1) Mitsubishi Pajero
This is also called the Shogun, but most other markets received it as the Pajero, coming from the Latin name for the wild Pampas cat. Not in Spanish-speaking markets, though—there, ‘pajero’ roughly translates to a word you might yell at someone who’s just cut you in traffic, accompanied by a specific hand gesture. Cue a hasty name change to Montero, meaning ‘huntsman.’
2) Toyota MR2
Toyota’s Midship Runabout 2-seater ran into issues in France, because when you say its name in French, it comes out sounding something like ‘em air du.’ Now, some of you might have studied French as a foreign language, and you may have amused yourself llooking up swear words in an English-to-French dictionary. You’ll understand, then, why Toyota dropped the 2 and just called it the MR in France and Belgium (but weirdly, not in Canada).
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3) Audi e-tron
Audi’s electric cars face a different issue in French-speaking markets, this time relating not to pronunciation but spelling. ‘e-tron’ may sound all cyber and futuristic, but in French, ‘étron’ means—and there’s no other way of saying this—turd. Audi, seemingly unaware of or unbothered by this, still happily markets its cars under this name in French-speaking regions, presumably leading to lots of childish giggling.
4) Fiat Tempra
This one’s not rude (well, it could be, we suppose), just a bit weird. Why on earth would Fiat, an Italian company, decide to name a car after the Italian word for ‘hardening’? Then again, this is the company that’s also sold cars named Uno (‘one’), Punto (‘point’), Tipo (‘type’), and Linea (‘line’), so maybe it’s just opening a dictionary on random pages. Coming soon: the Fiat Toothpaste.
5) Lamborghini Revuelto
Lamborghini’s preference for naming its cars after Spanish fighting bulls can lead to some very cool names, but also some translation weirdness. Urraco, for instance, means ‘magpie,’ and Murcielago translates to ‘bat.’ Reventon is particularly unfortunate in car terms—it means ‘burst,’ but can also specifically refer to a flat tire. Perhaps the best, though, is the Revuelto: While it can mean ‘unruly,’ ‘revueltos’ are also what Spanish speakers call scrambled eggs. Tasty.
6) Nissan Moco
If we had a pound for every time a Japanese manufacturer sold a rebadged Suzuki kei car with a name that translated to something unfortunate in Spanish, we’d have a hundred bucks, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice. Thankfully for Nissan, the Moco—a rebadged Suzuki MR Wagon—was also only ever sold in Japan, sparing Spanish-speaking markets the giggles of being offered a car named after what you fish out of your nose when you think nobody’s looking.
7) Honda e:Ny1
When this phenomenally average electric crossover was revealed in 2023, we assumed its name was supposed to be pronounced ‘anyone’. We were spared that particular bit of cringe—turns out you just say it ‘ee en why one’—but the resulting jumble of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and punctuation isn’t much better. It’s like Honda’s naming department spent an entire meeting just gently mashing their foreheads into the keyboard until something semi-acceptable came out.
8) Toyota bZ4X
Honda must have been taking tips from Toyota, which seemingly employed a similar technique for naming its first mass-produced EV for Europe. The bZ4X is actually part of a wider bZ (‘beyond zero’) range in China, and the 4X refers to its relative size and the fact that it’s a crossover. This seems like extraneous information when it’s the only bZ model available in other countries—and indeed, in the US and Ireland, it’s now known simply as the bZ. The rest of the world still has to navigate an alphanumeric salad, though.
9) Kia Cee’d
The very reasonably priced Cee’d was Kia’s first model designed and built in Europe, and the name was supposed to reflect that. It comes from CEE, the French initials for the European Economic Community, and ED, standing for ‘European design.’ Problem is, that leaves you with ‘Ceeed’, and that’s quite simply too many Es. Kia’s solution? The Cee apostrophe d.
