Which Car Is Least (or Most) Like The Place It’s Named After?

Aa Monte Ts
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Laying wide awake thinking about every cringe thing I said and did in the previous eighteen-or-so hours is my standard sleep ritual, and at the top of today’s Greatest Hits will be my stunning display of ding-dongery in today’s Slack huddle with The Team, including David Tracy, Torch, and the formidable (but affable!) Matt Hardigree, who suggested today’s Autopian Asks query.

Parissiene

I knew it was a good topic as soon as he offered it, but like a dope, I asked if we were sure there would be enough place-named cars. The cringe. My pea-brain only served up like three car names that were obviously (to me) titled after places, and one of them was the Pontiac Parisienne only because Jason wrote about it not long ago (that’s the story above). Thankfully, the gang was gracious enough not to ask if I was a moron [Editor’s Note: You’re great, Pete. So far from a moron it’s absurd! -DT], and rattled off enough place-named-cars to fill a Santa’s-list scroll if one was feeling old-timey enough to write them all down. For example:

Buick Lucerne

Kia Telluride

… as well as Chevys Colorado, Tahoe, and Monte Carlo; Hyundais Rio… and a bunch more that we know but don’t want to spoil. Which of these, or the countless others you can no doubt think of, is the least or most suitably-designed to bear the mantle of its place name?  The Autopian Asks!

Images: top shot, GM and Etsy seller; Buick Lucerne via GM; Lucerne, France by Slav Yakounin/Wikimedia; Kia Telluride via Kia; Telluride, Colorado by John Fowler/Wikimedia 

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161 thoughts on “Which Car Is Least (or Most) Like The Place It’s Named After?”

  2. I’m going with Buick Riviera for most like.

    The first and third gen Rivieras (not counting “Riviera” as a trim level on prior cars) were striking, good looking, and dare say, sexy.

    The Alfa Romeo Montreal is also a good candidate for most.

    Hard to top the Daewoo-based LeMans for least like.

    3. Montreal is beautiful, reasonably affordable, and kind of falling apart. It’d suit an entry level Alfa perfectly (and it might sell well if they offered the Quebec special of cutrate MSRP with no AC and crank windows), although the car we* got was just a little high end.

      *the global we, as the Montreal was never sold new in Montreal.

    5. I always figured the Riviera was named after the casino in Vegas. Its owners seemed to be fond of that place, parking lot was full of them.

    2. I would actually vote the Sebring as being both the most AND least like its namesake. It’s the most like Sebring, Florida for the reason you stated, plus the average Sebring owner is reportedly, 57 years old – right at home in Florida. The Sebring is least like its namesake in that Chrysler was actually referencing the famous local racetrack. There is nothing remotely sporty about a Chrysler Sebring and it’s reputation for lackluster reliability doesn’t evoke images of a twelve-hour endurance race.

  6. My Scorpion is called a Montecarlo outside the US and indeed she is tiny, looks gorgeous, and and is a gamble every time you turn the key!

  7. Pontiac Catalina. Anyone who has been to Catalina Island knows the primary transport in Avalon is golf carts, and all the roads out of town are dirt. A big cushy sedan is not what the island is about

      1. Avalon is not a real place, it is a mythical realm where Arthurs sword was forged and where he sought refuge to recover after a mythical battle. Avalon could be change to Elysium as it rides like a gentle wind over the tops of wheat fields though I suppose.

    1. Malibu back when Malibu cars were actually decent was a nice place. much like the cars, the latest basic Malibu People and the car actually seems to fit each other adequately.

    2. My 2013 Malibu has fashionable features with questionable implementation. The front styling looks like it was stretched and botoxed.

    1. Or even inside of Tucson, Arizona, where so much of the town is the urban-sprawl version of the same boring beigeness. Even after living there for five years, you could blindfold me, drop me at any major intersection in town, and take the blindfold off, and I wouldn’t be able to tell you whether I was at Swan Road at Golf Links Road, or Kolb Road at Broadway, or Speedway Boulevard at Wilmot Road, or wherever.

    1. That’s not the first LeMans. When Pontiac was rehabbing their image in the late 50’s/early 60’s, they adopted racy names like Bonneville, Grand Prix, and yes, LeMans.

