What's In A Name?

What's In A Name?

Did you and your contemporaries ever call notoriously slow cars and bikes ‘stones’? For example: “That old van sure is a stone…” When I was growing up my pals and I always referred to all underpowered vehicles as ‘stones’ or ‘slugs’, so I’m not sure if the new ‘Moto Guzzi V7 Stone ’ is an example of truth-in-advertising, or if someone at the company was unfamiliar with twentieth century midwestern American slang, or maybe they felt a reverse-psychology name for this bike would attract younger, hipper irony-craving buyers. Those youthful sophisticates who call their cars ‘whips’.

How cars and bikes are named is one of the minor mysteries of the universe, and so is how some models receive affectionate nicknames from the public. Such nicknames are usually better than the original manufacturer-given names. For example, a ‘flivver’ is a much better name than ‘model T’, and a ‘Bug’ or ‘Beetle’ are both leagues better than the official name of that original Volkswagen car, which was ‘Type 1’. Fiat named it’s similar tiny car the Tipolino, which in Italian is ‘Little Mouse’. The Italians have flair. This name is better.

Several of my favorite vehicle nicknames involve motorcycles. The old Suzuki GT 750 (with its capable three-cylinder liquid cooled two stroke engine) was universally known as the ‘Water Buffalo’ (in the USA) and the ‘Kettle’ (as in tea kettle) in the UK. Its unusual idling exhaust burble sounded almost like water boiling in a stove top tea kettle, but I have no clue about the origin of ‘water buffalo’. While this model was in production, and for many years afterward, one could go anywhere in the world and tell any other rider you had a ‘Water Buffalo’ and they would instantly know exactly what you were referring to. Same as ‘Hog’, which of course identifies all larger Harley Davidsons, and ‘Airhead’ for all older BMW’s and ‘Lead Wing’ for all Honda Gold Wings. ‘Water Buffalo’ might be the best affectionate bike nickname on record so far. Several of these old Water Buffalos have in recent years actually been ridden in the famous Ironbutt 11-day endurance event. Many people simply enjoy pronouncing those two incongruously joined words. ‘Water Buffalo’.

My wife has a quirky tradition of naming her cars after characters from the movie ’Napoleon Dynamite’. Her last car, a black Toyota Corolla which she’d purchased new eleven years ago, was always named ‘Kip’. For the past several months her new black Volkswagen Tiguan has gone back and forth between ‘Uncle Rico’ and ‘Rex’. At the moment it looks like ‘Rex’ is winning. I’ve never named any of my vehicles, except when they are not cooperating with my pathetic efforts to repair their occasional faults. At that point they all temporarily receive this name: ’The Pig from Hell’. It’s a name never to be spoken aloud just in case they can hear.

If there is one company with a gift for coming up with great names, it would have to be Rolls Royce, with names like the ‘Phantom’, ’Silver Ghost’, ‘Wraith’, etc. You can’t do much better than those. The Mercury ‘Zephyr’ name comes close, but it was a fluke. Who wants to drive a Marauder or Grand Marquis?

Moto Guzzi makes some great motorcycles. One long-produced nearly indestructible early model featured a large forward-pointing horizontal cylinder with a massive external flywheel attached to the left end of its crankshaft. This was a bit of an odd-looking bike in a military-steam-punk-meets-antiquarian-moto-technology way, but everything worked well, and the bike was apparently quite good. I’ve seen a couple of them at random bike nights. Their very long production run ended about a dozen years before I began riding. That big spinning external flywheel is spectacular when the engine is running. A higher-performance version of this model had a superb name: ‘Falcone’ which is Italian for Falcon. They probably also had some cool nickname, likely referencing that huge naked flywheel, but Falcone was such a great name whatever the slang name might have been could hardly top it.

Moto Guzzi has long had a knack for model names. Their larger contemporary sport bikes have frequently been named ‘Le Mans’ after the famous French racetrack, and the smaller sporting ones are called ‘Monza’s after another famous Italian track. The Monza race facility must be a bit smaller than Le Mans.