10) Ferrari FF
Cool car, the Ferrari FF. The world needs more shooting brakes, especially ones with V12s. Less cool is its name—it stands for ‘Ferrari Four,’ in reference to its four seats and—in a Ferrari first—four-wheel drive. Quite apart from the fact that FF can also stand for ‘front-engined, front-wheel drive,’ that means we’re left with a car called the Ferrari Ferrari Four. Catchy.
11) Renault LeCar
Capitalizing on the ’70s uptick in demand for small, efficient cars, Renault decided it would start selling the original 5 in North America in 1976. But with a limited market presence and consumer unfamiliarity with its European number-based naming scheme, the carmaker concluded that a new name was needed—one that emphasized its Frenchness. Its solution? LeCar. Yes, the Renault The Car.
12) Land Rover Range Rover
Sure, nobody actually ever calls the Range Rover by its full, official title, especially now that RR is officially its own thing under JLR’s ‘House of Brands.’ Still, buy a brand-new Rangie today, and the registration papers will still call it a Land Rover Range Rover, which is hardly an elegant solution, especially when you start tagging Evoque, Velar, or Sport SV Ultimate Edition onto the end of it.
13) McLaren MP4-12C
Yes, we know the original name for McLaren Automotive’s first road car has some historical basis—the ‘MP4’ prefix was long used for the company’s Formula 1 machines—but when you’re trying to compete with cars with evocative names like Gallardo and 458 Italia, it’s simply not going to cut it. Things got a bit better when the MP4 bit was dropped after a year or so, but ‘12C’ still tricked more than a few people into thinking this V8-powered car, in fact, had a V12.
14) Alfa Romeo Alfa 6
This exec sedan was the first car to get Alfa Romeo’s magnificent ‘Busso’ V6 engine, a powerplant the company was rightly very proud of. So proud, in fact, that it made it part of the car’s name. And sure, ‘Alfa Romeo 6’ would have been a fine if rather bland name, and would inevitably have been shortened to ‘Alfa 6’ by the masses, anyway. But for reasons we can’t fathom, Alfa decided its full, official name should be the Alfa Romeo Alfa 6. Yep.
15) Mercedes-Benz EQE/EQS SUV
Merc’s now-abandoned EQ naming scheme for its first wave of ground-up EVs seemed simple enough—the last letter points to the corresponding combustion-powered model in the lineup—but it posed a problem when it came to the equivalents of the GLE and GLS SUVs. EQE and EQS were already taken by pebble-shaped sedans, so the German brand’s solution was to matter-of-factly shove ‘SUV’ onto the end of the official model names, turning the company’s already sprawling range into even more of a headache for customers.
16) Volkswagen New Beetle
Reinventing an iconic and widely known car is always going to provide a couple of hurdles in the naming department. BMW got around it by making Mini its own brand, and Fiat shrugged and gave the new 500 the same name as the original. But Volkswagen’s awkward solution was to officially name the new Beetle...the New Beetle. This, funnily enough, didn’t stick with the buying public.
17) Chevrolet Chevy II
The precursor to the Nova (a car with a largely false urban myth about its own name), the Chevy II was developed in a remarkably short amount of time, but the meeting to decide its name must have been one of the quickest parts of all.
“What should we call the new Chevy?”
‘“That’s it!”
We can only be thankful GM didn’t later decide to give us the Cadillac Caddy. And since there was no Chevy I, we have no idea where the II came from.
18) Chrysler by Chrysler
You can just about get away with ‘brand name by brand name’ if you make, say, perfume, but last time we checked, Chrysler does not make perfume. It makes cars. The Chrysler by Chrysler, though, was a full-size luxury sedan from Chrysler’s Australian division. Was it supposed to sound classy and upmarket? Probably. Did it actually just sound confusing? Definitely.
19) DS No. 8
Speaking of naming cars like perfumes, that’s literally what Posh Citroen is doing now. Starting with the rather likeable new No. 8 electro-fastback-sedan-crossover thing, all its model names will be preceded by No., a move it openly says is inspired by Chanel. Nice idea, but if it wasn’t hard enough explaining to people what a DS is when they ask you what you drive, it sure is now.
NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
