What are your cars called!?…

Horse car (used for transporting our daughter to and from the stables several times a week)
The clean one (not used for the above)

My wife used to have a white Seat Alhambra affectionately known as ‘the Alhambralance’ or ‘The rolling Skip’ because of the sheer volume of child related detritus it usually contained.

A former neighbour used to drive an old ambulance that they’d repurposed as a camper van. It’d been painted in straight-out-of-the-60s psychedelia hippie colours, all flowers and paisley and such, and in the place of the former livery they’d printed “AMBIANCE”. It made me grin every time I drove past it.

Sort of related… My sister owns a Ford estate car and her two girls (now aged 10 and 8) started playing games on the way to and from school etc to pass the time – the main game involves looking for other Fords. This game has never got boring and my eldest niece can spot pretty much any model of Ford a mile off.

I was with them yesterday, coming back from the beach and she can see a bit of headlight or wheel arch poking out in a line of parked cars 50m away and accurately call it. She’s never wrong.

They don’t name the cars but my God, she can spot a Ford half a mile away on a pitch dark night!

Kia’s are called The Enemy because, from a distance a Kia badge looks a bit like a Ford badge. She’s long since wise to that one now. Her powers of observation are really something.

Black car
White car

It’s funny because they are both blue.

Actually that’s not true. They are actually black and white. Sorry.

Skoda roomster bike lugger is Dudders, as Dudley a very, very elderly gentleman across the road from the mother in law has the same car.

The Honda – it’s a honda.

Bikes

Leslie Chow – honda c90 after the Hangover character
Young Mr Chow – the other, newer ,honda c90. Channeling The Hangover and Are you being served. Both names devised by my wife.

Micheal Collins. 1968 bsa bantam which a neighbour in Kerry said looked like something out of the film

Evil Boss Hog – Harley sportster, self explanatory really.

Fiesta – Foxy the Racing* Fiesta

MG Midget – Mr Toad (it’s green)

Now turned into tin cans:

C-Max – Colin, boring yet dependable.

Berlingo – Benoît, French, and like his homophone full of hidden filth and used for dirty weekends.

*bog standard 1.4, but the OH only drives with her floor flat to the floor on at least one pedal at all times.

Ford Focus estate is Ermintrude as it’s highland cow coloured and has horns.

Never bothered, until my daughter got her first car, a mitsubishi colt and decided ‘mi’ led to Mimi.

So then we thought of names for wife’s car and then mine. Wife’s was going to be Ross, cause numberplate is RO22, but apparently that’s a shit name for a car. From that I said should be Paolo cos it’s a Fiat 500, and Paolo Rossi, obvs. But that never stuck. It’s just the little black car, which makes mine Big Black, after Steve Albini’s band

BYV short for big yellow van.
Yellow T4. 20 years old now I’ve had it for 13. Driving to Andalucia in it in September, what could possibly go wrong…..

Her powers of observation are really something.

There was a kid on telly years ago, on something like That’s Life or Record Breakers or something, who could identify cars from the rear light cluster. They had a big wall up with dozens of clusters to test him. (I think he fluffed it in the end, he missed a couple.)

Car-spotting is a fun talent though. I think it was a lot easier in my youth than today because they were much more distinctive before manufacturers worked out “optimal aerodynamic car shape” and have basically been turning out variations on the Ford Sierra ever since. I was sat outside a pub a couple of weekends ago, spotted something in the distance and suddenly thought, “is that…?”

(See if she can work out the Ford behind it, also.)

Mastro and an Escort saloon.

Used to be that we had a “dog bus”, that got upgraded to a “bike bus”. The dog now goes in the “works car” which is provided to me for work. Someone recently called it a Chinese milk float (MG5 bev) and I think there’s a chance that might stick.

