Animal instinct
If you need to find a name for the car you’ve just created, the animal kingdom is a rich source of inspiration.
The choice is almost limitless, and while it’s best to avoid something as uncharismatic as the blobfish or as difficult to spell as the xoloitzcuintli, there are still many opportunities.
So many of them have been used, in fact, that we’re going to limit the field here by sticking mostly to mammals, though we’ve added a couple of reptiles to the end of our list of animal-named car model names (not marques) from the 20th century, to enhance your reading pleasure.
The cars are presented in alphabetical order.
1. AC Greyhound
AC found almost no inspiration among mammals for its car names, but it did use greyhound (suggesting pace and, perhaps, loyalty) for a model it produced from 1959 to 1963.
This was related to the Ace and the Aceca, though built in smaller numbers than either.
Unlike the Ace roadster, it was a closed-roof grand tourer. That gave it a closer resemblance to the Aceca, though the Greyhound was several inches longer.
2. Apperson Jack Rabbit
There are several species of mammal commonly known as jackrabbit, though strictly speaking they are hares rather than true rabbits.
The Apperson company, which built cars in Indiana during the first quarter of the 20th century, had a stylised, running jackrabbit as its logo, and also named several of its cars after the animal, using the alternative spelling Jack Rabbit.
Two of the eight models listed in an early Apperson catalogue are called Jack Rabbit – a ‘Baby Tonneau’ four-seater costing $4000 (pictured) and a much racier two-seater Roadster priced at $4250.
Many years after the company folded in 1926, at least two bands – one in Indiana and another in California – were named Apperson Jackrabbit after the cars.
3. Buick Wildcat
Buick first used the Wildcat name in 1962 for a sub-series of the Invicta model range.
Wildcat then became a separate model, produced over two generations for the rest of the decade. The name has also been applied to several concept cars, including an EV revealed in June 2022.
Since we’re avoiding triviality here, it’s important to note that Buick was not simply referring to any old non-domestic cat.
Wildcat actually refers to a number of specific species found in various parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.
4. Chevrolet Impala
Chevrolet marketed 10 generations of Impala over more than 60 years (though not continuously), most recently abandoning the name as part of GM’s decision to stop building saloon cars in the US.
The animal it’s named after is a type of antelope. Impala, a word taken directly from the Zulu language, is how it’s most commonly known in the west, though other names are used.
Chevrolet Impalas were not specifically high-performance cars, but they were often fitted, at least in the early days, with powerful engines.
This makes the name reasonably appropriate. While the impala is not the fastest antelope in the world (according to the Guinness Book of Records, that’s the goitered gazelle), a healthy specimen can run at around 50mph, which makes it capable of escaping most predators.
5. De Schaum Seven Little Buffaloes
Even among the many colourful characters who have tried their luck in the motor industry, William Schaum stands tall.
One of his projects was the dizzyingly unsuccessful De Schaum company, which produced a type of car known as a ‘high-wheeler’.
In earlier years, this would have passed without comment, but by 1908 high-wheelers were considered extremely unfashionable, and the business folded almost immediately.
The best thing about the car, and one of the few reasons it is still known today, is that Schaum decided to call it Seven Little Buffaloes. It’s not clear why he did this, but at least it shows that he had a strong, if curious, sense of creativity.
6. De Tomaso Mangusta
Mangusta is the Italian word for mongoose, a small animal renowned for eating snakes.
The choice of name appears to have occurred to Alejandro De Tomaso after Carroll Shelby pulled out of a deal to co-produce a sports car called the P70. Shelby, of course, was the man who came up with the idea of the AC Cobra.
In fact, a mongoose will eat almost anything it can catch, though it does have an advantage over snakes in that it is resistant to their venom.
As a public service, we should also point out that the plural of mongoose is not mongeese (even though it sounds like it ought to be to a native English speaker) but mongooses.
7. De Tomaso Pantera
The Pantera was the immediate replacement for the Mangusta.
Alejandro De Tomaso’s feelings towards Carroll Shelby had presumably cooled down by the time it was introduced, since pantera is the Italian word for panther, a type of animal not particularly famous for its consumption of snakes.
