No, not which one has the best sounding engine – I’d argue strongly for the Triumph Stag there – but which one has the best name?
Triumph Stag is certainly a contender – a successful and aggressive beast is what the name suggests. Much better than Maserati Bora for sure. Some are a bit more functional – the Bond Minicar was just that, the Triumph Roadster likewise. Not very exciting though eh?
I recently drove a Bentley Brooklands Turbo R Mulliner, but that’s all a bit of an unnecessary mouthful. It’s like they were trying to chuck in every English thing they could think of. They might as well have called it the Bentley Royal Family Blackpool Pleasure Beach. I’m quite pleased they didn’t though…
The Gordon-Keeble GK1 starts well, but they clearly ran out of inspiration. Others just lie. The Morris Minor 1000 ended up with 1098cc, the Citroën 2CV actually had 3CV by the 1970s. Mercedes-Benz on the other hand just confuse. A 220SE has 2.2-litres, a 300SE has 3-litres. But you can also get a 300SE with a monstrous 6.3-litre V8! They called this the 300SE 6.3. Obviously.
The French were never much into names. Renaults were generally numbers after the Fregate/Dauphine/Caravelle era, Peugeots stick with the number-0-number and Citroën at most pulled a few letters together. The Traction Avant merely started life as 7A and only the Ami, Mehari and Dyane broke theme right up to the Xantia of 1993. That’s the French out for a refusal.
I guess it’s hard to decide, so I’m going to pick two Rovers with identical engines – something that gave the Solihull fellows a few sleepless nights. I therefore crown the winners of this non-competition the Rover Three-Point-Five and Rover Three Thousand Five.