07 Aug 06
Head across the Atlantic and you'll find car makers much more open to suggestions for really silly names for their cars - how else could we have been brought the Chrysler Imperial LeBaron, the Dodge Miser or the magnificent De Soto Firesweep. Plymouth played the oxymoron card perhaps better than any other with its Valiant Scamp and while Ford aspired magnificently to the Establishment with its Country Squire. And who would have forgotten the American Underslung Roadster, had it not disappeared in the same year as its creation almost 100 years ago?
But it is to Japan that we must head if we are to find the home of the silliest car names in the world. Japan doesn't just do silly car names better than anyone else, it renders all other attempts inconsequential by comparison.
Even the inadvertent ones are quite funny - Mitsubishi had to change the name of its Pajero off-roader in Spanish-speaking countries because the word was slang for someone with a predilection for amusing (and abusing) themselves. There are also those who assert that the Mitsubishi Starion was meant to be named after a male horse but something got lost in translation. Meanwhile over at Toyota France, sales of the MR2 were hampered perhaps a little because, spelled phonetically it sounded uncannily like it had been called the Toyota Shit. But these are nothing like as funny as those chosen with full knowledge of their meaning around the world.
I'll start with some of the less funny ones, just to warm you up. Few have been sold in Europe (if you think the Nissan S-Cargo and Suzuki Cappuccino are funny you ain't read nothing yet), some are vans and others are concept cars - but all are real machines made by very well known companies.