Mastro and an Escort saloon

Did Ford drop the Orion name for booted Escorts? Either way I have a possible irrational hatred of front wheel drive Escorts. Never driven one I didn’t despise. A particular low point being a 1.8d without power steering.

matt_outandabout
Full Member
“Blue car.”
“Red car.”

Posted 2 hours ago
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did they have a race?

After a long journey, give her a little pat for being good to me.

Ooh. Now. That got me thinking. I do call my car ‘car’ when it’s done a good job towing the caravan. Little pat on the steering wheel and a “Thanks car! Great job!” (I do have a history of cars breaking down whilst/post-towing.)

did they have a race?

Yes. See the previous page. You lost. 😁

Did Ford drop the Orion name for booted Escorts?

Yep. That’s a 93-plate so pretty much right after Ford dropped the Orion moniker, it’s an Escort saloon. Jeff is correct on both counts.

The Maestro was liveried up with something like “the £500 rally challenge,” I expect there’s an interesting story to be had there.

black car and red car. my so named them.

The V70 is called ’70’
The XC90 is called ’90’
The Peugeot Partner (Berlingo) is called ‘Brian’

My Fabia did have a name but it never stuck so it’s just called ‘The Skoda’ which is a pity as it’s been a brilliant (if boring) dependable workhorse that I don’t want to part with until I have to.

The Mini is called Georgie, even by people outside the family. The local garage even has her on the books as that rather than the number plate.

There was a kid on telly years ago, on something like That’s Life or Record Breakers or something, who could identify cars from the rear light cluster. They had a big wall up with dozens of clusters to test him. (I think he fluffed it in the end, he missed a couple.)

You Bet maybe? I know they had a teenager on there who could identify any car from a quick look at it’s crushed cubed remains. It’s the kind of ‘unique’ talent that they went for.

Either way I have a possible irrational hatred of front wheel drive Escorts. Never driven one I didn’t despise.

I had a mk3 for a while. It was decent enough on paper but the unluckiest car I ever owned. That was the car I collected at 11:40am, drove about three blocks before being picked up on a PNC check as being without owner and netted a £90 fine and six points because unbeknown to me my insurance didn’t start until noon. A week later my girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend kicked in all four door panels. After that it kinda went downhill.

It had an intermittent fault I’ve spoken about before where you’d sometimes come to it and it’d be stone dead, eventually diagnosed in seconds by going directly to Lucas after spending months and months of fannying about with various mechanics and auto-electricians.

I washed it once using Fairy liquid because why pay for expensive car shampoo amirite? It stripped the gloss paint rendering the former deep burgundy red a sort of matt brown that’d probably be quite popular these days with boy racers and Allegro owners.

It had Ford Electrics Syndrome because of course it did, it was a mid-80s Ford. A slight whiff of a dodgy earth or a blown bulb and it was disco inferno if you dared brake and indicate at the same time.

An oncoming vehicle drove through a flood and I got a faceful of water. I never did get to the bottom of quite how that came about.

It finally met its end when I stuffed it up the arse of a Mitsubishi Colt because I was too busy perving at a girl across the road rather than looking where I was going. To its credit it absolutely annihilated the Colt whilst sustaining relatively minimal damage itself beyond a shagged bumper and a bonnet like Angry Emu’s beak, but by that point it was the straw that broke the camel’s back and I drove it to the nearest scrapyard in a fit of pique.

You Bet maybe?

I want to say it was earlier than that but you may be right.

The Mini is called Georgie, even by people outside the family. The local garage even has her on the books as that rather than the number plate.

Oh if we’re going off what garages call cars, mine must be the Magic Money Tree.
Get it up on the ramp and shake it…

My old Kia Sportage was called Kenny. Someone crashed into it while it was parked in Milton Keynes. “Oh my God, they killed Kenny” was the universal cry from my colleagues when they saw the damage.

Ford Focus was called Frodo because it was smaller than Kenny

My current Astra was named Alvin by my daughter

There was a kid on telly years ago, on something like That’s Life or Record Breakers or something, who could identify cars from the rear light cluster. They had a big wall up with dozens of clusters to test him. (I think he fluffed it in the end, he missed a couple.)

