Yesterday, the illustrious and quite tall Matthew Guy asked about the most linguistically pleasing model names. I tossed out the AMC Ambassador as a model that rolls off the tongue in a flood of satisfaction.
AMC Ambassador — it’s like one of those old, alliteration-addicted British airliners like the Bristol Brabazon or Vickers Vanguard. Actually, one airliner to roll out of the UK at the time was the Airspeed Ambassador, so AMC’s biggest offering had a friend on the other side of the pond.
While we’re not here today to talk about names per se, we are about to delve into wordplay again. What automotive term gets under your skin?
There’s a long list to choose from, but your truly finds himself getting rankled when the going gets poncy, as Corey might say. High-falutin’ words spouted by car nerds and German executives in sharp suits who wouldn’t dare use the term in a dingy bar far from the bright lights of the big city.
Speaking of Corey, “heckblende” is a word our friend uses to annoy this writer. To normal people, this obnoxious term signifies the presence of a full-width taillight assembly, not unlike that found on an Olds Aurora or a 1970 Ford Thunderbird. Don’t ever use this awful word.
There’s now a new and very specialized term struggling to get itself established in written materials pouring out of the Fatherland, and that term is “foot garage.” Coined by Porsche to refer to a pair of indentations in the new Taycan’s underfloor battery pack, these battery dents provide greater real estate for backseat occupants’ feet. In other words, they’re a footwell extension, yet Porsche decided to give this feature a name. And what a name.
I suppose my gloves are hand garages.
Sure, automakers can assign whatever name they want to a new or mildly updated feature; these aren’t industry-wide things with agreed-upon monikers. They’re not rocker or sail panels or spoilers or what have you. Of course, sometimes terms denoting a component, feature or bodystyle differ depending on where you stand geographically. Born into a life of castles and tweed? It’s not a convertible — it’s a drop-head coupe. It’s an estate car, not a wagon. It’s a rev counter, not a tach.
We’ve got names for everything.
It’s now time to use your words to rant and gripe about that particular name, term, or descriptive word found in the auto arena that gets under your skin.
[Image: © 2017 Jeff Wilson/The Truth About Cars]
“Anti-Roll Bar” seems odd to me because it’s describing something in the negative, like “wireless”. Of course, I call it a “Sway Bar” but that’s contradictory because it doesn’t make the car sway.
Stabilizer bar is also used.
:-)
The first stabilizer bar patent was awarded to Canadian inventor Stephen Coleman.
That’s actually the most apt description, but does it imply that cars without them are not stable?
“Automatic Manual” It’s enough to make one fly into a violent chainsaw massacring rage. It is not an automatic manual; it is an automated layshaft transmission.
I have also heard this term applied to dual clutch transmissions (DCTs), which are also automated layshaft transmissions except with two concentric input shafts. I wish I knew how to edit the Wiki – I would do so with extreme vengeance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_manual_transmission
“Shooting Brake” – how very hoity-toity are we?
AMC Flash-O-Matic. Had to hide the fact that it was an off the shelf Borg Warner transmission. It wasn’t very flash, but it sure was matic.
Borg-O-Matic?
;-)
Cruise-o-Matic: Ford
How well were they assimilated?
They made excellent drones.
If “station wagons” were called something else, they might still be around. (“Shooting brake” is just as bad.)
Depot hack?
http://owlshead.org/collections/detail/1923-ford-t-depot-hack
Do you prefer the term ‘estate car’?
What about ‘squareback’?
And what should we call station wagons with 3-doors? Shooting brake does indeed sound pretentious, but it did give a name to a particular style. However just like coupe that has now morphed.
Now they seem to call them crossover utility vehicles.
:-(
Okay, how’s about this:
America – station wagon
U.K – estate car, brake, shooting brake
France – break
Germany – sportwagen
Everyone is a little different, yes
I considered a few personalized plates for my car (7 characters on a personalized plate in NM.)
ESTATE
SPRTWGN
SHTNGBK
SHGNWGN
But I think what ToolGuy may have been referring to is that many pretentious internet commenter Hoonigan types like to call all wagons “Shooting Brake”. As if it somehow makes them more interesting or cooler.
Shi*ting brick?
You do Shooting Brake with only 7 letters…
I loathe the word “hoon” and all its derivatives. I don’t even have a good reason other than a general distaste for the type of person who would use it unironically.
As for a term to describe cars themselves, “shooting brake” has always rubbed me the wrong way too. Just doesn’t make sense and seems pretentious.
Indeed. It is more pretentious than cucumber sandwiches.
Huh, I never thought of cucumber sammies as pretentious. Our current situation is an inundation of cucumbers so they are included in just about everything.
more of a reap what you sow kinda situation.
