Press On: Does your car have a name?
I know some people who have named every car they have ever owned. As for me, it”s been hit and miss. One person explained car naming as a logical extension of the days when people traveled by wagon. He said people named the horses that pulled the wagon, so why shouldn”t we name our cars. Well, it”s a little bit of a stretch, but I guess I can play along with his reasoning.
Cars do seem to have a personality, so it does make sense to provide them with a name. My wife named the car that I now drive. It”s a Ford Edge. She tabbed it Mr. Edge. She says it is after Mr. Ed, the talking horse. There we go with a horse connection again. The Toyota Celica that I drove during my mid-life crisis years is the Red Rocket. My daughter drives it now. It got its name because, even though it has a four-cylinder engine, it has terrific acceleration, plus the fact that I got a couple of speeding tickets right after I got it.
Back when my kids were young, when the National Lampoon Vacation movie came out, I was in awe of the “family truckster” they drove. One day, on a car lot across the street from the newspaper where I worked was a huge, Ford station wagon that looked exactly like the family truckster Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) drove. I had to have it. It became our own Family Truckster. It was OK until we went on vacation and drove the dirt road from the Royal Gorge to the historic mining town of Cripple Creek, Colorado. We discovered that a previous owner had monkeyed with the insulation in the back of the vehicle. The road dust came right into the car and we ate dirt for over 30 miles. And to add insult to injury, the starter went out and caused us to cut our trip a day short.
When our twin daughters reached legal driving age, I found two old Ford Fiestas for them to drive to school. They were really pretty decent vehicles for 16-year-old girls and they got lots of miles out of both of them. Both of those cars had colorful names. One was called Pickle. It was bright green, so that was understandable. The other one was Timber Wolf. At the time, we lived not far from Kansas City and Worlds of Fun amusement park. The Timber Wolf was the new roller coaster phenomenon. I never knew if they named the car after it because of its rough ride or due to how my daughter drove it.
Stephen King has probably had as much to do with people naming their cars over the past quarter-century as anyone. He gave us Christine, the first really killer car. It was a 1958 Plymouth Fury that 17-year-old Arnie Cunningham thought was to die for. Actually, I think the movie scared me away from naming my cars for a while, especially female names. It seems that more cars that are given people names wind up as female for some reason, even when the owner is a lady. I”m not sure why.
Often, cars are given names that just naturally fit. Like one person named his new Mini-Cooper Gary, after my namesake, Gary Cooper, the famous movie star. Another person”s Volkswagen became the Velveteen Rabbit and a Hyundai owner called his model Moonlight Sonata.
I think most of us will agree that the cars from our past that meant the most and still provide the most memories are the ones we felt close enough to that we named it. Most people spend a lot of time alone with their car. We form a relationship. We talk to them. Why shouldn”t they have a name?
If you want to share with others the name of your current car or one from the past, e-mail it to me. I will run a list next week.
Gary Dickson is the editor and publisher of the Record-Bee. Call him at 263-5636, ext. 24. E-mail him at gdickson@record-bee.com.
