Chery-picking car names can get you a King Kong, a Rongwei (Wrong Way?) or even an FO!

This is such a gem of a story, but I thought ST Life! (Jan 14, page C2) did not give it adequate prominence, so I wonder if many readers might have skipped it:

After I had read the article above, I sent this text message to several people:

"This is hilarious. A Chinese car-maker wanted to name a new model F1 but found out that Formula One already has the rights. So it called the car FO."

Back came the usual LOLs, ROTFLMAOs, hahahahas....

But I like this response best: "Hahaha! Next version: FU."

------------------------------------------------------------

Motoring history is of course replete with badly (or unluckily) named cars. Here's MSN Autos' list of "Worst Car Names Ever":

http://editorial.autos.msn.com/worst-car-names-ever

Aiyoh, my favourite car of yesteryear, the Daihatsu Charade, is in that list above. I have blogged previously that when Datsun (before it rebranded as Nissan) introduced the Bluebird here, many Hokkien-speakers sniggered (a literal translation of bluebird would be lam chiau). And Mazda's 323 had punsters playing on the number itself (three into three). Likewise, the Malaysian car-maker Proton's name rhymed with "potong" (Malay for "to be split apart").

------------------------------------------------

Finally, I learnt that today is "No Pants Subway Ride Day". But of course nothing of the sort happened on our MRT trains. Here is China's Global Times' pictorial on the event across other cities:

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/755662.shtml