Good Car Names Gone Bad

by Eric Peters
EricPetersAutos.com

Here are ten good car names gone bad – ruined forever, through no fault of their own:

Chevy Cavalier

This name summons images of gallant horsemen protecting their monarch – though it’s not likely many owners of the odious – and obsolescent – GM economy car that bore this name ever felt like a king. The Cavalier was the Cheese Whiz of cheap cars – mass produced and tasteless. You didn’t drive one because you wanted to. You drove one because you had to. Someone (Mom & Dad) either gave it to you – or it was all you could afford. And in your turn, you got rid of it as soon as you could.

Dodge Mirada

This name kind of has a nice ring to it – and might have worked out had it not been affixed to one of the final death rattles of Chrysler Corp. before it went bankrupt (Mark I) and from there into to K-Car rehab. The shovel-nosed, fastback 1980-83 Mirada offered poorly fitted, leaky T-tops and rear-wheel-drive when both were going out of fashion – and under its hood lurked one of the weakest V-8s ever constructed, a 318 cubic-inch embarrassment belting out a dismal 130 hp. (See also: Chrysler Imperial and St. Regis.)

Pontiac T1000

It sounds tough, like the relentless robotic assassin in the Terminator movies – but this sad-sack on wheels was just a rouged-up Chevy Chevette sold under the Pontiac nameplate. GM’s idea was that buyers would actually pay extra for a Chevette with a more masculine name. The tragedy is, many did. It was cars like this that dug Pontiac into a hole so deep that not even great cars like the G8 – one of the very last new Pontiacs ever built before GM pulled the plug – had a prayer of turning things around.

Porsche 914/4

Normally, the Porsche name commands respect and admiration. With this one exception. Packing a 76 hp VW-sourced flat-four only slightly hotter than what you’d have found squatting behind the rear decklid of a slow-pokey Super Beetle, this car almost singlehandedly ruined Porsche’s reputation. It was conceived as part of a joint Porsche-VW project in the late 1960s that was intended to to accomplish two goals. One was to give Porsche a new model; the other was to give VW a replacement for the Karmann Ghia. The Porsche variant originally came with a suitably Porsche flat-six, not the 1.7 liter (and Beetle-based) flat-four used with the VW version. But early ’70s cost-cutting led to cancellation of the six in the 914, which beginning with the ’73 models lost the six and came instead with a much less powerful flat-four sourced from VW. This most un-Porsche engine was also used in the wretched 912 series.

Pontiac Turbo Trans Am

Built for just two short years (1980-81) the final iteration of Pontiac’s second-generation (1970-81) F-car was the apotheosis of the Disco Machine – a gimpy ersatz muscle car that could barely heave itself through the quarter-mile traps in under 17 seconds despite the wild graphics, air dams and “turbo” decals plastered all over the thing. Like Brando, there was all kinds of potential; it coulda been a contender – but turned out a sloppy palooka that embarrassed itself wherever it showed up.

Mercedes-Benz 190E

The Focke-Wulf Fw190 was a superb WWII fighter and that association alone might have been sufficient to give any car to bear the same name a decent head start. Too bad Benz decided to go K-mart with it by christening its first downmarket model with the same once-proud designation. Though later examples got better, the stain on the carpet left by the initial batch of 190s can never be scrubbed away.

Dodge Daytona Turbo Z

Just saying it sounds pretty cool (especially if it’s James Earl Jones saying it). Too bad the car itself – a K-car based, front-drive pretender – was so lacking in the powers of The Force. Even worse was the way this car expropriated and sullied the legacy of the old V-8 Daytonas of the late ’60s. See also: Chrysler Laser.

Lincoln Versailles

Louis XVI would surely prefer another trip to the chopping block than having to endure the association of his fabulous palace with a pretentious, double-priced Ford Granada. An example of Detroit badge-engineered, bait-and-switching at its most consumer contemptuous – the Versailles showed the world that some people will pay Lincoln money for a Ford with a fake vinyl roof and knock-off wire wheel covers.

Aston Martin Lagonda

Another cool-sounding car name forever tainted by the freakish, over-digitized atrocity that bore it, circa 1976-1990. Aston Martin has produced some gorgeous and memorable machinery; but the Lagonda – with its oddly choppy body and cheesy, early Atari-style interior – isn’t one of them. The electronics were so unreliable that the cars were often undriveable until the ECU and other components were gutted and replaced with something more viable. On the other hand, the bizarrely futuristic shape of the car eventually made it useful as a background prop in low-budget sci-fi flicks.

Bricklin SVI

Before he helped midwife the Yugo in the ’80s, Malcolm Bricklin had a brain fart of his own back in the mid ’70s. The SV1 “safety car” was supposed to be ahead of its time, a “car of the future.” And in some ways – such as its energy-absorbing, body-colored bumpers and tubular steel chassis – it was. But due to lack of money, the SV1 was more of a cobbled-together kit car than a future car – built with leftovers from Ford and AMC. It had the look and feel of a teenager’s hot rod project put together in the backyard with a Sawzall and some RTV. If a Nuremburg-style tribunal is ever held for designers of automotive atrocities, Malcolm Bricklin will surely find himself in the docks to answer for his crimes.

Reprinted with permission from EricPetersAutos.com.

July 16, 2011

Eric Peters [send him mail] is an automotive columnist and author of Automotive Atrocities and Road Hogs (2011). Visit his website.

Copyright © 2011 Eric Peters

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