The Toyota What?

By Peter Gill

Peter Gill is the co-founder of the NZ Motoring Writers' Guild and author of the HarperCollins book "Ten Times Round The Clock".

He recently moved to Kerikeri.

Here I was at the Kaikohe supermarket the other day and parked next to a Toyota Enema.  Did I say Toyota Enema? That's what I thought the badge on this aging used import people carrier said, but I didn't have my glasses on. I find that I need my glasses increasingly these days and my old English teacher was right. It DOES send you blind even if it's taken over 40 years for it to happen.

But back to car names and some on used imported cars beggar belief. The other day in Kawakawa I saw a smart

little Mitsubishi. And the name of the model? Dingo. But wait! There's more! There is an irony. The Mitsubishi Dingo sported a sign in the window saying "Baby On Board."

Still on the subject of Mitsubishi, there's an intriguing story behind the name of the Starion Mitsubishi muscle car of a few years back. I do not mock the way foreigners handle English because they can usually speak my language far better than I can theirs but these things can have their amusing side.

For years Mitsubishi used model names that were associated with horses or riders such as Canter, Lancer and Colt. The story has it that when they came to produce the muscle car, Mitsubishi's project leader for the model rang the badge maker and told him (using the best English pronunciation he could muster) the car was so powerful and muscular it was going to be called the Stallion. Please make the badges. Hence it became the Starion. The rest, as they say, is history.

One name that as far as I know New Zealand has been spared, is a Daihatsu model I saw at the Tokyo Motor Show. It was called the Naked. A colleague earnestly hoped they would not come out with a souped-up model called the RS. And, by the way, did you know the Daihatsu brand has left the New Zealand market?

Daihatsu had more or less become an economy sub-brand of Toyota and in our small new car market it was no longer viable for Toyota to offer both its own small cars and those of Daihatsu as well. Interestingly, I think one of the best little people-carrier buys on the used car market is the Daihatsu Mateira. This funky little 1.5 litre car of circa 2007 is stunningly well executed and if you can find one, it's likely to be very reasonably priced.

But back to strange car names once again. There are even vans that have them and some can make me clench my buttocks. The Nissan Homy and the Daihatsu Deli Boy come immediately to mind and everywhere I go I see the little Toyota Runx. Can you imagine asking a woman to experience your Runx?

And the other day near Puketona I came up behind an aging Toyota used import sedan on which the factory fitted badge announced it was the "Exciting Version" Wow, I thought, and was led to wonder what the other version might be like and who would have bought it.