There Are Way More Cars That Share Names With Simpsons Characters Than You Think

How many seasons has The Simpsons been on? All of them? Every season? Whatever the number is, it’s more than any other scripted television show, ever. Fine, I’ll look it up: it’s 37 seasons. Damn! The Simpsons has become one of the true American cultural touchstones, and like any stones one touches, there are connections to cars. I’ve explored cars and Simpsons-related subjects a number of times before, but somehow I’ve never explored this one all important Simpsons/automobiles question:

What Simpsons characters share their names with actual, real-world cars?

As with so many things, this is a question a child might ask, but not a childish question. Now, the Simpsons pantheon of characters is vast, so I can’t really say this is a fully comprehensive list. But, among recurring or at least relatively well-known Simpsons characters, I think this list covers that set pretty well. And even with that restriction, many of the cars here are still pretty obscure.

Let’s get started with the list, beginning with the character/car combination that got me thinking about this in the first place:

Haw-haw! Springfield’s greatest bully/distressed vest-appreciator Nelson Muntz shares a name with the incredible Muntz Jet, a car I just wrote about recently. Made from 1949 to 1954, these sporty convertibles were the brainchild of LA-based electronics pioneer Earl “Madman” Muntz.

For some reason, the next Simpsons character that popped into my head as having a name that was probably a car company was Superintendent Chalmers, of steamed hams fame. And, sure enough, there was a Chalmers Automobile company, operating around Detroit from 1908 to 1924. In 1911, they were the eighth-largest carmaker in America!

Okily-dokily, we need to note that churchy Ned Flanders shares a surname with the Flanders Automobile Company, a short-lived concern that sold their cars through Studebaker dealerships, and eventually Studebaker ended up buying what was left of the company.

Flanders car offerings were fairly conventional, but they did have a starter that worked on pressurized air, which is interesting.

You likely know more Prince cars than you realize, as they were merged into Nissan in 1966, but they were the start of such famous cars as the Nissan Skyline, which started off as a Prince Skyline. It’s kind of odd that such a cool car shares a name with such a painful nerd like Martin.

Mr.Burns may have actually been alive during the lifespan of this car maker, demanding that tires be re-vulcanized and the right amount of naptha be decanted into the fueling tank. The Burns Hi-Wheeler was a type of car pretty unique to America, designed to travel well over the often terrible roads of the era, thanks to those large, forgiving wheels. Burns cars were powered by flat-twin engines mounted under the floor.

I suspect you’ve heard of the car in this one, more likely than you remember the Simpsons character, who has only been on a couple of episodes. The car is the Meyers Manx, the legendary VW-based dune buggy that was the brainchild of Bruce Meyers and launched an entire kit-car industry.

The character is Roger Meyers, Jr., the head of the studio that puts out the ultra-violent Itchy and Scratchy cartoons so well-known in the Simpsons universe.

This one is interesting because it’s the only real example of a car company being really featured in The Simpsons: Powell Motors, run by Homer’s long-lost brother, Herb Powell. This is the company that built the infamous Homer car, based on Homer’s input.

Interestingly, reality is about as absurd as fiction in this case, as the Powell Manufacturing Company once built trucks by salvaging 1941 Plymouths from junkyards to turn into new pickup trucks, which is, of course, bonkers.

Springfield’s most famous quack and perhaps the most notable graduate of Hollywood Upstairs Medical College, Dr.Nick Riviera, shares a cognomen with one of the most famous Buicks of all time: the Riviera. The Riviera has been one of Buick’s most daring platforms for styling experimentation, just like how Dr.Nick is not afraid of daring experimentation, like using Kraft Singles for skin grafts.

Otto, who famously likes to get blotto and once owned mustard, drives the school bus for Springfield Elementary School. Otto is also the last name of Nicolaus Otto, the man who came up with the Otto cycle that drives the vast majority of four-stroke gasoline engines, but here I want to note that Philadelphia was once home to the Otto Gas Engine Works, which had a subsidiary called Otto Motor Car Sales company, that sold premium-priced, 35-horsepower cars for two years.

Remember ersatz Bond villain Hank Scorpio? He was the guy who made wearing a sport coat over jeans acceptable for rich guys, I think, in addition to his global-takeover schemes. Good boss, too, if you ask me.

He shares a name with one of my favorite luxury cars of the 1980s: the Merkur Scorpio. This was a Ford of Germany vehicle that was imported to America under the Merkur name, alongside the iconic XR4Ti. These were big and well-appointed cars, drove great, and had lots of room, but silly Americans couldn’t wrap their heads around a high-end hatchback, so they never sold that well.

One of the trio of perpetual school bullies, Jimbo Jones, shares a last name with a Wichita, Kansas-based carmaker that built touring cars with Lycoming engines for about five years. About 3,000 were built, with maybe five or six left existing today.

Here’s a Simpsons character that has been on a lot of episodes, but only when one of the characters ends up in court, because he’s a judge. Fortunately, this seems to happen pretty often. He’s sort of a gruff, one-note character, and the carmaker that shares his name, the Snyder High-Wheeler, was sort of a one-noter itself, being that kind of very American high-wheeled crappy-terrain prowler.

Finally, we get to the namesake of this whole thing, the Simpsons themselves. The car they share a name with is really obscure, some steam-powered buggies built by a John Simpson in Sterling, Scotland. A small series were built, but it may be a stretch to call them mass-produced.

There was also a maker of steam lorries called Simpson-Bodman from Manchester, and these beastly road locomotives could haul up to five tons!

That’s all I found so far; I suspect if you really wanted to dig, you could find more. But, even so, this is still way more than I’d have expected from a show without characters with names like Chevy or Kia.