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Car names can be a controversial topic. I don’t mean the model names that manufacturers give to their cars – although there are certainly some of those that make you wonder ‘what were they thinking?’ Hillman named its new mini-car after a small trouble-causing demon (the Imp) while Ford had its brief fling with names derived from Roman bureaucrats (Consul, Prefect). These pale into insignificance when compared to some of the names given to Japanese cars on the domestic market, such as the Daihatsu Naked, the Yamaha Pantryboy Supreme or the Mitsubishi Guts. What I actually mean is the business of giving individual cars names. You don’t have to spend long at a classic car scene before finding plenty of examples of cars with names, which isn’t surprising: Old cars are characterful things (that’s a big part of their appeal) and it’s only a small step on from that to the car acquiring a name. I should, at this point, admit that I did name one of my cars – my first. It was a slightly ropey Series 3 Land Rover. Although its number plate began ‘WLM’ (making ‘William’ the obvious name) it actually picked up the name ‘Gromit’ because it was white with brown bits, like the stoical animated dog. Our main family wagon when I was growing up was a Mercedes-Benz E Class estate, which was known as ‘The Bismarck’ because it was German, very large, and didn’t steer very well. Maybe naming cars would be more acceptable if people began giving them less personal names – certainly no one seems to have a problem with Field Marshal Montgomery naming his staff car ‘Old Faithful’. If he’d called it ‘Horace the Humber’ or ‘Geoffrey’ it probably wouldn’t have gone down so well!