“Coupe” for anything with more than 2 doors.
theflyersfan agrees with you below.
One of those moments where I started typing, got delayed, and then finished and posted when deanst did…
Mobility.
What do I win?
Yes to this!
Yes. I was going to say the same thing. It is completely meaningless and every manufacturer wants to be a mobility company.
Quad 4
To be fair it means quadruple valves per each of four cylinders, but yeah it can sound odd.
Four door coupe. Yes, I realize that in some definitions, “coupe” is determined by interior space and not the number of doors, but in common automotive jargon and knowledge, coupe is 2 doors. So this slicing of the market into smaller and smaller pieces, including overstyled four door “coupes” just drives me up the wall, especially when they can make these sometimes attractive sedans a mainstream model and not a niche 4 door “coupe.” (Example – the A5 four door “coupe” I find very attractive and probably should be the mainstream A4.)
Damn straight. Thank you for saying it.
And that whole four door coupe crap is precisely what is driving people to CUVs.
Actually, it’s roof shape, not interior space, that allows automakers to call something a coupe.
The term has evolved to mean two doors, but back in the day, it referred to a car with a cut (or really sleek) roofline. Sort of like it does now. Likewise, you could have a two-door car with a really upright roofline that wasn’t any different than that of the sedan and not-all-that-long doors; the automaker might call that variant a two-door sedan..
I think even back in the day when you could have a 2 door sedan and coupe in the same model line the coupes were all 2 doors as far as I know, this 4 door coupe thing is new(relatively speaking). But admittedly I’d give a pass to 3 door coupes like the Saturn Ion. The worst offenders are the “coupe” SUVs that’s just wrong on so many levels!
Rover P5 sedan and coupe comes to mind.
Barn find. Stop with this sh!t already. Yes, there are cars that qualify for this name. But nowadays it seems to be attached to every classic car that needs restored. And I use the term “classic” loosely. “What we have here is a 1982 Chevette, a true classic and local barn find! Needs some body work but can be driven as is with some brake work.” Not everything old is a classic and not every beater left out in a field or parked behind some junky shed is a barn find. Sometimes they are just worn out POS that nobody wants to deal with anymore. Caveat emptor indeed.
“Survivor”
My Dad would call his 1967 Mustang (now mine) a “Survivor”. Really, Dad? It’s on it’s 3rd convertible top, had the original rear axle replaced by a Ford 9-inch, various under hood components replaced when they died…
By that definition isn’t every car that makes it to a certain age a “survivor”?
Agreed.
“Thigh support”
Also, according to my father, your gloves are “hand shoes.”
“Post” sedan. A sedan has a B pillar. Adding “post” to sedan is just attempting to sound more informed than one is.”Post” is redundant.
No manufacturer ever built a “post” anything.
Hardtop is the outlier [hardtop sedan, hardtop coupe]. It means a body style without a B pillar and I don’t care what Ford called the Mustang II, or Mini calls itself today: they weren’t and aren’t hardtops.
Same with “pillarless hardtops”. Redundant again.
Switch, swap, change , “out”. What one is switching, swapping or changing is already going out. Another attempt to make the process sound more involved than it is and… redundant.
My biggest peeves and made by people who should really know better.
“Needs restored”
“Had ran when parked”
“Longroof”: someone trying way too hard to be hip
Badge engineering is one that gets on my nerves, mainly because people use it incorrectly. Badge engineering is literally taking a car, slapping a different badge (and perhaps a new front end) on it, and marketing it as a different car. The Toyota Yaris Sedan is a badge-engineered Mazda2. The Chevrolet Suburban and GMC Yukon XL are badge-engineered.
The Lexus ES is not a badge-engineered Toyota Camry, just because they share a platform. A Cadillac XT6 is not a badge-engineered Chevrolet Traverse or Buick Enclave; it isn’t even the same size as those cars.
If the two products have different body shells, they aren’t badge engineered. And even if they mostly *do* have the same body shell, if they have completely different interiors (as in the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator), that’s not badge engineering, either.
Agreed. This is one of my pet peeves too. Also, a car sold in one country under one name and sold in another country under a different name is not badge engineering. The Buick Regal and Opel Insignia being a good example.
Well, I mean, that literally *is* badge engineering…but it’s not a transgression. No one’s trying to sell a vehicle as two distinct products in the same market.
I think the Opel Insignia and Vauxhall Insignia would’ve been a better example of a none badge engineered badge swap. Vauxhall is known to be the British Opel while Buick is marketed as its own thing with hardly a mention of Opel even before the sale. But in general badge engineering really does get too much use these days.
And, most people only look at your examples in down fashion.
