Name That List, #29
What is this a list of? The answer is below in extended.
Answer:
They're names suggested by the poet Marianne Moore for the medium-priced car that the Ford Motor Company was developing in the late 1950s. Moore was responding to a request for car-name ideas from the company's Marketing Research division.
Ford ended up ignoring all her suggestions and named the car the Edsel.
Lists of Note has the full list of car-name ideas that Moore came up with, and its sister-site, Letters of Note, has the correspondence between the Ford executives and Moore.
- Intelligent Bullet
- Andante con Moto
- Pastelogram
- Bullet Cloisonné
- Intelligent Whale
- Thunderblender
- Cresta Lark
- Mongoose Civique
- Symmechromatic
- Utopian Turtletop
Answer:
They're names suggested by the poet Marianne Moore for the medium-priced car that the Ford Motor Company was developing in the late 1950s. Moore was responding to a request for car-name ideas from the company's Marketing Research division.
Ford ended up ignoring all her suggestions and named the car the Edsel.
Lists of Note has the full list of car-name ideas that Moore came up with, and its sister-site, Letters of Note, has the correspondence between the Ford executives and Moore.
An Edsel Corsair, via Wikipedia
Comments
Way before it's time. A true roadboat.
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 03/10/16 at 10:02 AM
I was thinking something military. Since it bombed...
Posted by TheCannyScot in Atlanta, GA on 03/10/16 at 10:21 AM
I've always wondered about the vertical shape of that front grill. Why!
Posted by KDP on 03/10/16 at 12:27 PM
A fast read through the list gave me a nagging feeling I'd seen one of those before. It took me a minute to home in on Pastelogram. Then another minute to remember the attribution explaining why someone named their blog that.
Posted by Phideaux on 03/10/16 at 01:34 PM
@KDP: Why not? The vertical grill is hardly unique to the automotive world. Maybe they were introducing a bit of European flair into the market.
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 03/11/16 at 12:40 AM
The grill was intentionally made reminiscent of a horse collar.
Posted by Omar on 03/11/16 at 12:40 AM
As Top Gear once said in describing another car "A urinal for a front bumper".
Posted by Puptentacle on 03/11/16 at 02:32 AM
I was hoping they were names of Pentagon contingency war plans.
Posted by Fritz G on 03/11/16 at 08:25 AM
Actually I was thinking of lady parts, but that's just the way my mind works.
Posted by KDP on 03/11/16 at 09:09 AM
@KDP: I can see it now. "Hey baby, my lightning rod is ready for your thunderblender!"
Posted by Miles on 03/12/16 at 03:19 AM
I'd rather drive a car with one of these names than one called a Yaris or a Passat. Supposedly the market research company had a total of 6000 names for the Edsel. Must have overwhelmed the execs. There are scads of reasons given for the failure of the Edsel but a big one was the price. And how come all that market research couldn't tell the designers that they needed a place for a front license plate, which was required in most states?
Posted by Dave Plechaty on 03/20/16 at 05:01 AM
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Category: Name That List