals something new about the car's driver.

When I told a coworker that I had once named a VW Beetle "Coche" (Spanish for "car," because when I ran the VIN number, I found it had been assembled in Mexico, and it deserved a one-word name that sounded feisty and exotic), she jumped up and down in her desk chair and confided in me that her current car, an old, boxy Buick, was named "El Conquistador," and she didn't know why, but it popped in her head and it stuck. It was hard to imagine this timid, five-foot-one (in heels) woman in accounting driving something called "El Conquistador," but when I saw her go into detail about how she felt while driving it, there was no doubt in my mind that she was a much different person on L.A.'s surface streets and freeways than in the cubicle five feet away from mine. She was The Conquerer.

To get the male perspective, I asked a cute designer what he drove as we entered the parking garage on day after work. I figured he'd drive some kind of sleek sports car that wasn't too flashy. It turns out he drove an '83 Ford Ranger. When I asked him if he named it, he scrunched up his face and retorted, "No, guys don't name their cars." Then he looked at his truck and said, "Well, that's not entirely true. Sometimes I call it, 'Clifford.' You know, for Ford?" A big macho truck named "Clifford"? I guess it made more sense after he told me it was very much a "Clifford," an old man taking his time, meandering across the city.

I thought to my own past car names. Beyond "Goldmember" and "Coche," there was "Porscha," the SAAB I knew deep down had the spirit of a turbo-charged Porsche and in it I felt like Speed Racer, "Green Machine," my Mazda 626 who was my superhero car that never broke down despite how long between servicing I waited, and "Slick," my white Toyota Tercel that leaked oil from the day I got it until the fateful day the engine blew up while cutting through Korea Town.

I've been eyeing the car listings lately and I think I'm almost ready to trade "Goldmember" in for something a little more "me," and like an excited parent-to-be, I already can't wait to pick out its new name. But I know that the right one won't come to me until I sit in the driver's seat with my hands on the wheel, becoming one with the car.

Read More:

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chrissy coleman is a featured contributor for vLane.