‘Panther’ is a fairly loose term. Several animals known as panthers, including the type found in Florida, are strictly speaking cougars.
However, leopards, lions, jaguars and tigers are classified within the genus Panthera, which is part of Pantherinae (big cats in general), a subfamily of Felidae (all cats).
8. Dodge Ram
Dodge began using the Ram name for its trucks and vans in 1980, and established Ram as a separate brand in 2010.
In this context, a ram is not a species of animal, but a male sheep which has been left as nature intended and is therefore still capable of fathering other sheep.
Ram is also one of several common names for the ram chichlid, a small freshwater fish endemic to parts of South America.
However, since the Ram logo (which first appeared as a hood ornament in 1932) depicts a sheep with very large horns, it’s clear that Dodge wasn’t thinking about fish when it chose the name.
9. Fiat Panda
The large, monochrome bear usually referred to as the panda is officially named giant panda to distinguish it from the much smaller red panda. The two are related only in the sense that they are both carnivorous mammals.
Fiat has used the name for small cars since 1980, but although that’s enough for inclusion in our list the derivation is actually slightly different.
According to Fiat, the car is named after the Roman goddess Empanda, who might have been a deity in her own right or, it is said, might simply have been Juno going under another title.
There’s still an animal (but non-mammal) connection, though, since an empanda is a species of jumping spider.
10. Ford Bronco
As we’ll see, Ford has a long history of naming cars after mammals.
The first, alphabetically, is the Bronco, an SUV which made its debut in 1966 and was discontinued after five generations 30 years later, before re-emerging as two separate models in 2021.
A bronco is a horse, but not of a specific type. The word is used for any breed with a tendency to buck, which makes them popular in rodeo events.
There is therefore a slight connection, in name at least, with the Rodeos manufactured by Isuzu and Renault, though neither of these directly refers to an animal.
11. Ford Corcel
The Corcel was Ford’s small saloon (and estate and sometimes coupé) sold in South American markets from 1968 to 1986.
Despite the Ford branding, it was originally developed by Willys-Overland, and was closely related to the Renault 12.
In both Spanish (the most widely spoken language on the continent) and Portuguese (the official language of Brazil), corcel means steed, or courser, or perhaps charger. Whatever the exact translation, it refers to a horse – theoretically of any breed, but always used for riding, and often in a military context.
What it doesn’t mean, in either language, is ‘horse’ in the general sense. That translates into caballo in Spanish, and the closely related cavalo (male) or more linguistically distant égua (female) in Portuguese.
12. Ford Cougar
Under the name shown here, the Cougar was a short-lived coupé derivative of the Mondeo which made its debut late in the 20th century.
The same vehicle was also the eighth, and at the time of writing most recent, example of the car marketed in North America as the Mercury Cougar.
As an animal, the cougar is the largest of the ‘small cats’ (therefore excluding those in the genus Panthera) which can purr but not roar.
It is also known by many other names, including panther (as mentioned before), puma, mountain lion and catamount.
13. Ford Mustang
The original Mustang was a concept revealed in 1962. Cars of the same name have been in continuous production over seven generations, or eight if you include the Mach-E electric SUV.
The vehicle was directly named after the North American Aviation P-51 Mustang fighter plane used in the Second World War, but it ultimately refers back to a breed of horse.
In the animal sense, mustangs are free-roaming horses found in the western United States.
They are officially feral, which means that they are wild but are descended from domesticated animals. These were brought over from Spain, starting in the late 15th century.
14. Ford Pinto
Pinto is the Spanish word for ‘I paint’ and is used as an adjective, too.
The animal connection is that a pinto is also a horse – not of any specific breed, but with one of several multi-coloured coat patterns.
There is a myth that the Ford Pinto sold very badly in Brazil because the word means something quite different, and rather unfortunate, in Portuguese. In its most extreme form, the story includes a reference to Ford having to rename the car Corcel.
Although you can read this on many badly researched websites, it’s nonsense, on two counts. First, the Pinto was never marketed anywhere in South America, where Ford sold the Corcel instead; second, the Corcel had already been in production for two years before the Pinto was launched.