Guzzi’s luxury-class bikes were long called either ‘Eldorado’s or ‘Ambassador’s. Those models were popular world-wide as police bikes and also for ceremonial or parade escort use, so those names were appropriate to the institutional use these models often served. I remember them being Harley-solid dreadnaughts which were easy to maintain, super durable, comfortable long-distance bikes. They competed most directly with alpha-numerically named BMW’s. If you were a daily-riding motor-officer, which would you rather tell someone you rode? The tutonically-named R-75, or an Ambassador? (Side note: Both of those good names were also used on popular automobiles. Cadillac once sold lots of Eldorado’s and a few years earlier American Motors/Rambler also sold a fair number of Ambassadors.)

The new Moto Guzzi ‘Stone’ seems like a nicely modernized mid-size old-school bike. Well-engineered, practical and a bit uncommon. If you are shopping for bikes and believe any particular model is likely to remain in production for a long time, uncommon-ness is a real virtue. Earlier versions of the ‘Stone’ have been produced for many years, so it is likely future versions of it will be made for a long time ahead. This is a good thing.

If you happen to be looking for a bike about like the Stone, you could do a lot worse. Say (for example) you were comparing it with a Triumph Tiger or Speed Triple (great names, great bikes), several of the excellent Ducati ‘Scrambler’ iterations and, for good measure, also the wonderful Suzuki SV650/Gladius. All are current versions of long-running models. Your choice might simply come down to if there is a better Guzzi, Triumph or Suzuki shop nearby.

As a thought-experiment imagine answering the common question: “Hey, what kind of bike is that?” with: “It’s a Stone. A Moto Guzzi Stone.” (“Bond. James Bond…”) Does that seem like it would be more fun than pronouncing the names of the similar machines? “It’s a what?…A Stone?” Maybe “Stone” is a cool bike name after all. Not quite in the ‘Water Buffalo’ coolness league, but definitely in that same ballpark.

I double-dog-dare any Japanese, Korean, Indian or Chinese bike manufacturer to name a new motorcycle their XYZ ‘Slug’. “So, what are you riding?” would receive this great deadpan reply: “It’s a XYZ Slug.”. You couldn’t say that without grinning inside. This would seem to be difficult to top, though Renault-Nissan once offered an overly cute small car called an ‘Escargot’ (Snail), so maybe there are no absurd name boundaries.

Perhaps in the future some boring nerd book will be written about the universe of interesting, cool and odd bike and car names. Bikes like the ‘Monkey’, ‘Concourse’, ‘Ninja’, ‘Blackbird’, ‘Hurricane’, and ‘Rune’. Already there’s this random bike name generator out there on the internet three languages.

Whatever you call your chosen conveyance, its name is cool.

-- Mr. Subjective 2021

Roadmaster

PS – As far back as I remember I’ve had a soft spot for the vehicle name ‘Roadmaster’, which Buick used for decades on one of its larger cars. And long ago my younger brother gifted me the luxuriously chromed plastic model badge you see here (right). On Buicks this badge added about five miles per hour to the top end, and on this home-made garage boombox I’m positive it has always added two or three more decibels.


17 comments


  • Mike Hedrick

    There is a very popular suv on the market called Telluride after the Colorado ski resort town (and summer moto haven). The name was derived from 19th century miners who referred to it as “to-hell-you-ride”. Not the first thing that would come to mind when naming a luxury SUV however well it may traverse that path.


  • Steve

    I’d suggest rereading the article, excerpt included below:

    Moto Guzzi has long had a knack for model names. Their larger contemporary sport bikes have frequently been named ‘Le Mans’ after the famous French racetrack,


  • Steve

    In Response to John Cheston: I’d suggest you reread the article, excerpt below:

    Guzzi has long had a knack for model names. Their larger contemporary sport bikes have frequently been named ‘Le Mans’ after the famous French racetrack,

  • Aerostich

    In Response to Steve Gray: You’re right – Thanks for the heads up! We’ve fixed it above.


  • Ron

    Hey, Mr. S, enjoyed the post.

    I believe Guzzi just uses “Stone” to describe the bike’s finish. The V7 “Stone” has matte-finish paint and black trim, as opposed to the V7 “CLassic” which has shiny paint and lashings of chrome.

    Part of the origin of the “Water Buffalo” was simply because very few bikes at the time were water cooled. Add buffalo because it was solid and perhaps a little ungainly.


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