I never was very good at geography, so forgive me the inherent ignorance that prompted the following blog. You see, I was stuck behind a car in a traffic jam the other day and was desperately trying to work out what its name meant.
Altea? Altea? All I could imagine was one half of the chart-topping duo that sang Uptown Top Ranking or, more likely, some future world where Jenny Agutter and Michael York live and where little rubies start flashing in the palm of your hand when you reach 30. Oh, and where a pathetically unthreatening robot that moves at a snail's pace somehow manages to catch and chop up 'runners' in the frozen zone.
Of course, the mental pictured conjured by this exotic name turned out to be miles off the mark and apparently Altea is actually a nice little bit of Spain on the Costa Brava.
But it got me thinking, yet again, about the age-old subject of car names.
I really don't want to retread the millions of words written about ones that mean unfortunate things in other languages or to repeat apocryphal – and often xenophobic – stories about how some cars got their model identities.
As a Jensen owner, however, I am well aware of the importance of a car name. After all, is there a less snappy, more unwieldy title than the four-syllable Interceptor? It made for a long, more-expensive-to-produce badge as well, so I am surprised they didn't shorten it to Inty or 'Ceptor and save a few quid, but somehow this name worked. Really worked.
