Ask anyone with a child how difficult it was to choose a name, they’ll likely tell you it was a difficult decision to make. Parents haven’t got anything on car companies, though, because not only do they have to find a name that hasn’t been used already and therefore hasn’t been trademarked, they have to make sure the ideal name doesn’t translate badly or hold a less than ideal connotation. Sadly for the manufacturers but amusingly for us, a few names were stamped on cars that really shouldn’t have been. So here’s our run down of the worst car names…
Nine cars whose name translates badly
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Toyota MR2
There’s a lot of love for the Toyota MR2, whether it’s the original W10, the follow-up W20 or the final W30. Toyota never sold anywhere near as many as Mazda did the MX-5, arguably its closest rival, but as affordable, mid-engined sportscars went, it was either the MR2 or nothing at all.
MR2 stood for ‘Midship Runabout 2-seater’, but, sadly, in French ‘MR2’ happens to sound exactly like ‘merde’, which, in case you are unfamiliar, translates in English as a four letter word that begins with ‘s’, ends in ‘t’ and isn’t ‘soot’. The name was rightly adjusted to the Toyota MR for French-speaking markets.
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Buick LaCrosse
You’ve probably never seen a Buick LaCrosse, and that is no bad thing. It does have a name that may make you chuckle, however.
Launched in 2005 in the USA, the LaCrosse was a fairly ordinary saloon car, the name ‘LaCrosse’ referencing the sport. Across the border in Canada, however, it needed a new name, as ‘LaCrosse’ was slang for, well, onanism. Weirdly, Canadian dealers actually requested Buick change the name back for the 2009 model year despite the name, to make better use of the ‘LaCrosse branding that was used everywhere else. Brave, brave dealers.
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Isuzu GIGA Light Dump
OK, this isn’t a car but a truck. Still, the name is worth sharing, right? The Giga is a range of commercial vehicles built by Isuzu since 1994. There have been two generations, the most recent launched in 2015, and engines have varied in size from 7.8 litres to 30.4 litres. Even the fantastic Beast of Turin can’t match that.
Unfortunately for Isuzu, the naming strategy for one variant of the Giga wasn’t thought through fully. A small truck with a tipper rear was introduced with the name ‘Light Dump’. A fantastic name, but another truck can go one better…
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Mazda Titan Dump
What’s better than Light Dump? A Titan Dump, of course. It was Mazda that went one better than Isuzu, and oddly it did it with a tipper truck that was considerably smaller than that of the Isuzu.
Now rebadged as a Isuzu Elf, the first Mazda Titan was launched in 1971, the second-gen following on in 1980, the third in 1989, the fourth in 2000, the fifth in 2004 and the sixth in 2007. The Dump name was born in that first iteration. Bravo Mazda.
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Audi A3 e-tron and e-tron
e-tron (lowercase e, because style) is Audi’s electric brand name, and we’ve seen it on the back of a handful of four-ringed vehicles for a number of years now. Its first appearance was on the e-tron concept back in 2010, an R8-based all-electric supercar that, well, would only do 124mph. But it paved the way for future e-trons, and since then we’ve had the e-tron SUV and the e-tron GT – rest assured there will be plenty more.
Sadly the name, like a few others on this list, does not translate so well in French. Étron actually means “turd” in French. Well you certainly wouldn’t want to drive around in one of those.
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Daihatsu Scat
On the subject of étron, may we introduce the Daihatsu Scat. The word scat, another word for a bathroom deposit, has featured on other cars, most recently on the Dodge Charger and Dodge Challenger with the ‘Scat Pack’. In fact Dodge first offered the Scat Pack in its line-up back in 1968. But Dodge didn’t actually call a car Scat…
Officially known in many markets as the Daihatsu Taft, Taft standing for ‘Tough and Almighty Four-wheel Touring Vehicle’, the car was titled Wildcat, Pionier and Scat elsewhere. Production lasted just 10 years, from 1974 to 1984. The name isn’t great, but the car looks rather cool.
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Mazda LaPuta
The Mazda LaPuta was Mazda’s version of the Suzuki Kei, a quirky Japanese kei car that (shock) we really, really like. Even without the bonnet scoop we’re thinking of ways to import one to the UK… The Kei was in production from 1998 to 2009, while the Laputa was sold from 1999 to 2006.
There’s just one thing. As you might have guessed, it’s the name. Laputa might be a fictional island in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, but ‘puta’ also matches up to another word for ‘female dog’ or ‘person of the night’. Maybe we won’t import one after all, or if we do, we’ll buy the Suzuki version…
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Mitsubishi Pajero
We all know the Mitsubishi Pajero as the Shogun, a rugged, go-anywhere off-roader that was in production from 1981 to 2021 across four generations. A bonkers 3.3 million were sold in that time. It was as tough as they come, a dependable workhorse that would look just as at home on a small farm as it would delivering aid in some remote part of the world at the hands of the UN.
There was a reason the Pajero was sold as the ‘Montero’ in Spanish-speaking territories, and that was because ‘pajero’ translates to something that sound an awful lot like banker but starts with a ‘w’ rather than a ‘b’. A mighty car but another unfortunate name.
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Hyundai Kona
Most of the cars on this list are old, but there’s evidence to suggest that, no matter what name you go for, there’s a chance someone, somewhere, will think a name sounds similar to or exactly like a rude or offensive phrase. That evidence comes in the form of the Hyundai Kona.
The Kona is a dinky little crossover named after an area of Hawaii, built in six countries around the world and sold almost everywhere. In China it is sold as the Encino for reasons unknown, but in Portugal it goes by the name ‘Kauai’, the reason being Kona sounds like ‘cona’, and cona is a rather strong word for a specific area of the female anatomy. Strewth.
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