The Beatles’ The Beatles. Metallica’s Metallica. Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin. All great albums. All self-titled. It does cause some confusion, which is why all these albums have more commonly used nicknames. The Beatles is The White Album, Metallica is The Black Album. Led Zeppelin is sometimes called Led Zeppelin 1 because it was followed by 2 and 3, but they made it even more confusing by leaving their fourth album untitled.
There have been a few self-titled cars. The DeLorean is often called the DMC-12, but the company actually changed the name about the same time as production started. The car was supposed to cost $US12,000 ($17,930), which is where the 12 came from, but by the time production started, the price had risen to over twice that. The model name became DeLorean. It isn’t exactly self-titled, because the company’s name was “DeLorean Motor Company,” so the make and model is the DMC Delorean which is close.
Then there’s the Ferrari LaFerrari. The LaFerrari is, of course, the “The Ferrari”, so it’s the Ferrari The Ferrari, which, again, close.
Canoo seems to be going all the way, calling their first vehicle the Canoo Canoo. I like it. It’s bold, and there is no confusion as they don’t have other vehicles to name yet. Hopefully Canoo will survive long enough to have to deal with the confusion.
I think this should be more common. It works in music, so why not cars? So here’s my proposal for the cars that automakers should just rename to be self-titled, and the nicknames they should have to differentiate them.
The Ford Mustang Mach-E. Ford really wanted to connect this vehicle to the Mustang brand, presumably so it wouldn’t get lost in a sea of electric SUVs that nobody is buying. But they really could have taken it in a different direction, showing the world that they are serious about electrification by just calling it the Ford Ford. You’d still get people talking, and none of the Mustang people would be upset. Win/Win. Nickname: Ford Mustang.
The Toyota Land Cruiser. The current Land Cruiser and especially the Lexus variant isn’t the best way to spend nearly a hundred grand on a car, mostly because it hasn’t had a major update in 14 years. It is, however, a legendarily reliable vehicle, and Toyota is a legendarily reliable brand. Fifty years from now when the world is a barren post-apocalyptic wasteland, the cockroaches will be driving Land Cruisers. Nickname: The Mall Cruiser.
The Jeep Wrangler. This one is easy. I mean, it’s the Jeep. When you think Jeep, you don’t think Compass or Renegade. You think about the Wrangler. In fact, I think Jeep should pull a Led Zeppelin 4 on this one and just leave the model untitled. It’ll just be the Jeep. Nickname: Jeep
The Dodge Grand Caravan. I know, Dodge has more exciting vehicles, but the Caravan has always been one of its best. The company has sold almost 15 million of them and it was the first model to really capture the minivan market. It’s arguably the best vehicle Dodge has made in the last 50 years. Nickname: The Boxy One.
The Mazda RX-9. Mazda has had several RX cars, up to the RX-8 and possibly an upcoming RX-9. Some of them were not actually called RX-anything, like the first one, the Cosmo. These cars have all been rotary, but rumour has it that the name might come back with an inline-six instead of a rotary. This is probably for the better, but it seems weird to call it the RX-9 when all the others had a different powertrain. Perfect opportunity to name it the Mazda Mazda. Nickname: The White Album.