Good car names rich; bad car names poor

There sure are a lot of lists on the Internet these days. Most recently, I stumbled across Forbes' latest compendium of the best, worst, and weirdest car names. Why anyone would care about this, I don't know, but it's worth a look. The good people at Forbes like car names that both suit the car and sound “cool.” These include the AC Shelby Cobra (a Cobra is pictured here), the DeSoto Firedome and the Rolls-Royce Phantom. Note that these cars are generally in a price range that would bring my checkbook to tears if I had it with me. Coincidentally, the worst car names are cheap cars that sound like country clubs, such as the Buick LeSabre, the Chevrolet Greenbrier, the Lincoln Versailles, and—most blatantly—the Rambler Country Club. Yes, how dare those comparatively affordable cars put on such airs! Such insolence really fogs my monocle. The weirdest car names are the most exclusive category, because they have to be Japanese. No other culture would name a car the 20 Light Dump with a straight face. But it's almost unfair to include Japanese cars, because Japan is a parallel Earth where logic is meaningless and everything has a distorted smiley face and spiky blue hair. And besides, it's been well-documented (by Dave Barry among others) that the Japanese people love the way English words look, but could care less what they mean. But given Forbes' sensitivity to class issues, I wouldn't expect them to know that. This list should have been called Cars for Poor People and Cars for Rich People, since that's essentially what it was.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

January 11, 2007 in Kiefaber | Permalink