Hooniverse Asks: What’s the Funniest Family Car Name?

By Robert Emslie Feb 21, 2017


The badge on the boot lid of the 1962-70 Iso Rivolta IR300/340 is, like every other aspect of the car, a thing of beauty. A chrome finished casting made up of two different but decidedly complementary scripts—a heavier italicized cursive for the Iso and a more delicate, almost art deco extrusion for the Rivolta—could be hung on an art gallery wall. Oh yeah, it’s true, the car is called a Rivolta, like in revolting.
Why would you saddle a car with such a name? Well because it’s a family name—Renzo Rivolta was the founder of Iso Autoveicoli S.p.A—and the fact is that the name didn’t have the same context in Italian as it does in English. We English speakers may stifle a giggle at the mere mention, but in Italy they hold Rivolta in great honor not just because of his sixties sports cars but also as the creator of the Isetta bubble car a decade earlier.   
Many a brand has carried the name of its builder or benefactor, and for every Ferrari or Chevrolet, there has been a Bizzarrini or Koenigsegg. Today we want to be a little childish and decide which of those family names has been the funniest ever applied to a car. I think even Porsche applies seeing as how no one can seemingly pronounce it correctly.
Image: DRIVE

74 thoughts on “Hooniverse Asks: What’s the Funniest Family Car Name?”
      1. I associate swinging/swingers/key parties strictly with the 1970s, not any other decade. (It was the swingin’ sixties, without the wink-wink, nudge-nudge that came later.) Are you saying television & movies have lied to me?!

          1. I remember an old Car and Driver TV thing that showed how a lot of the older RV’s were based on Dodge trucks in the seventies.
            You know this is the kind of knowledge that will make money some day.

      1. There was a family of Ford concept cars called the Probe I, III, III, etc. starting in the early 80s. Apparently, they didn’t hear the giggles at the car shows.

      2. I’m sure it was sold to them this way.
        “People are going to probe the universe and explore the outside world in their new Ford”
        While the bean counters thought
        “We don’t care what it costs. Just get rid of the front wheel drive Mustangs tooling costs”.

  1. Honda had some really bad luck when trying to name what later became the Jazz/Fit in 2001. It wasn’t discovered at all until posters and brochures arrived at the Swedish marketing department for translation. Let’s just say it didn’t help that the model was advertised as “small on the outside, but spacious once you get in” and “a daily pleasure.”
    Removing the last two letters was enough for the US market, but for Europe they decided to start from scratch just to be sure. It’s said to have cost Honda several million euro.
    http://www.gocompare.com/coveredcontent/coveredimages/154731/jazz.png

    1. Didn’t completely succeed, in Norwegian forums the original name is sometimes used as a nickname – but marketing-wise, that’s still better than the original idea…

      1. well, after it was used it was given a hot bath and as everyone knows a hot bath puts the cherry back in everyone.

  2. I always thought the Pontiac LeMans (not knowing about the race as a young teen) was kinda funny because we learned that one of the lady parts in heath class was called the “Mons Venus” and thought, “heh, the mons!” Now we have a race called LeMons. Now, I hope that is all YOU think about, too.

    1. But Ssangyong means ‘Double Dragon’. How unintentionally cool is that? However, I’d argue that ‘Korando’ is worse than Rexton. Makes me think of Komodo Dragons.

    2. No word of a lie. I was raised in a town called Rexton.
      If the car is anything like the town it will underwhelm you with its mediocrity.

  3. Somewhere in the house I still have (if I could find it) a 1/43 scale diecast Rivolta, silver, with jewel headlights.

    1. I had the same understanding of the question. The question by itself isn’t clear in this distinction, but within the context of the post, Rob was pretty clearly asking for a family name of a car, and not a name of a family car.

      1. I knew a gal in college named Missy Cooper.
        She got married to a guy named Clubman Coop.
        Half of this is true.

        1. I used to work on MINIs. At one point I had two repair orders on my desk.
          The customers’ names were Marie Cooper and Veronique J. Mini.

  4. One would think Ford would have researched what the Edge SEL would have conjured up…
    All sorts of names in this one.

  5. here in Australia in the 70s, holden had a model range called the Torana (originally based on the Vauxhall Viva range) and in Melbourne at least that was inextricably linked to a youth detention centre of the same name

  6. Not family cars, but Japanese van names have had some clangers in the past, eg Homy and Bongo.
    Likewise some European small van names don’t translate too well, eg Jumpy and Bipper.

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