Last year, we came up with a list of dumbest car names of all time, but the well of dumb names is so deep it's just too hard to resist not coming back to it. It's also a lot of fun to research and try to find a more ridiculous name than the last one you remembered or found. Add to that how things can be lost in translation or someone in marketing can miss an innuendo and you end up with the kind of list writers love to write.
Dodge Dart Swinger Special
In the 1960s the Dodge Dart was a cool car. In the 1970s though, the term swinger gained a new and provocative meaning. We like to think that at some point in the 1970s, a married couple went to a swinger's party and dropped the keys to their Swinger in a bowl.
Mazda Titan Dump
The Titan is a commercial vehicle Mazda has been making since the 1970s, and the Titan Dump is the dumper truck version. That means it's likely that at some point somebody has looked at the available fleet vehicles for a job that needed doing, and opted to take a Titan Dump. You may also remember the Light Dump from our list of the most offensive car names ever conceived.
Nissan Friend-Me
When Nissan unveiled its Friend-Me concept in 2013, it was aimed at the internet and tech-connected youth market. Almost immediately, the automotive media industry collectively rolled its eyes. It's a cool looking car, but that's a name that smacks of desperation.
Hummer
This is a brand name, and a brand that was born in 1992. In the 1990s, hummer was also a popular name for a particular take on the act of fellatio that involves, you guessed it, humming. Given the kind of people that bought Hummers in the 1990s, there's no doubt that hummers happened in Hummers. Maybe someone even bought a Hummer in Vegas one day and that evening paid for another hummer, this time in a hotel that rented rooms by the hour.
Ford Probe
The name Probe was meant to conjure the idea of technology in the time that probes were being sent out to explore outer space. However, what leaps to mind when people actually hear the word probe is rarely pleasant. The Probe could have been the Mustang had the company gone through with its Coca-Cola style marketing disaster name of Classic Mustang. Thankfully, the car world dodged that particular bullet.
Daihatsu Charade Social Poze
The name Charade on a car is a little sad. But combine it with the words Social and Poze and you have some heavily synergistic irony. It's just a shame the Charade is a small economy car rather than something big and laden with chrome and irony.
Mitsubishi Carisma
The Mitsubishi Carisma was built for the European market from 1995-2004. The Carisma was then bought by those that had none. Even more comically, there was also a Tommi Makinen Edition Carisma GT.
Chevrolet Celebrity
The Celebrity was built for eight years through the 1980s and not many people remember it. It's the Lacey Chabert of cars and, as a result, doesn't even make the D-list.
Great Wall Wingle
The Wingle is a Chinese pickup truck built by the company Great Wall since 2006. It was renamed Wingle 3, then in 2010 the Wingle 5, then Wingle 6 in 2014. There's another Wingle model, called the Wingle 7, that was introduced in 2018. There's an Australian market version called the Great Wall Sailor, but it's much more fun to type the word Wingle.
AMC Gremlin
According to Wikipedia, a Gremlin is: "... a folkloric mischievous creature, similar to the chupacabra, that causes malfunctions in aircraft or other machinery." That's why a company building cars choosing Gremlin as a name for a car is baffling, but AMC did just that. All we know is don't feed it after midnight or get it wet.
Nissan Elgrand Homy
We had a chuckle at this in its Nissan Homy Super Long trim before, and it turns out the Elgrand is a gift that keeps on giving. We neglected to mention the Elgrand Homy is a hilarious piece of cultural appropriation once you think about it. Whether it's deliberate or not, we have no idea.
RAM 1500 Big Horn
If the name Big Horn doesn't make you snigger, then you're a better person than any of us. We get that Big Horn is a river and a county in Wyoming as well as a type of sheep native to North America with big horns, but it's a little on the nose for a truck trim and the demographic these trucks are mostly aimed at.
Geely PU Rural Nanny
Geely's PU is a small sedan or coupe delivery utility for the Chinese market, and Geely is an awesome source of comical translations. You can have your PU in either Rural Nanny or Urban Nanny versions, but we think it'll be more fun to tell people you drive a Rural Nanny.
Toyota Estima Lucida G Luxury Joyful Canopy
We know the Estima here in the US as the Previa. What we really wish is that Toyota would start slapping those innocently exuberant modifiers on trim levels of the brand's current minivans and crossovers.
Chevrolet Citation
While the word citation does have positive connotations, they aren't what spring to mind particularly when connected with a car. We wish Chevrolet had carried on with this line of thought though, because a big muscle car called the Chevy Violation would have been badass.
Suzuki Every Joypop Turbo
It's so dumb yet so descriptive we love this one. The Suzuki Every is a micro van available in commercial and passenger versions. It's basically a rebadged Mazda Scrum with a much cuter name, particularly when its 600cc engine is turbocharged.