15. Ford Puma
The Puma SUV doesn’t qualify for this list because it was launched too recently, but the name was also used for a Fiesta-based coupé produced around the turn of the century.
As previously mentioned, the animal commonly known as the puma is in fact a cougar.
However, puma is also the name of a genus within the cat family, of which today’s cougar is the only living member.
Some extinct cats, originally thought to have been members of other families, have been reclassified as pumas long after their fossils were discovered.
16. Ford Taurus
As car manufacturers generally do, Ford put a lot of thought into what it should call the new mid-sized model it would introduce in the 1986 model year.
Members of the public were given a choice of 20 names, of which the most popular was Integra.
Instead of going with that, though, Ford stuck to the vehicle’s codename, Taurus. This was reputedly chosen by engineer Lewis Veraldi and product planner John Risk after they discovered that their wives were both born in May, under the sign of Taurus.
The origin of the name as applied to the car is therefore astrological, but it is also the Latin word for ‘bull’, the animal which the constellation of Taurus looks a bit like, if viewed with considerable imagination.
17. Hillman Husky
A husky can be any one of several breeds of dog which is comfortable in cold climates and strong enough to be able to pull a sled for great distances at remarkable speed.
Hillman first used the name for an estate version of the contemporary Minx in 1954.
Three more Husky derivatives of the Minx were produced from 1958 to 1965. After a short gap, the name was transferred to yet another estate, this time based on the Imp.
Hillman presumably used it to suggest how useful the cars would be to their owners, as the dogs certainly are.
18. Hyundai Pony
Hyundai used the Pony name for the first model it sold outside South Korea and, later, for export versions of the Excel.
In equestrian circles, the definition of a pony is a little vague. It essentially means an adult horse of, in theory, any breed, measuring no more than 14.2 hands. The name can be used for larger horses (polo ponies, for example), though an expert tells us that this is “similar to adult women referring to themselves as ‘girls’ – i.e. inaccurate but inoffensive”. To complicate matters still further, the falabella, which is absolutely tiny, is considered to be horse, but not a pony.
There is also some uncertainty surrounding the definition of a pony car. Broadly speaking, this is a relatively small but sporty American coupé or convertible, at least one size down from a muscle car, though the increasing size of what were once pony cars has muddied the waters.
We can safely say this about pony cars, however: the Hyundai Pony definitely isn’t one of them.
19. Lamborghini Miura
Ferruccio Lamborghini was enthusiastic about bullfighting, and many of his company’s cars have been given names related to the sport.
Rather than list all of them here, we’ll concentrate on the earliest. Launched in 1966, the Miura is generally regarded as the first mid-engined supercar, though not the first mid-engined roadgoing production car.
Miura is a type of Spanish fighting bull bred on a farm near Lora del Río in south-west Spain.
One particularly famous Miura bull, Islero, which had the unusual distinction of killing its matador rather than the other way round, was honoured by having another Lamborghini named after it.
20. Mazda Bongo
Although it appears to refer to a type of drum, the Mazda Bongo is in fact named after a large antelope.
How large, exactly? Well, the bongo is actually the third biggest of all antelopes, dwarfed only by the giant eland and common eland.
Mazda’s first Bongo (pictured) was a light van introduced in 1966.
Subsequent vehicles of the same name, many of which shared the original model’s cabover design, have included other commercial vehicles, along with MPVs capable of carrying up to eight passengers.
21. Mercury Bobcat
While the derivation of the Ford Pinto’s name tends towards the vague, its Mercury-badged equivalent refers to a specific type of animal.
The bobcat, which lives in Mexico, southern Canada and most of the contiguous United States, is the smallest member of the lynx family, behind the Eurasian lynx (which can be pretty hefty), the Canada lynx and the Iberian lynx.
Its name comes from its ‘bobbed’ tail, which is unusually short compared with its body length in cat terms, though in fact it shares this characteristic with all other lynxes.
No car called Bobcat has ever been sold with a Ford badge, though this was the name of the project which became the first-generation Fiesta.
22. Mercury Sable
The Ford Taurus, previously mentioned, was also marketed by Ford’s slightly upmarket brand as the Sable.
A sable is a small mammal which forms part of the marten family.
