When a company is naming a new model, they often spend a fair amount of effort coming up with an engaging name for it. Some are named after notable people like the Enzo Ferrari. Moreover, some are called after places like Ferrari’s F500 Maranello, which is the name of the city where the company headquarter locates. Human’s first inspiration for automobiles and nimble vehicles was animals, fast like Jaguar or tough like Ram. This way of naming models has been used for a while now.
As in today, there are more and more companies changing their naming methods and leaving animal kingdom behind. They have come up with this alphabet/numeric system of labeling their models. Some even go beyond this realm and add hyphens and other symbols like Alpha, Omega, etc. The following is the list of top 10 mentionable cars in automotive history that were named after animals.
10 Mitsubishi Colt
Colt was the first model Mitsubishi started producing after the WWII in 1962. It was named Colt because that’s what animal enthusiasts call young male horses between the age of 2 to 4. It was introduced as a rear-engine hatchback with a 600cc engine on it.
Between 1978 and 2002, the name Colt was given to Mitsubishi Mirage that the company was exporting to Europe and Australia. Colt was also the name that a British car company used to market Mitsubishi’s vehicles in the UK.
9 Sunbeam Tiger
Roots Motors Limited was a car manufacturer from Britain that made Sunbeam Alpine Roadster in the mid-’50s. While they were busy assembling their inline four-cylinder engines on the body they have developed, the famous race driver and engineer Carroll Shelby decided to join forces and make a high-performance version of this model.
They ended up putting a 4.3-liter V8 engine developed by Shelby and manufactured by Ford on the body and named it Tiger for all the might it brought into the scene.
8 Fiat Panda
As much as this car resembles the face of a big panda bear, it wasn’t named Panda after the fluffy ball of black and white. It was called Il Zero at the beginning of its design phase, and Fiat later renamed it to Rustica and, for some reason, released it as the Panda that was inspired by the Roman goddess and the guard of travelers, Empanda. It was first debuted as a 1980 model and has sold more than 7.5 million units until now.
7 Chevrolet Impala
The famous Impala was named after The African antelope. The animal on the logo of the car is also an impala. The name was first used in the 1956 General Motors car show, where the company revealed its new model that came with Corvette-like lines on the body design and high-performance engines in different displacements.
They came with various features like the Turbo Fire V8 or the W-series Turbo Thrust V8 that in the first models were paired with a 3-speed manual or 2-speed automatic transmission.
6 Datsun Bluebird
This model was under production by the Datsun division of the Nissan company from the late ’50s with different chassis and bodies, including the sedan, hardtop, and the hardtop coupe, the most famous series being the 510.
The model was named after a cute family of small birds called the Bluebirds. The exciting thing about this model is that it had won first place in 1982 Australian Endurance Championship for Nissan, who entered the races with two factory Bluebird Turbos.
5 Shelby Cobra
Cobra was developed by Carroll Shelby, who was a successful racer and an engineering enthusiast back then. He was hoping to drive his own car on the tracks, and the name Cobra came up in one of his dreams.
The story behind the model is that he reached out to the British AC car company, who had recently lost their engine provider and got their attention with his enthusiasm for high-performance. Then he convinced Ford to develop his engine to be assembled on the body made by AC.
4 Triumph Stag
The old now-defunct British car company Triumph was responsible for this 2+2 sports tourer that nearly 26,000 were made from 1970 to 1977. Italian designer Giovanni Michelotti was responsible for designing the stag model. The word Stag is used to call male deers, especially a mature male red deer.
The model was brought up inside the luxury division of the company and was developed in a way that it could compete with the Mercedes-Benz SL models at the time.
3 Dodge Viper
Recently Tom Gale and Chris Theodore have done an interview about how the Viper was developed and named. Tom was the leader of Viper’s design team, and Chris led the engine development team.
They said that they both were inspired by the Shelby Cobra at the time of making the new model. Moreover, they knew that their new model will be named after a snake to honor the model that encouraged them to make the new high-performance Dodge with the help of Lamborghini, which was owned by Chrysler at the time.
2 Volkswagen Beetle
Volkswagen Type 1 was named "der Käfer" (German for Beetle) in its first original brochure and was initially commissioned by Adolf Hitler and designed by Ferdinand Porsche in the ‘30s. This iconic model grew out to the highest number of production for a car, with more than 15-million units ever made.
Production of Beetle Successor, New Beetle, was ended in 2011, then it was redesigned and backed as A5 Beetle in 2012 that went on until 2019. The final generation of Beetle was basically a Golf under a face-lifted Beetle body with more modern looks.
1 Ford Mustang
There are multiple statements on where the Mustang name comes from, depending on where you are seeking the truth. One sure thing that can be found is that the first horses that were brought to the US from Spain were named Mustang.
But there is another saying that claims the name was actually taken from the WWII fighter plane P-51 Mustang fighter, which John Najjar, the co-designer of Mustang prototype, was fond of.