A blue and white Renault Caravelle parked in a Florida drivewayBilly Shakesmen once asked in one of his plays "what's in a name?" Well, a whole lot. Names can evoke feelings and moods in the listener that can become permanently associated with the namee. Automakers love giving their cars animal names, for instance, that evoke power or strength. Last week, when I asked you about your favorite cars with animal names, I got some cool responses and learned about cars and animals I didn't know about. Neat! I'm recreating a bit of that magic with todays question: What's your favorite car named after a place? It can be real, like the Volkswagen Taos, or imaginary (or rather, mythical) like an Aston Martin Valhalla. It can be a building, a park, a city, a country or, like my favorite place-named car, a state. It can even be another planet, like the the Vulcan or every Saturn. If you can stand on it or in it, it counts. My pick...A dark red Renault FlorideNow I know what you're thinking: shock me with that deviant choice, Marquis. Another cute Ghia-designed French car on Jalopnik. Oh look, it's an affordable roadster with no top and good wheels. I know I'm not blowing anyone's expectations off their hinges here, but I just think the Renault Floride is such a tidy, sweet little car. More than just a love of everything that makes the Floride, known in the U.S. and UK as the Caravelle, feel like a Florida car. Or at least the Florida of the early 1960s. Like the cute little Karmann Ghia, the Floride was rear-engined and rear-wheel drive, the car was a hit for Renault (Grace Kelly even owned one!) according to Hemmings, but didn't do quite the same numbers as Volkswagen's Ghia. Eventually Renault dropped the Floride name, which I think was a mistake. I want to think of the Florida this car evokes: a sunny drive through the Keys to get a tropical drink and add another layer to your perfectly tanned skin along the way. Nowadays, Florida just seems like a place where giant floating pollution toilets dock, where a cartoon rat shakes kids upside for whatever is in their pockets, and where criminals make big numbers on YouTube. I'll take the slightly classier, Grace Kelly-owning, French vision of the Sunshine State thank you very much. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox, and add us as a preferred search source on Google.
+10 others
