Opel’s new Adam rocks, and it rolls too

WHEN it comes to dumb product names, the automotive industry has had its fair share of gems.

Isuzu’s Mysterious Utility Wizard (I kid you not) illustrates a peculiarly Asian ability to truly get something lost in translation, while something like the Studebaker Dictator vividly illustrates an American talent for seamlessly demonstrating crassness and insensibility in equal measure.

Us Europeans are not immune to howlers either. Audi’s adoption of the E-Tron handle for its hybrid vehicles is very unfortunate as ‘etron’ translates from French as ‘excrement,’ while Renault found to their embarrassment that the Koleos name it gave its 2007 SUV translated into ‘testicle’ in Greek.