Of the five 2CVs I've owned since the 1970s, I've named at least tthree - 'Rosie' a red Special, 'Yvette' a light blue Club and 'Amélie' a white Special. I think it's rather nice to name a car although I haven't named any of my three motorbikes nor our Citroen C3. The only 'rules' I used when naming them was that as they are feminine and French, the names had to be both feminine and French. Had we been blessed with a third daughter rather than a son, she would have been named Rosie. Amélie was chosen after watching our favourite French movie of the same name.

I started a thread over there for people who don't name their cars. It very quickly turned into a list of the names that people had given their cars.

Of ours, three have names, five don't.

The Saab, Peugeot & Mehari don't, although the file of history I got with the Saab shows that a previous owner called it "Minuit", presumably because it's black. Sad. Very, very sad. The two Slowlexes are just "mine" (2200) and "Ellie's" (3800).

The 400 is "fleaBag" because it came from fleaBay. No more than that, and it doesn't tend to get used outside of the title of the thread here, tbh. When we're discussing it, it's "the 400".

The 350 is "Hetty". It came to us ready-named, almost. The previous owners called it "Henrietta", but we thought that FAR too pretentious for a small grey van, so it instantly got contracted. They'd, in turn, derived that from a previous owner calling it "Henry", apparently. Gawd knows why.

Ellie's Club is "Sparky", due to an age-old electrical incident with the steering lock, I gather...

Mine are 'the red 2cv' and 'the Ami'. My parents called the van 'fanny' seemingly oblivious to it being a schoolboy term for a badly packed kebab. To me, it's just 'the van'.

It's interesting, I certainly form emotional attatchments to certain cars, but find it hard to go as far as naming them . I still get embarrased when people refer to that bamboo as 'slamboo', I always referee to it as the bamboo.

I'm sure a psycoanalist could write a book on me.

Umm, who changed the badging on it?

Not me.

Spanners.

But how much time and effort do you spend keeping them working?

On that basis, I have always named my project cars but not my A-B cars as I am far more intimate with them rather than treat them as simply a mode of transport.

Other people name the Bedouin but it's usually stuff like "Shitroen" etc.

Ahem


I must admit, I always thought you reffered to it as the Slamboo

This is quite an interesting point and highlights another possible difference between Those Who Name and Those Who Don't. I certainly spend time maintaining my car, and on a good day might even refer to it as a project, but ultimately, the thing is my car. I have no interest in owning something that gets used only on summer Sundays, and no interest in having a car for the sake of it: it has to have a practical purpose. My project car and my A-B car are one and the same.