What's in a name?

[DaveNP]

Originally Posted by canis

Datsun Sunny! Best name ever!!

I'm joking of course, although I do have a soft spot for them. But surely Cortina must've seemed like a really daft name at the time, ...

I thought the Datsun had lots of soft spots.

Good point about the Cortina, we have the benefit of hindsight and can instantly go 'Oh yeah, Cortina, that was a great car' but back then there must have been people wondering where the name came from, back then it's stable mates were the Zephyr (a light breeze), the Consul (a Diplomat), the Anglia and the Escort, at least when the Capri came along it followed the Italian exotic theme.
Volkswagen did approach some consistency in naming with names based around different winds such as the Scirocco, the Golf (Gulf stream), the Passat (German for trade winds), the Jetta (Jet stream), but then through it all there was the Beetle and then oddities like the Eos, the Phaeton and the Up.

Is this why I like Volvo? Because of their consistent naming policy as can be clearly seen by the easily navigable page listing all the different subsections of the forum? (sarc)

[Dippydog]

There was of course the "posh" Zodiac to go with Zephyr and Consul at one time known collectively as The Three Graces. Also there was the Corsair.
Datsun certainly seemed to have an odd naming policy with Cherry,Sunny,Violet,Bluebird and Cedric.
From the Rootes line up there was
Sceptre
Hawk
Super Snipe
Imperial[a name also used by Chrysler for one of their models]