You want to know something I appreciate? I mean, aside from the transistor and our nation’s remarkably competent network of municipal water systems and being hugged from behind while doing dishes? Punctuation. Yes, punctuation, those little dots and dashes and squiggles that are traffic signals of our written language. Generally, punctuation isn’t particularly common in car names, largely because car names tend to be single words (occasionally there’s doubles or triples, sure) and not whole sentences, so the need for punctuation is significantly reduced.
Of course, while it isn’t common, it’s not like it’s unheard of, either! There are some cars that incorporate punctuation into their names, and I think we’d all be better off if we know what they are. We should probably establish some ground rules, though. For example, I’m not sure hyphens should count, because there would just be too many. If we count both manufacturer and model names with hyphens, off the top of my head I can think of Karmann-Ghia, Willys-Overland, Pierce-Arrow, Kaiser-Frazer, Dual-Ghia, Gordon-Keeble, and there’s many more. I think a hyphen is too easy. So, we’ll say no hyphens.
Wait, so what are the accepted set of punctuation marks, at least for English? It seems there are 16 of them: period, question mark, exclamation point, comma, semicolon, colon, em dash, en dash, hyphen, parentheses, curly brackets, square brackets, apostrophe, double quotation marks, single quotation marks, and ellipsis. So, of these, I think we can lose all they hyphen-like ones (em and en dashes, hyphens). The rest I think are okay.
I think I’m okay with some other typographic symbols being counted as punctuation, like pound sign/number sign/hashtag or slashes like the ones I just used there or even an ampersand, if it’s actually used officially and not just a substitute for “and” because you’re feeling lazy.
So, with these parameters in mind, let’s see what we can come up with:
Volkswagen Up!
Volkswagen ID.3
Volkswagen ID.4
Volkswagen ID.Buzz
Honda That’s
Th!nk City
Smart #1
Smart #3
Fiat X1/9
Alldays & Onions
Kia Cee’d
That’s not even a dozen! Yes, the list goes to 11, but there have to be more, right? I think? If any crew can come up with some that I missed, it’s this one. There’s got to be more; what are they?
Oh wait! I thought of one more, a good one, from the really, really early days of cars:
Bollée L’Obéissante
This was an 1873 steam car from French automotive pioneer Amédée Bollée!
And, yes, that is absolutely an automobile, pre-dating the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, which was not, despite what Mercedes-Benz likes to claim, the first automobile. Not even close.
There must be more! I just checked Coupe de Ville and Sedan de Ville, by the way, they don’t use apostrophes. And I’m not counting concept, just production cars (and yes, it’s believed the Bollée was built in series! I can’t recall how many, though), so no Chrysler D’Elegances, sorry.
But I know there have to be more!
AMC Hurst SC/Rambler
AMC AMX/3
Is an Oldsmobile Curved Dash disqualified because a dash falls under the hyphen restriction, or because it’s curved is it more like a parenthesis?
Jeep Comma(nder)
How about trim designators? Kia Soul !, aka the Exclaim trim.
Well if you are going to count X1/9, then I think you really need to count the Z-28, the F-series and E-series.
Ferrari P4/5
My Google-fu is failing me but either Suzuki or Daihatsu had a kei car called We’ve (possibly a trim level of the Alto or Mira)
Haven’t seen this one mentioned. Not punctuation, but a good one:
DKW 3=6
Daihatsu Mira e:S (no, that’s not an equipment level, it’s a separate line)
There was. A car company. That called itself. Alldays & Onions???
The Brits are so fucking weird.
Named after its two founders, who had the surnames Allday and Onions respectively.
‘Cuda
First thing that came to my mind.
Nissan Silvia Q’s and K’s
Say for a moment that hyphens do count, and consider Saabs 9-3 and 9-5. The badge rendered the 3 and 5 as superscript, but in text it was commonly rendered with the hyphen. Is the true model name based on the badge or the text? Or is either text merely a visual representation of the true, spoken form?
Doesn’t Citroen have a car called Champs-Élysées that’s also abbreviated C-Elysees? I feel like that one should take the cake.
It’s not the Champs-Elysées but the C- Elysée as in C-2, C-3, C-4 etc… And Jason said hyphens don’t count
There is totally an accent mark over the first e. That means it has a dash and an accent mark
Actually two accent marks in Élysée, but accent marks are not in Jason list neither. But the Champs-Élysées (plural) are the avenue, the Élysée is the french equivalent of the Whitehouse.
Smart also has the #5 it unveiled last year.
And Kia had a 3-door hatchback version of the Cee’d, called the Pro_cee’d. Yes, that’s an underscore.
Don’t they want it to be pronounced “hashtag five” not “number five”? And does anyone who’s actually young (I’m 50) think that has the sort of “Hey, Fellow Kids!” energy I’m guessing it does?
Yes, I thought Hashtag One/Three/Five was very stupid too.
pound 5?
Well, in my case there was always “the f$%&@!g BMW broke again.”
Very good. Yes, the Grawlix model transcends marque.
I haven’t seen the Nissan R’nessa mentioned yet.
Don’t know if this qualifies, because is an entire brand: Yes!
Triumph GT6+
Jaguar XKE 2+2
Pontiac 2+2 (which wasn’t, it was a full 4-seater made by putting a full-length console in what would otherwise have been a 6-passenger 2-door hardtop).
Tatra T2-603
Porsche 914/6
Saab 9-3, 9-5
Saab-Lancia 600
Nissan Sunny GTi-R
Toyota Celica GT-Four
Lancia Thema 8.32
Lamborghini LM-002
The Saabs didn’t really have dashes, that’s just the common way to write them. They’re superscript numbers, which is a whole other category we could look at.
Jason said, “I think a hyphen is too easy. So, we’ll say no hyphens.”
Lamborghini LM002 is written without hyphen. Tatra didn’t use T before model name: 2-603.
Fiat Punto
Lots of Acuras in the late 90s to early 00s had the engine size included in their name, with a decimal.
Like 3.2TL, 3.5RL, 2.2CL etc.
It probably just ended up confusing customers who didn’t realize that 2.5TL and 3.2TL are the same car with different engines, so I can see why Acura dropped it when they redesigned those models.
I’ve found that Geely uses an interpunct on a couple trims of the Emgrand L.
Emgrand L Hi·XEmgrand L Hi·P
You just wanted a chance to use “interpunct” in a sentence didn’t you?
Obviously!
OK, I had to look up Alldays & Onions. As per Wikipedia, founded by the combination of two engineering companies, one founded in 1650 by John Onions, and the other by a William Allday in 1720. They joined up in 1889 and made bicycles, motorcycles, cars and tractors, among other things. They seem to have lasted until the 1920s. I wonder, existing continuously in some form for about 270 years, if that would make them the longest-lived company ever to produce automobiles?
Honda has a whole series of EVs featuring colons.
e:NS2
e:NP2
e:NS1
e:NP1
e:Ny1
e:N1
N-Van e:
Then theres some + signs (not punctuation, but still good)
Toyota C-HR+
Toyota Prius+
Suzuki Wagon R+
Datsun Go+
Found another ampersand as well with a Toyota concept car:
Toyota CS&S
‘Cuda.