@Cougar, You Bet:

I didn’t rewatch it through and can’t remember the outcome, but I remember it at the time as I was embarrassingly good at it too. Definitely harder nowadays with there being many more different models of car available, e.g. BMW used to have 3-, 5-, 7- and 8-series, but now I couldn’t even tell you how many different models they have.

Mate of mine at Uni had a mk1 Fiesta in 80’s socks yellow which picked up the nickname The Flying Banana.

Banana it was. Flying, not so much.

There was a kid on telly years ago, on something like That’s Life or Record Breakers or something, who could identify cars from the rear light cluster. They had a big wall up with dozens of clusters to test him. (I think he fluffed it in the end, he missed a couple.)

My bother used to collect Ford brochures and learned the specification of Sierras because our dad used to have them as company cars (ie, L model would get a rear parcel shelf, GL also got an electric aerial, Ghia gave you power steering and a rear demister etc etc etc).

did they have a race?

They stuffed their face.
But the blue car will always win in our household.

@Cougar, You Bet:

Ah wow, that’s fantastic.

Doubly so as the uploader is the actual kid from the show.

I was a chubby 17 year old car geek with oversized glasses (are these retro cool yet?) and a very 80s fuzzy sweater. I wrote to LWT in London to appear on the show letting them know of my ability to recognize cars by their tail lights. To my surprise they had me on the show where I got to meet the effervescent Bruce Forsyth. So a message to all the geeky kids out there that think they may be undervalued in the world because of the way they look or what size they are or that they only know about one silly subject matter. If you enjoy something, don’t give up. Who knows you may entertain a whole country one day! By the way, I still would like to own an Aston Martin Lagonda one day!

My Mitsubishi is called Joey because it’s an Asx.
the 407sw it replaced was called Skylark because we all got aboard it and it had the turning circle of a narrowboat.

My wife has a new VW ID4 – which has been dubbed the “eco panzer” as it is a big old thing but seems to just waft along without any noise..

I used to have an old american Post office jeep, which was called Dolly after Dolly Parton, as it had really big headlights

I then had a Land Rover 101 Forward Control, where the fuel pump had to sit on top of the engine cover (between the front seats) and when it cut out, you’d hit it with a spanner, so that was called “spanky the truck”

Old Polo was “Peter Polo”
Old T4 was “Trav”

Current ID3 is “the iPad”
Transit connect is “the van”

Mine is called Eros, and hers is Thanatos.

Lad I play cricket with has a Tesla Y – he calls it Musky 😳

Big red – skoda octy estate, also the ‘dog car’.
Gertrude, the golf.

Before that
Holly the Honda, picked ecause she had a red nose apparently.
Elf – Peaugeot 206 with ELF at the end of the plate.
My Red 205 and Uno never had names, other than s**t-boxes as that is what they were.

Lad I play cricket with has a Tesla Y – he calls it Musky 😳

The aforementioned friend with the Flying Banana also had a Honda Accord which was Musky, but that was largely because he had a girlfriend whilst still living with his parents.

My sister used to have aan old Escort she called the ‘pissy’ car because the end of the number plate read PEE.

Wife used to have an Aygo called shug (hugo the Aygo).

I’m not really into calling my cars names as I’m not very imaginative nor gives too much of a @@@@ what I drive as long at its dependable, has a decent stereo and is easy to drive.

Her newer Fiat 500 is called (by me only) either Shug 2 or the Shug imposter.

My favourite car was a 1995 Fiat Cinquecento Sporting but as I was in Dublin at the time, it was referred to as a Cheeky-chenko!

I miss that car but think it’s mostly nostalgic musings…

My Model 3 made me pick a name, so I went for “Scooty Puff Jr” in homage to my favourite TV series.