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!
Towards the end of Neon production, Canada got it as the SX 2.0. Similarly, the Mercedes 450SEL 6.9 seems to be accepted as a valid model name.
I believe the North American 6.9 doesn’t even have the 450SEL badge, only 6.9. At least mine doesn’t, and never did (I.e. it wasn’t removed).
You are correct – C/D called it the 450SEL 6.9 in their article – but the US brochures from 1977-1979 referred to it as the 6.9.
FWIW, I got this from a fuel economy guide issued by the Canadian government in 1977, where they name it as the 450 SEL-6.9, but that’s assuming they got it right.
Fun fact, it’s the worst performing car in the guide, at 14 Imperial MPG combined, equivalent to 20.1L/100KM or 11.7 US MPG.
Yeah that MPG figure sounds about right :/
In terms of weird Canadian rebadges of compact sedans with engine displacements in the model name, there’s also the Acura 1.6 and later 1.5 EL.
Only one came to mind because it was probably the first car name where I realized the punctuation was both present and seemed a bit strange!
Nissan Silvia K’s
Loosing all the hyphens… Like what Kia did with their new KN logo?
Cadillac Allanté
a diacritic is not punctuation.
Piëch agrees.
Chrysler’s TC by Maserati.
https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/2022/07/19/9154914/junkyard-find-1991-chrysler-tc-by-maserati.jpg?size=720×845&nocrop=1
What’s wrong with hyphens – there’s lots of hyphens. Tons of hyphens!
Mercedes-Benz S-Class, E-Class, C-Class…. (& etc)
Cadillac V-8 & V-16
Lincoln Zephyr V-12
Jaguar C-Type, D-Type, E-Type, F-Type, S-Type, F-Pace, E-Pace
Mercury Marauder X-100
How about slashes?
Rolls-Royce 20/25, 25/30 and 40/50
Ferrari 275GTB/4, 375GTB/4
Chevrolet Camaro Z/28
Do accents count? Sure they do:
Lincoln Continental Town Coupé
Ford Mustang Grandé
Ferrari 250 Coupé Boano, 250 Coupé Ellena and 250 Coupé Pinin Farina
Then there are the “+”s – Do they count?
Ferrari 330 GT 2+2, 365GT 2+2, etc.
Pontiac Catalina 2+2 & GrandPrix 2+2 Aerocoupe
accents absolutely do NOT count.
But… but… that means my post below is tripe!
I’m going to appeal to the ultimate authority.
JASOOOOOONNNNN!!!!
Adding to the pluses,
Datsun 260Z and 280Z 2+2
Datsun 280ZX 2+2
Nissan 300ZX 2+2
Mustang 2+2
If accents DO count, we can include the Nissan Rogue Krōm in the list.
(Parenthesis) [Brackets] and {Braces}… Who calls them curly brackets and square brackets?
Programmers. It eliminates confusion, because not all of them know their proper names, and the descriptors clear things up immediately.
Looking farther back, can we talk about how the old print world’s “ad” sign morphed into the electronic world’s “at” sign?
Ahhh. I’m not a programmer so I don’t know their jargon. I teach math and it always comes up when you start nesting grouping symbols.
Mathematicians tend to be very precise, so I get why you go with the formal names. Makes complete sense.
We programmers live in a world of multiple languages, frameworks and paradigms. Things can get oddly nebulous when we talk to our peers, as the same word can have multiple different meanings depending upon context.
Trying to be specific and speak in the other person’s frame of reference can get exhausting, so I guess we take the lazy way out on the braces vs brackets issue.
Our bad. 🙂
… Everybody?
No.
In the early pony car arena, can’t forget Chevy’s Camaro Z/28, or the Shelby G.T.350.
Since people seem to be missing this bit…
(I even left Jason’s typo in there)
The Town & Country is the only production vehicle to use an ampersand so I’d count it.
I’m pretty sure I remember my South African friend who died in prison in the 80s having a Renault Le’Car.
Can we count trim levels?
If so, Dodge’s R/T (and the rarer T/A) are pretty cool.
If we can, ahem:
Legacy 2.5GT
Also if so:
Kia Soul !
Kia Soul +
e-Up!
Come on, this is easy!
One that bugs me because it doesn’t have punctuation: the JDM Toyota Porte. In Japanese it’s written ポルテ (po ru te), more like Porté.
Isuzu P’up
Came to the comments looking for this one!
Lynk & Co?
Brougham d’elegance
I knew there was a production d’Elegance somewhere! Thank you.
No interrobang‽
No.
The InterroBangers at the Punctuation Pub will be gravely upset, and likely to bring their beef to the Typography Tavern as well!
Sorry Jason I am 100% against you on punctuation. Why? Well you have the complete sentence and only then at the end do you have the punctuation. Shouldn’t the punctuation be at the beginning of the sentence? Like my last sentence you had to read it and only at the end did you see the question mark and realize it was a question. Of course Shouldn’t would tell any literature person it was a question. But for others how about ?Who did this. Of course who tells it’s a question but a ? At the beginning uses punctuation, but Who did this? Has a question and the question mark at the end is irrelevant.
My dad was an English major, he hated that he could never refute my argument.
You could always just adopt the Spanish orthography and use the inverted question mark ‘¿’ at the beginning of your interrogative sentence. I quite like it and find it useful.
¡And this one too!
One that surprised me: there are official print ads for the 1950-53 MG TD that call it the T.D.
Here’s one that refers to the T.D. series M.G. Midget
Here’s another one for the T.D. Midget
And yet another here
And how about the 1500cc version of the MG TF? The badge on the car reads “TF”-1500, including both quotation marks and a dash.
Those ads boasted about the extra point.5 horsepower.
I’m pretty sure some variant of the Chrysler Town and Country (the minivan, maybe?) was badged “Town & Country”.
It was
Yep and it’s the only production vehicle to use an ampersand.
Pretty much every Mazda from the last decade or two.
I genuinely had to stop and think where the punctuation in my Mazda 3 is, then realized it’s now the exception to the rule in the Mazda lineup now that the 5 and 6 are gone.
As soon as I saw the headline, I came to see that you have my Kia Cee’d listed.
Even though I believe it’s not sold in the US, I knew Jason wouldn’t let me down.
It was used for several years on Top Gear’s Star in a Reasonably Priced Car segments, so it got some broader exposure.
And Jezza always referred to it as the “Kia C E E apostrophe D”.
Kia Soul !. The top trim level was referred to as the “Exclaim”, but it appeared in print materials as “!”. Always wished they put that exclamation point on the tailgate when I had mine.
Ford F-150, F-250, F-350, and all the variants. Given that it’s been the best-selling vehicle in the US for years, that accounts for quite a lot of hyphens out there.