    2. The Daewoo one though was based on the Opel Astra from Germany. Our friends in Ebikon (incidentally about 15 mins from Lucerne, Switzerland) had a black one (Opel) and my friends here in Aus mums first car here was the Daewoo version.

    2. I’m assuming that’s on the plus side, at least for the OG California.

      Also ‘Daytona’ was a nickname that stuck; the real name was 365 GTB/4. I’m happy it stuck.

    1. Why does it say “Lucerne France” on the image? Isn’t Lucerne in the middle of Switzerland, in German-speaking part of the country at that?
    2. My vote goes to the Citroën C-Élysée. You could argue that “C-Élysée” references either Parisian Champs-Élysées or the mythological ones. Either way, C-Élysée as a “cheap family car” was not reminding of either paradise or one of the most expensive streets in the world.

    1. A neighbor had a 1968 (67?) satellite that he purchased from the son of an elderly neighbor who passed away. We carpooled to high school in that in the late 80’s.

      I was very glad that the driver was scared to speed because I don’t even remember that car having seatbelts.

  14. The Lada Niva California is both a Most and a Least, if that’s even possible.

    Edit: I just remembered the Nissan Prairie. Nothing prairie-like in that suburban minivan.

  16. Chrysler Cordoba. An ode to reprehensible taste, big for no good reason, inefficient as fuck, driven by egomaniacs concealing a low self respect.
    As regards my home city: spot on.

    1. But also, IKA Torino. All the elegance and charm of the northern Italian city, and a similar affinity with motorsports excelence.

      1. Also, the Brazilian Ford Verona, a two-door Escort, subtly elegant and disconcertingly appealing:
        https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS2A355NO78Nnmdf9MXOo0el4KyYX6d0LX7tQJMI4lxmW9st0GzuIAo2ceLOf9CIDWXVYM&usqp=CAU

        Ah, we had a Brazilian Ford Versailles as well, a badge-engineered VW Santana, barroque as fuck and aspirational in all the wrong ways:
        https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.carrosegaragem.com.br%2Fford-versailles-o-santana-da-ford%2F&psig=AOvVaw1-tndTPNPrdIW_Gqe59ZMX&ust=1686345176218000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CBEQjRxqFwoTCMia_LrLtP8CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE

    4. You can lump the Lincoln Versailles in with this group. But remeber the 70’s was all about personal luxury….they even put the Aspen name on a rear wheel drive mid level economy car and did not bat an eye.

    5. Maybe when they were new. Now? Anyone rocking a Cordoba has got to be an interesting person with a strong self-image who marches to their own beat, likes what they like just because they like it and feels no need to justify it.

  17. Would have thought this was question was inspired by the Chevy Corsica from yesterday’s showdown.

    H/K do love to name after a place – Tucson, Santa Fe, Sorento (if spelled wrong) in addition to what’s been mentioned.

    I was thinking Aztek if we do allow spelling variations, but they’re both history…though there is an Aztek NM. Montana too in the Pontiac fold.

    1. Respectfully disagree. Utah is secretly really fun, but the Bonneville definitely is not. Also Bonneville is the land of extremely high speeds, something which you would never catch the car doing.

      1. Yeah, that’s why all the fun is in West Wendover, hugging the Utah border. They have to leave their own state in order to have fun.

      2. I guess I was thinking of the early 90’s Bonneville and early 90’s Utah.
        Booorrrring.
        3.2% beer, dirt weed and no night life to speak of, come on.

  19. The Pontiac Parisienne should’ve been called the Pontiac Montrealais.

    The Kia Telluride would be right at home in Telluride, if only as an “or similar” rental. The Rio would need a 1.0L engine (which gets a tax break in Brazil) rather than the US-market 1.5 to fit in in the most famous Rio.

  21. When the Chevy Bel Air debuted in 1950 , it was a top trim car named after a tony LA town – okay, that’s befitting… but by the time the nameplate died, it was a bottom feeder trim and no one who lived in Bel Air would be caught dead in one.

    You could say the same for the Biscayne. Biscayne Bay was a fancy town in South Florida.

        1. I was even thinking of Isuzu in another thread yesterday and forgot that one.

          I also thought of Alcyone, Atlas, and Electra in the Pleiades constellation as seen in the Subaru logo but thought that might be too in the weeds…or in the stars.

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