As with the mink, which is more distantly related, its fur is highly prized by people who make and buy expensive clothes, and even more so by the sable itself.
The former aspect is probably what appealed to Mercury, since it gives the name a connotation of luxury.
23. Mitsubishi Colt
There are several definitions of the word colt, but all of them refer to a young male horse.
Mitsubishi has used it as a model name for small cars since the early 1960s.
In the UK, Mitsubishis were imported by the Colt Car Company, which used Colt as the marque name.
For example, the car sold in Japan as the Mitsubishi Lancer was known in the UK as the Colt Lancer. In the US, the same vehicle was marketed as the Dodge Colt.
These examples contradict the fact that it wasn’t a Colt at all in the Japanese sense.
24. Mitsubishi Pajero
Mitsubishi’s large off-roader, along with several smaller models, was known in the UK as the Shogun and in other markets as the Montero, but in Japan it was always referred to as the Pajero.
Despite this, pajero is not a Japanese word. It refers to what is sometimes described as a subspecies (Leopardus pajeros) of the pampas cat (Leopardus colocola), which lives in many parts of South America.
By one definition, there are in turn five types of Leopardus pajeros, but they are not all universally recognised.
In fact, there is a lot of uncertainty about the whole business. Several sources give Leopardus pajeros as the overall name for pampas cats in general.
25. Nissan Leopard
After the confusion regarding the pampas cat, it comes as a relief to switch our attention to the leopard.
There’s no argument that a leopard is a large, spotted cat, though there are several varieties spread across a wide geographical range in Africa and Asia.
Nissan used the name for four generations of sporting luxury saloons and coupés produced from 1980 to 1999.
In the latter year, Nissan decided that the Leopard was superfluous, and dropped it. Today’s equivalents are the non-SUV models in the Infiniti range.
26. Reliant Kitten
The Kitten occupies an interesting position in Reliant’s history.
Before it was launched in 1975, Reliant had specialised in sporting models and small three-wheeled passenger cars, as well as a variety of commercial vehicles.
The Kitten was its first small four-wheeler, and the first car intended from the start to use the 848cc version of Reliant’s own engine, though this unit was also introduced to the mechanically similar (but three-wheeled) Robin at the same time.
To return to the theme of this article, the Kitten was the first of only two Reliants named after mammals, the second being the Fox.
27. Seat Leon
The Leon just qualifies for inclusion here on two counts. First, it appeared very late in the 20th century, having been launched in first-generation form in 1999.
Second, it is, strictly speaking, one of several Seats named after places in Spain. Others include the Cordoba, the Ibiza and the Toledo.
However, León is not only the name of a city but also the Spanish word for ‘lion’, and you can’t argue that a lion isn’t a mammal.
Leons of all generations can be described as Seat’s equivalent of the Volkswagen Golf, but that’s rather simplistic, because they are also related to several other VW Group models. The name has also been used by Seat’s more recently formed sporting brand, Cupra.
28. Singer Chamois
The car best remembered as the Hillman Imp was also marketed under the Singer and Sunbeam brands.
The Sunbeams were known either as Imp or, in the case of the high-performance coupé, Stiletto.
In Singer’s case, the car was renamed Chamois, after a goat found in mountains across Europe. It is sometimes referred to as a goat-antelope (though it isn’t an antelope at all), and the name might have been chosen as a contrast to the larger gazelle (which, as we’ll see, was also used for a Singer, and definitely is an antelope).
The Singer Chamois was produced as both a saloon and a coupé, with no change of name, and was both better equipped and more expensive than the standard Imp.
29. Singer Gazelle
The word gazelle describes several current and extinct members of the antelope family.
It was used for the first Singer model produced after the brand was taken over by the Rootes Group in 1955.
This was part of the Audax range, which also included the mechanically almost identical (and similarly styled) Hillman Minx and Sunbeam Rapier, the Australian Hillman Gazelle and the Commer Cob van.
The series ran, with many updates, until 1967. At that point, the Gazelle name was transferred (as Hillman Minx and Sunbeam Rapier were, too) to the new Rootes Arrow range.