Sniff sniff “the ES is a badge-engineered Camry.” It’s never “the Toyota shares a hell of a lot with a Lexus.”
lstanley:
Well, that’s a self-defense reflex. Built-in consumer protection. If a company sells the same thing under two different names and at two different prices, we (rightly) assume that the scheme is to the manufacturer’s benefit. IE, to our detriment. So we are innately vigilant of such schemes, and rightly so.
“The Lexus ES is not a badge-engineered Toyota Camry, just because they share a platform.”
The Lexus ES is simply a badge-engineered Toyota Avalon. In MY2013 the ES stopped being a longer Camry; that was the model year that the ES and Avalon became the same car, the ES with a tux and a better cup of dealer coffee for the owner.
So no, now it’s been damn near 7 years since that happened–and yet people still put it in the same slot as the Camry. It’s as if no one paid attention when Toyota marketed.
It is not badge-engineered. Between the ES and the Avalon, every body panel and every interior part except a few switches is different. It may feel the same to drive and share most of the mechanicals, but that’s not badge engineering.
In the Toyota/Lexus lineup, only the Land Cruiser and LX 570 even come close to being a badge-engineered pair, and even there the interiors are different enough that I don’t think the label fits.
Fahrvergnügen of VW fame
Personally, I think internet people get way too hung up a lot of this stuff.
What do you expect from brain dead people who get hung up on cats with grumpy faces?
Okay well this is more speaking generally but I always get irritated when people mis label automotive anything.
I’ll give some examples of the ones that are bugging me this very moment.
I watched a movie on Netflix last night called “Time Trap” the Land Rover Discoverys we called Jeeps, I heard Jeeps
And see Land Rovers ahhh! Don’t do that.
People like to call things that they are not and I get it most of the time, but as an auto enthusiast I am always let down and irritated when I find things aren’t as they are so-called.
In the early 90s my mom used to call her Toyota Tercel her sports car and to this day errrr. That is not a sports car.
When co-workers I know with large gas guzzling SUVs and Trucks drive them like hot rods on the streets, then say they get good gas mileage!?!; Ugh no you don’t. I drive the longer distance to work, plus go out to eat vs them cooking most nights and get gas almost every three weeks they get gas every four days but nope no problem everything is fine.
It’s a common thing, especially in the early days of the SUV boom, to call everything that’s an SUV or even a reasonably-tall crossover a Jeep.
Missy Elliott has a 2000-era song whose lyrics include “See ’cause y’all be drivin’ Lexus Jeeps and the Benz Jeeps and the Lincoln Jeeps, nothin’ cheaper, got them platinum VISAs.” Presumably, these refer to the LX 450 or LX 470, ML 320 and Navigator, respectively. At least they were all BOF at the time.
I also once heard my barber tell someone over the phone to “park between the Cadillac Jeep and the…Jeep Jeep.” The “Cadillac Jeep” was a 2010-2012 SRX, whole the “Jeep Jeep” was my own Grand Cherokee.
Likewise, I once had a colleague try and describe a car he rode in while in Europe. He said it was “some sort of Town Car.” It obviously was *not* a Lincoln Town Car, but that was his way of describing a large sedan.
Very silly; I agree.
“Fueling”. Putting fuel, diesel, gasoline, hydrogen in a vehicle.
Oh NO! Now it’s been changed to something about fuel efficiency and vehicle emissions. “Like, Whatever!”
Limited.
As in a limited edition Camry, Accord or Altima… limited to what? The millions of identical clones that rolled off the assemble line?
Actually, typically when those automakers use the term “Limited,” it really does refer to a special edition trim level for that year only, oftentimes to sweeten the deal by giving you content you would otherwise be locked out of. For instance, the 2012 Camry SE Limited built upon the four-cylinder SE trim with the 18-inch SE V6 wheels, an 8-way driver’s seat, a 6.1-inch touchscreen with navigation and a sunroof. Prior to that, you couldn’t get an SE that well-equipped; you’d have to step up to the XLE, and forgo the SE’s sporty looks.
It’s mainly Ford and Chrysler that have “Limited” as a mainline trim, usually at the higher end or the very top of the trim ladder (see Grand Cherokee Limited or F-150 Limited).
GM has used the “Limited” suffix to denote a previous-generation car that is sold alongside the new one for a year or two, mainly for fleets. When the current C1XX Acadia debuted for 2017, the old Lambda-based Acadia continued alongside it as the Acadia Limited. Likewise, when the new Tiguan rolled out for 2018, Volkswagen sold the old one for a year as the Tiguan Limited. In both cases, yes, the car’s time on the market was reasonably limited, although it’s not as though either was sought-after.
Honda has just straight-up used “SE” or “Special Edition” to refer to one of those weird one-off trim bundles, and I can’t recall an example of Nissan using “Limited” anywhere, but perhaps you can.
