Cars used to have cool names that meant something, like the 'Mercer Raceabout.' Now we have total bullcrap, like the 'Toyota Avanza.' When did this start happening? What was the first car to have a totally meaningless name that sounded kinda cool?
The Avanza, for those of you who don't follow my personal trade journal Rear Drive Passenger Vans of Southeast Asia Quarterly, is a rear-drive passenger van sold in Southeast Asia.
And of course, fine students of Italian (or anyone that read the Avanza's Wikipedia page) will know that avanza is a conjugated form of avanzare, to advance. Not that anyone living in the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Mexico, Peru, Egypt, or the other African countries in which the Toyota Avanza is sold will know that, since Italy never got around to colonizing any of those countries. Unless Toyota sells them in Eritrea, and even then that's a stretch.
So, what was the very first car to have a name that didn't really mean anything to anyone buying the car, but sort of sounded cool? Bonus points if the car has a 'z' in its name.
Photo Credit: Toyota