On giving your car a name

On giving your car a name

I've done something really bloody stupid.

I've gone and given my car a name.

Giving your car a name is expensive. It personalises your relationship between man and automobile, leading to emotional attachment, expensive gifts and even more expensive maintenance, before the not entirely unexpected tearful split.

Just like any other relationship then.

TV's Richard 'Hamster' Hammond learned this lesson the hard way on a recent Top Gear, accidentally giving a clapped out 1960s Opel Kadett the name 'Oliver'. This led to our short-arsed hero developing a disastrous relationship with the machine that cannot be totally attributed to the knock on the head he got from his rocket car crash, resulting in thousands of pounds spent shipping the bag of bolts back from Namibia.

Namibia.

For a car.

A crap one.

And now, I have done the same.

I have a clapped out 1996 Ford Escort with 95,000 miles on the clock. Which I have named The Silver Hornet.

The Silver Hornet

Those of you who have seen my car can vouch for one thing about The Silver Hornet.

"You spacker, Scary. It's blue. How can a car called The Silver Hornet be DARK BLUE?"

It is. It just is.

I have compounded my folly by allowing this car to be my second with the same name. At least the first Silver Hornet (an Austin Allegro) was actually silver, but if there's anything to be said about its performance, it can never be described as hornet-like.

Sloth-like, perhaps, but never hornet-like. And I spent a fortune on the bloody thing, not least on getting an entirely new set of suspension for it just weeks before all the wheels fell off.

I also had a Renault 21 named after an obscure Brazilian footballer. But we don't talk about him any more.

What, dear reader - apart from "Start you useless piece of shit, START!" - do you call your car?