51 replies to this topic

[Gil Bouffard]

I was reading another thread when it came to me to see how far we could go with this..

I know that Rusty Wallace applies nicknames to his NASCAR Winston Cup cars. I particularly remember "Killer."

Scott Pruett drove a Mercury Merkur XR4TI in Trans Am that he called "Christine," after the car in Stephen King's book.

Parnelli Jones won the Indy 500 driving "Ol Calhoun."

Maybe we could compile a list of nicknames..

Gil

[Marcor]

OLD NUMBER ONE:

Was it the official designation or the nickname of the first Bentley Speed Six 6.5-L, winner among other things of the 1930 Brooklands 2 x H ?

[cjpani]

How about "Frankenstein" for Adrian Fernandez last season´s car... it had parts from 3 different cars!!!!

Best regards,
cjpani

[Ray Bell]

From some time in late 1939 through to as late as 1954, Doug Whiteford ran a car built out of a 1934 Ford V8 utility (pickup) that was called 'Black Bess'...



It was winner of the Australian GP in 1950, took over when he had no Lago in 1954, and there was a sister car built and named after his daughter, Kaye... no V8, this one was a V12 with an engine from a Lincoln Zephyr. I've never seen a picture of it with a body, and the steering column was unsupported, so it was a dog to drive. But then, anyone who drove Bess also said the steering was horrible...
Anyone who drove against Whiteford in it thought it was all right!
Photo is from the 1948 GP (& the AGP book), Whiteford rounding a haybale at the Point Cook aerodrome on that stinking hot day. The car sported Edelbrock heads and a magneto, and the chassis that had formerly bashed around the bush in its life with the Victorian Forestry authorities got some telescopic shock absorbers.

[Don Capps]

How could anyone not mention Ol' Yeller? I still recall the whitewalls that were used on a few of the Ol' Yellers.... seemed neat at the time!

[dbw]

are we talking casual nicknames or actual nom de racecar?..."tiger II"[kaye don's t54 bug....]"babs"[we all should know that one]..gee, all the english hillclimb specials seem to have had names....bloody mary,wasp,salome......red, the famous morgan 3 wheeler...or babydoll, lew spencer's morgan 4 wheeler...shall i go on?

[Allen Brown]

Wasn't the Parnell-built Lotus 25/33 (R13) called 'Percy' by the team?

Allen

[Ross Stonefeld]

how about...

piece of sh*t!

[jarama]

The car raced by JMF during the 1947 Temporada was a single-seater nicknamed "Negrita": actually was a Ford T-Model chassis, powered by a 6-cylinder, 3.9-litre, Chevvy war lorry engine.

[cjpani]

"Little bastard"

Enough said about the nick...

[dbw]

"mother gun" sounds familiar...was it a bentley of some form?

"old 16"...vanderbilt locomobile
the whole "spider" series
"golden submarine" miller
"cordon rouge"..raymond may's brecia
i'll think of more....

[Ray Bell]

The Mildren-Alfa monocoque raced by Gardner and Bartlett was known very familiarly as the 'Yellow Submarine.'



...something to do with Mildren's traditional colours, the high cockpit surround, conning towers and a Beatles song, I believe.

[dbw]

how could we not mention the whole "chitty" series...[the real ones!!!!]

[Ray Bell]

Anyone mentioned the Bira ERAs, Remus and Romulus... I think Romulus was mentioned in connection with someone else...

Something to do with the dogs that founded Rome or something.

It would be nice to have the genesis in here if we know it, wouldn't it, as I have done with these last two?

Old Yella, by the way, wasn't that the name of the car, rather than the nickname (oh dear, so was Black Bess!)...

[moody]

.....I think Rusty Wallace had one car ha named 'Whitney' after Whitney Huston and didn't James Hunt have his girlfriends name on the side of his McLaren at some point?

[Marcor]

The 1977 F1 Renault turbo was ofter nicknamed The Teapot (by Ken Tyrrel for instance).