Side note: Beware of weird trims created by dealers. A Toyota dealer near me was creating its own “Platinum Edition” version of the Camry by giving the car window tint, VIN etching and Platinum badges, clearly donated from a contemporary Escalade. To add insult to injury, the basis for this “Platinum Edition” was the base-model Camry LE, so it wasn’t even anything nice.
The Koreans have become fond of “Limited” as well
Oh, yes; absolutely. Mom drives a 2012 Sonata Limited (which at the time was the nicest trim; I’m not sure if it is now).
Ford took that a step further and turned it into an actual model for more than two decades and eventually two models – LTD.
Trim inflation that results in ridiculous trim level names, such as the Highlander Hybrid Limited Platinum that I own. Going back to earlier Toyota naming conventions, instead of LE, XLE, Limited, and Limited Platinum, the four trim levels should have been base, DX, LE, and XLE.
DX is really old. In the last twenty years, they (Toyota) have used CE to refer to a really stripped-out model. And I agree with you.
I think Honda when I see DX
Honda is still using DX in Canada on the Fit and Civic sedan.
“First-ever” x
where x = a new model, especially when said new model is just an update of the current model with a new name.
STFU!
Also, first ever doesn’t mean good, it just means new. Just because it doesn’t have a predecessor doesn’t mean it couldn’t be a pile of hot garbage.
Well, no, but no automaker is going to say “look at our fresh pile of garbage.” They (or their agencies) always write about the product in a positive and exciting light. It’s Advertising 101. Indeed, the more superlatives they use without actually describing the car’s tangible merits, the more likely it is to be bad, or at least uncompetitive.
However, an automaker might, in hindsight, admit a car wasn’t very good. Like Marchionne saying that the 200, Dart, and 500e were crap, after they’d been released.
I’ve never seen them do “first-ever” when it’s just a straight-up redesign. However, it *is* disingenuous when an automaker calls something the “first-ever” and it’s just a name change.
“Introducing the first-ever 2016 Mercedes-Benz GLE-Class.”
Right…because you face-lifted the M-Class and changed the name. It’s not even a complete redesign.
Toyota TRD—-every time I see it, I think TURD. Yuck!
Same here! At least now I know I’m not weird.
When I see “LTZ” on a Suburban, I think of Bob Lutz, and then I think of Rick Wagoner, and then I get a little sad.
Mostly a Canadian-ism but hate when people call manual transmissions “standard”. Maybe it was the standard 50 years ago but it’s been decades since anyone has had to learn to operate one to get a license and it’s long since stopped being standard on most vehicles. Plus “is it automatic or standard?” and “can you drive standard?” just sound so stupid.
Also hate when trim levels have names but it’s not denoted anywhere on the vehicle. Why call it a Mazda3 GX, GS or GT when they all just say “Mazda3” on the car. Just call it base, mid, and top. Or 2.0, 2.5 and 2.5 plus or something.
Guilty as charged. And despite your feelings I will continue to refer to all 3 pedal cars as having a ‘standard’ transmission. Sorry.
Reviewers, we don’t care about hard-touch or soft touch plastics.
Spot on. There is always the video shot of the reviewer knocking on the plastic with a bent finger, “a little too much hard plastic here”. Whatever. You want to give me some useful information, how about pricing on replaceable items like tires, brakes, how hard it is to maintain, etc. These same reviewers want every car to have 6 piston brakes too, never mind the cost associated with replacement. Not saying there is not a place for them, just not on a daily driven Camry.
2drsedanman, Yup, 6 piston brake calipers have no benefit for 98.5% of buyers/drivers.
I gave up on vehicle “reviews” some time ago as all they tell you is about appearance. It would be better to know if the car has tires made by the lowest bidder that throw the tread at less than 25K miles. Or if there are reliability problems with the powertrain, suspension, steering, or brakes.
Cupholders, moonroofs, spoilers, .05 secs faster in the 1/4? Shrug.
I don’t know if this counts but I can’t stand Mazda’s
Zoom Zoom Advertisements.
Trim/Model name “EX”, something on the bootlid to remind you of someone you don’t like any more.
Which of the following is the highest spec tire?
– Extreme Performance
– Max Performance
– Ultra High Performance.
It’s actually Streetable Track & Competition, if you’re talking about Tire Rack categories.
Steph writes: “I suppose my gloves are hand garages.”
German got there first; glove is “Handschuh”, or hand shoe.
“Tesla Autopilot”. ha-ha-ha
Alcantara
We all know what it really is…faux-suede or suede-ette much like faux-leather is coined leatherette. The word doesn’t annoy me, it just makes me smile whenever it’s used to “upmarket” an automotive interior.
Yeah . . . sorta like vinyl was once an optional “upgrade” to standard fabric . . . of course I’m dating myself a bit . . .