Taking a crack at car names

Car names are apparently a minefield of hidden meanings, which would do justice to an automotive Da Vinci Code. That's if you believe the assertions of various regular posters who populate online forums, slanging away at each other's favourite badge.

On the Australian sites, there's naturally a lot of the Red vs Blue from the Holden and Ford camps.

Holden stands for “Hope Our Luck Doesn't End Soon,” according to somebody called FPVgal, who also claims Ford means “First On Race Day,” only to be corrected by Monaro05, who says it actually means “First on Recall Day”.

You thought BMW was an acronym for Bayerische Motoren Werke, not so, it seems. Bought My Wife, Big Money Waste, Bavarian Manure Wagon; take your pick. In crime-ridden South Africa, it's Break My Windows. Audi goes All Unnecessary Devices Installed, or Accelerates Under Demonic Influence, having driven the scorching RS4, we'd agree with the latter.

Chevrolet has a long list, but all along the theme of Condition Hopeless, Entire Vehicle Relies On Lousy Engineering Techniques.

Any Dodge is apparently Dead On Day Guarantee Expires.

Fiat? Fix It Again, Tony.

A Honda fan claims it stands for Hallmark Of Non-Destructible Automobiles, but is swatted down with Hang On, Not Done Accelerating, by one who's obviously never had their foot on the pedal of the ballistic little Civic Type R.

Hyundai is tagged with Hope You Understand Nothing's Driveable and Inexpensive; Kia gets Kick It Again.

There's more. But some of it isn't suitable for a family website and some might even be rejected by the upstanding editors of Bikini Babes With Big Pistons.

Luckily, it's all in cyberspace, so no real blood is ever spilled. But the only other public entertainment that comes anywhere near offering this amount of fantasy, insults, threats, lies and exaggeration is the coming federal election campaign.

Happily, that promises to have even less basis in reality.