Sweet Irony

Deciding that likening an ugly ass car to an ugly ass fruit was a good idea, French automaker Renault tried to launch a campaign that compared the Renault 14 to the pear. The fact that poire, in French, can mean both pear and gullible was apparently lost completely on the manufacturers, as was the fact that no one really wants a car that looks like a pear, basically meaning it’s a short, fat ass automobile. On top of this, the car had an issue with body corrosion, leading people to start calling it “the rotten pear” as “worthless shit” was not entirely media friendly and didn’t really include a pun.

Elsewhere in Europe, Rolls Royce, attempting to continue their stodgy, carrot-in-the-ass image, developed the Silver series. This included the Silver Wraith, Silver Ghost, Silver Dawn, Silver Cloud and nearly Silver Mist. Luckily, someone at Rolls had been to an Oktoberfest or two and the fact that mist, in German, translated roughly into “shit” meant that the image of elegance they were going for could potentially be lost as even a silver shit is still a piece of shit. The name then became the Silver Shadow and still none of us could afford it.

Genocidal

Proving that a name can hold a lot of unfortunate meaning, Studebaker released its Dictator in 1927 and for years, in the US at least, things were pretty OK. The name was supposed to represent that Studebaker dictated the standard. At the time, Mussolini was the only notable dictator in the world that anyone cared about and people were pretty impressed with his Babe Ruthyness and ability to get trains running on time. Then Hitler came along. Needless to say, the idea of marketing a car that seemed like the vehicle of choice for crazy-ass Hitler was not entirely appealing, and Studebaker quickly dropped the car and replaced it with the Studebaker Commander while keeping the Studebaker Master Race Fun Bus on the sidelines, just in case the war turned out differently.

Getting in Touch

Not a lot of people know that lacrosse is the national sport of Canada, and fewer people care. Nonetheless, Buick must have thought giving that name to a car would go over swimmingly in the Great White North. The downside to this idea was that, for a tiny subset of French Canadian kids, lacrosse is also a slang term for whacking off and Buick, apparently, wasn’t really thrilled with marketing a car that was basically called “The Masturbation.” Mind you, since most people wouldn’t have made the obscene connection Buick would have probably gotten away with this one, had they not publicly announced it, thus letting everyone know what only a few dick joke enthusiasts would have known otherwise. Fortunately, Buick didn’t have to suffer this fate alone as Mitsubishi launched its Pajero in Spanish countries and quickly learned that it too means rubbing one out. Fortunately, Volkswagon abandoned plans for the VW “Slap Boxing the One Eyed Champ” well before it hit the streets.

Wang Chung

Not to be outdone by the masturbators of the world, Ford launched its epically shitty Pinto, the car that exploded whenever someone foolishly tried to put fuel in it and was the basis for that scene in Fight Club when Ed Norton explains the cost benefit analysis of a company caring about whether their cars kill people, in Brazil without anyone on staff letting them know that Pinto was slang for small penis. On the other hand, given that it really was something of a tiny dick car, maybe no one cared.

Ford has denied that the Pinto was ever sold in Brazil so this misnaming is just an urban legend, however a quick search of the web can find a few instances of people claiming to have contacts in Brazil who confirm that this car was there and that they sold it, they told jokes about it and they still have some on their lot, just waiting to explode.

Your Mom

Mazda got curiously literary by invoking Jonathan Swift in the naming of their LaPuta, having something to do with Lilliputians, maybe being tiny and creepy, who knows. Luckily, the world of Spanish speaking peoples didn’t need to worry about that as, for them, this was Mazda the Whore. Somewhat less impressive but still making an effort at being insult to the ladies, Toyota dropped the Fiera in Puerto Rico, where the term basically means “ugly, old woman,” but only because “cum dumpster grandma” was too long to fit on the promotional material they had made up.

Opel, a company that for all we know was made up on the internet just to throw us for a loop while we researched this article, let fly a car called the Ascona. If you’re in some parts of Spain or Portugal, Ascona is the place they told you to stop biting on your sister’s Barbie’s when grandma was over. Unless you were a normal kid, in which case it’s slang for the cooch over there.

Honda tops the list of Japanese automakers who inexplicably insult women with their Fit, which seems innocuous enough at first. Unfortunately for them, they planned on releasing it in Europe as the Fitta, which certainly sounds very Euro friendly, unless you’re from a handful of Nordic countries where the word, roughly translated, means cunt. Not a cute and pleasant slang term for the flower of womanhood, but straight up the Viking equivalent of the C word. Now that’s how you name a car.

Land of the Rising Sun

While many names seem to come initially from the English speaking world and translate poorly elsewhere, we can only speculate as to what the people at Isuzu may have been thinking when they fashioned the GIGA 20 Light Dump. We suspect it had something to do with chili. When we looked into the sheer number of other Japanese automakers who apparently just pulled random English words out of a hat to name their cars we nearly shat from joy. With names like “Mysterious Utility,” “Prairie Joy,” “Delica Space Gear,” and “Rickman Space Ranger” it seemed for a moment like they were simply mocking Frank Zappa’s naming abilities. Then we ran across the Daihatsu Naked, the Toyota Deliboy and the Vulugrafo Bimbo and it became clear much of this was probably about deviant sexuality. How long will it be until we get the Suzuki Rimjob? How long?

Dirty Habits

Sometimes you need to think like am immature jackass if you’re a marketing exec. A good one, at any rate. Because immature jackasses are very apt to go on an internet comedy site and write articles about your stupid product if you don’t market it correctly. Say, for instance, you release a car with a name that immediately brings to mind jokes about ass play. Like the Ford Probe. Probe is a perfectly acceptable word and all, but it has been co-opted by the sex toy industry to describe various deep dive devices and anyone who’s been abducted by aliens will tell you, probes are not pleasant.

The Dodge Swinger, on the other hand, seems to imply Dodge was hoping that you’d either be boning random strangers in the back seat or that, late at night while you’re tucked away in bed, your car was going to creep into the neighbor’s garage and pound the shit out of their minivan’s tailpipe. Because your car likes big girls.

Toyota, apparently with superbly unimaginative people in marketing, produced the Emina. How no one on staff made a single enema joke over the course of the vehicle’s production and release is astounding, but the idea that the car is good for flushing your ass and is essential for safe and hygienic bum love may be something they’re proud of, who are we to say?

We refuse to make jokes about Hummers here. We’re not that lazy yet.