The 26,846th Gazelle of this generation, which left the factory in March 1970, was the last Singer ever built, not including the modified Porsche 911s created by the unrelated Singer Vehicle Design.
30. Stutz Bearcat
The first Stutz was a racing car called the Bear Cat which performed respectably in the inaugural Indianapolis 500, in 1911, finishing on the same lap as the leader, in 11th place.
A production version was introduced the following year. Later models, whose name changed to Bearcat, continued until the early 1920s. Much later Bearcats, based on the Blackhawk, appeared in the 1970s and 1980s.
A bearcat might sound like an imaginary creature, but in fact it’s a real animal – a cat-like mammal found in increasingly small numbers across south and south-east Asia.
Its official name is binturong. As far as we know, nobody has ever built a car called binturong, which perhaps is a pity.
31. Sunbeam Tiger
Sunbeam first used the Tiger name in the 1920s for a car which achieved the now unimaginable combination of being successful in circuit racing and, in 1926, setting a new Land Speed Record.
Its 4-litre engine, the smallest internal combustion unit ever used in a successful LSR attempt, was created by joining two 2-litre twin cams and supercharging them.
The next Sunbeam Tiger was a sports car produced in two generations from 1964 to 1967.
Similar in concept to the AC Cobra, it was a Sunbeam Alpine sports car adapted to take a Ford Windsor V8 engine, initially measuring 4.3 litres and later 4.7 litres.
32. Triumph Stag
Depending on who you ask, a stag is either an adult male red deer, or an adult male of any large deer species.
The stag is often considered a noble beast, which could not initially be said of the Triumph sports car named after it.
Beautiful though it undoubtedly was, the Stag – or rather its 3-litre V8 engine – quickly developed a reputation for being appallingly unreliable.
The problems leading to this have largely been solved by specialists and the engine is no longer considered a liability.
33. Volkswagen Lupo
Introduced in 1998, the Lupo was a city car based on a shortened version of the platform used for the third-generation Volkswagen Polo, among other vehicles.
It was mechanically identical to the Seat Arosa, which was launched a year earlier but had a smaller line-up. For example, only the Lupo had a high-performance GTI derivative in the range.
Lupo is the Latin word for wolf, and it is understood to have been chosen in reference to Wolfsburg, the German city where VW has its headquarters.
It was widely reported at one point that the Lupo name would be revived for a later Volkswagen city car known during its development stage as the Up, but this did not happen.
34. Volkswagen Rabbit
Except in the cases of some saloons and estates, the Volkswagen Golf has been known by that name in nearly every market for close to half a century.
There are only two exceptions. The mammal-related one is that the car was sold as the Rabbit in the United States during its first generation (possibly, it’s said, out of fear that Americans wouldn’t want to buy a car with the same name as a sport).
The policy changed for the second generation but was reintroduced for the fifth, on the basis that American owners would be delighted by the reference to a successful car produced three decades earlier.
That didn’t work, so VW abandoned the idea for the sixth generation, and has not revisited it since.
35. AC Cobra
Okay, having reached the end of our alphabetical list of mammals, it is now time for the reptiles we mentioned back in the opening slide.
The AC Cobra, also known as the Shelby Cobra, was a derivative of the AC Ace sports car, which Carroll Shelby thought could be improved by fitting a large Ford V8 engine.
Initially, the engine in question was the Windsor, available first as a 4.3-litre and later as a 4.7. The even more formidable 7-litre FE unit later joined the range.
There are several types of snake called cobra, most of which are venomous, have hoods which they unfold when they feel threatened and can rear upwards.
The exception is the false water cobra, which isn’t closely related to the others, never rears up and isn’t particularly venomous, though you should avoid being bitten by one if you can.
36. Dodge Viper
Like cobras, vipers are venomous, though they are only distantly related within the snake family.
In each case, the sense of threat is appropriate for a powerful sports car, a term which could be used to describe the Dodge Viper as well as the AC Cobra.
By the end of its production in 2017, the Viper was powered by an 8.4-litre V10.
Its maximum capacity in the 20th century was a (slightly) more modest 8 litres, but this still made it one of the largest-engined cars you could buy in the world, certainly from a mainstream manufacturer.
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