Adam Skalman Skalman is a second-year
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Damn, car names are really stupid nowadays. Imagine speeding
down a sleek and empty highway in a bitchin’ new convertible,
the night wind cool and fast, the moon illuminating every curve,
every feline contour as you fiercely hurtle through time and space.
Man, you’re cool. You’re Batman. You’re Knight
Rider.
You keep your sunglasses on, even though it’s night time,
and your beautiful machine screeches to a halt in an empty midnight
fill station, the attendants scramble from behind their cash
registers and concealed porno magazines to gaze in awe at this
purring beast and it’s cooler-than-thou master.
“Sweet ride,” one grease monkey might utter.
“Watcha drivin’?”
You stutter, your bubble burst and your cheeks blushing.
“Err,” you mumble. “It’s a
Sebring.”
Cricket noises. Tumbleweeds.
Oops. You’ve just fallen prey to one of the most vicious
and unnecessary evils propagated by the American automotive
industry ““ cool cars with ridiculously uncool names.
Where are the car names of legend? Where did they disappear to?
What would those Comets and Valiants and Ramblers think of us now,
atop their cloud-lined aeries in junkyard everafter, looking down
upon streets and highways filled with cars with names like Miata,
Maxima and Mystique. My God! Those sound like characters from
“Dungeons and Dragons.” It’s blasphemy ““
pure and simple disrespect for the cars that preceded them.
Car names used to make sense. They described so succinctly, so
efficiently the appearance or utility or pure spirit of an
automobile without having to bastardize words or borrow latin. We
(and by “we,” I mean our parents) had the Ford Falcon,
the Dodge Dart, the Chevy Impala; cars named after paragons of
speed and agility, names that conveyed to the driver a sense of
what this car could do if given the chance. These cars could run,
jump and fly away. They could outdistance predator and prey alike.
They were so fearlessly fast and shamelessly sexy. So American.
 Illustration by notlisted You can totally picture some
dude sporting a mullet and a muscle tee cruising down a busy
thoroughfare in Tulsa or Des Moines blasting REO Speedwagon at full
volume from his Iroc. At stoplights he probably yells the name of
his car over the booming music: “I rock! I rock!” This
is what it’s all supposed to be about, right?
You’ll find none of this at your local car dealership,
none of the revolutionary spirit and exhilarating idealism of which
cars today are in such desperate need. Contemporary car names are
wimpy and flaccid, nonsensical but without whimsy. Sure Corvair
didn’t mean anything, but it sounds like the pinnacle of
space-age 1950s technology, like something George Jetson could fold
up into a briefcase once he arrived at work. But what the heck is a
Sentra? Am I supposed to get excited about my Sentra? Are Sandy and
Rizzo going to fight over me when I race for pink slips in my
Sentra? If they did, it would probably depress me. You can do
better than this, ladies.
SUVs seem to be the worst offenders these days. The monikers of
these urban assault vehicles range from laughably impotent to
creepy and unnerving. The hugest car on the road is the Ford
Excursion, which supposedly does not fit into the standard American
garage. So why does this bad boy have such a sad, depressing, weak
name? An Excursion … as in, “Honey, I’m going on a
little excursion to the fabric stores on Melrose.” Or,
“We need milk and bagels. I’ll make an excursion to
Pavilions.”
Seemingly, Ford has named its cars backward, giving their
smallest SUV the most adventurous name: the Escape. As the trucks
get bigger, the names sadly get punier: the Explorer is smaller
than the Expedition which is smaller than the Excursion. What will
their new bigger, better SUV be named? The Ford Brisk Walk? The
Ford Beer Run?
The SUV has also been prone to some pretty racist names as well.
Where does Jeep get off naming its best seller Cherokee? Or Mazda
making a Navajo? Naming your car after people who fought
desperately to protect their natural homeland from exactly the sort
of roughshod, good-ol’-boy capitalism that produces cars like
the Cherokee, is like South Africa marketing Mercury Mandela, or
China selling a Buick Buddha. I’m surprised Jeep didn’t
mention in the commercials how perfectly the fold-down rear seat
accommodates a tepee or a dead buffalo. Shameless if you ask me.
(And furthermore, the Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo is named after a
town in Texas, a state which was never originally inhabited by the
Cherokee people.)
The dorky SUV names are seemingly endless. Paging Kia: what in
God’s name is a Sportage? Sportage is what my friends and I
used to say when a girl’s nipples were showing through her
shirt, as in “Rachel really had some sportage on
“˜Friends’ last night.”
The names get more embarrassing still, when we turn from SUVs to
regular sedans and coupes. Ford is a major offender here as well,
but luckily its stupidest car is no longer in production. Behold
the Ford Aspire, arguably the smallest car of the ’90s. What
an exceptionally, and perhaps intentionally, condescending name?
Sure, your car is miniscule, but it has goals, dreams and
aspirations. The only thing this car aspires to be is an Escort.
(Hey! Kind of like those guys in line at Rage on Thursday
night.)
And then Chrysler comes along with the Sebring, which is, for
all intents and purposes, marketed exclusively for the middle-class
white male going through a midlife crisis, the guy whose wife
wouldn’t let him buy the red Camaro he had his eye on. I hear
the stereo only plays light jazz and the top automatically goes
down while touring wineries. To be fair, this is a fairly cool car.
A big, lazy roadster for those pining for the El Dorados and
T-birds, but why ruin the experience by naming the dumb thing a
Sebring? It sounds like a facial cleanser, a douche, or something
girls order in bars.
Car names are pompous, misguided, and worst of all, infinitely
sticking with sober alphanumerics. We need guidance and leadership,
a Studebaker or Edsel or Henry Ford brave enough to come back from
the dead and rename American cars in the spirit of everything that
is fast, loud, cool and candy-apple red. We need to remedy this
truly embarrassing situation. We need to take action now, or else
the legacy you leave your children will be a 1991 Suburu with a
rusty hood. And nobody wants that, right?