What’s in a name? Places and cars that share names
Posted by Dale Edward Johnson on Nov 10th 2021
Car companies spend millions of dollars on research, focus groups, surveys and consultants to come up with just the right names for new cars. But it turns out that studying maps has also been an effective way to come up with names for vehicles.
A roadmap of the U.S.A. has been the inspiration for lots of car names. Chevrolet produced a Biscayne, after Key Biscayne in Florida; a Cheyenne truck, named after the capital of Wyoming; and a Scottsdale truck, like the city in Arizona near Phoenix. Both Dodge and Pontiac had models called Phoenix. Laredo is a city in Texas and the name of a Jeep. The Mercury Sun Valley was named after a resort area in Idaho. There’s a Toyota Tacoma, named after a city in Washington.
When the car industry was getting started, proud industrialists and inventors often named their creations after the cities where they manufactured cars. For example, in the early days of the industry you could drive an Auburn, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Des Moines, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Toledo or a Tulsa.
The names of states have also made their way onto vehicles. The Montana was a van by Pontiac. There was a Dodge Dakota, Kaiser offered a Carolina and a Virginian. Ferrari had a California. A special version of the Ford Mustang was the California Special. Buick sold a California GS.
Cities in California have also lent their names to the car industry. Pontiac scooped up the names Catalina and Ventura, from a resort Island and a community north of Los Angeles, respectively. In the 1940s Graham offered a Hollywood. In the 1950s there was a Hudson Hornet Hollywood. Mercury offered the Monterey and Montclair; Chevrolet, the Laguna, Del Ray and Malibu.
For some people, names like Aspen, Bel Air, Tahoe or Yukon conjure up visions of trips to go skiing, shopping, boating or adventure hiking. But car buffs may be more likely to associate these names with vehicles that holiday destinations.
The Dodge Aspen was a compact from the 1970s and ’80s. The Bel Air name was applied to luxurious Chevrolets in the 1950s, to a low-end, full-size Chevy in the 1970s. The Tahoe and Yukon were SUVs made by General Motors.
New York has also been an inspiration for car names. There is the Fraser Manhattan. The Chrysler New Yorker held the distinction of being one of the longest-used car names, from 1938 to 1996. Even some New York City street names have found their names onto car trunk lids, such as the Chrysler Fifth Avenue and the Buick Park Avenue.
Some geographical car names are chosen because they sound exotic, like the Cadillac Biarritz, named after a resort town in the southwest of France; the Dodge Monaco, named after the independent principality on the Mediterranean; the Mercury and Lincoln Capri, after a resort island near Italy; the Oldsmobile and Cadillac Calais, a seaport in northern France; the Ford Cortina, a resort in Italy that was the venue of the 1960 Winter Olympics; the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, a gambling resort in Monaco; and the Chevrolet Corsica, named after an island of France in the Mediterranean. As well, there was a Ford Torino, American Motors made a Barcelona, and Chrysler had the Cordoba.
Manufacturers also looked to the tropics and offered a Bermuda, by Edsel and Willys; Caribbean, by Packard; Montego, by Mercury; and a Nassau, by Chrysler.
Naming cars after cities is not strictly a North American practice. BMW sold the Bavaria in the 1970s. Austin named some of its models after cities in England, including Westminster and Cambridge. Morris had an Oxford. Alfa Romeo produced a Milano, a city in Italy. Ferrari offered a Modano named after a province in Italy. In the 1920s, Mercedes-Benz made Stuttgart and Manheim models, named after the German cities where they were produced.
Sometimes entire nations have had cars named after them, like the Rambler American and Austin America. Volvo and Toyota had models called the Canadian. Maserati offered a Mexico.
These days, car names are often a combination of numbers and letters – but fans of old cars can find plenty of place names on the trunk lids of classic vehicles.
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