[Allen Brown]

Remus and Romulus were dogs??!!!

It's a good thing we TNF'ers just stick to talking about motor racing.

Allen

[Rainer Nyberg]

The Arrows A9 was refered to as :
"Well-cooked spaghetti"
(it had something to do with the torsional rigidness of the chassis....)

Rainer

[Paul Hartshorne]

The 1982 Toleman TG181B was nicknamed The Belgrano after the Argentinian Battleship that was sunk by the British in the Falklands War.

This nickname may be considered to be of somewhat questionable taste as the sinking resulted in the deaths of over 100 Argentinian sailors

[Uncle Davy]

Briggs Cunningham's 1950 Le Mans entry, "Le Monstre"...

[josh.lintz]

Bira had a car named "Hanuman", a monkey god in the Hindu religion.

[Gil Bouffard]

From "American Road Race Specials, Glory Days of Homebuilt Racers, by Alan Girdler, Motorbooks International, 1990.

"The press loves a good story, and (Max) Balchowsky has few equals when it comes to quips and yarns and making friends. At the time he began racing his revamped special, there was a Disney movie about an ungainly old hound with a heart of gold and nerves of steel: Old Yeller, or Ol' Yaller, as they said in the movie's dialect. So Balchowsky painted his racer yellow, brush marks visible ten feet away, and nicknamed it after the other mongrel. He referred to his creation as "that yellow pile of junk" and he reveled in listing all the junkyard parts."

I am more interested in personally applied nicknames.
" Hanuman," "Remus and Romulus," are personal nicknames.

How many drivers had/have personal nicknames for their race cars?

Gil

[Uncle Davy]

Originally posted by Allen Brown
Remus and Romulus were dogs??!!!

It's a good thing we TNF'ers just stick to talking about motor racing.

Allen

Allen,

Ray's been spending too much time in the Paddock Club...it's affecting his mind.

[Mike Argetsinger]

As this quote from Gil Bouffard points out, we have several categories of nicknames represented in the posts above.

One such category is nicknames that were given to cars by outsiders - the public, the press, etc. - and the names stuck. An example of this category posted above is "Le Monstre" which the French race fans dubbed the special bodied Cadillac that Briggs Cunningham brought to LeMans in 1950. The press picked it up and the name is still associated with the car today.

Another category - which could be argued not to be a nickname at all - is a name given to designate a one-off special. Old Yeller probably falls in this category. To that I would add the BuMerc which is the name Briggs Cunningham gave his very unique (and fast!) special which he drove to 2nd place in the 1948 Watkins Glen Grand Prix. It was a Buick Century chassis and engine (5.2 liter) with a body from an SSK Mercedes. It may sound crude but the engineering that was done to make this work was very sophisticated for its time.

And it seems there is still another category - represented in posts above by "well cooked spaghetti" and "The Teapot" -which could be said to be references - or nicknames - applied by racing insiders but not necessarily adapted by the cars owner.

And finally the category that Gil refers to. Personally applied nicknames of which many examples are given above. To this category I would add "Poison Lil", George Weaver's name for his supercharged 1936 Maserati V8R1 (I posted some details on this fascinating car just yesterday on the thread regarding US racing post war up to 1960 - not the exact thread title!). Weaver led the first lap of the first Watkins Glen race in this outright Grand Prix car (it also had a considerable Indy history). Colonel George Felton (an entrant in that inaugural Watkins Glen race called his Vauxhall OE 30/98 "Quicksilver." In 1949 at Watkins Glen Bill Milliken raced the car he called "Butterball" (he had raced it the previous year at Pikes Peak and elsewhere and broke the integral transmission at Pikes Peak which kept him from racing it at Watkins Glen in '48 - instead he raced his Bugatti T-35A - which is the same car my father raced in '49). The "Butterball" was more formally known as an F.W.D. (standing for the Four-Wheel-Drive Company). Milliken's "Butterball" was one of the two cars that the F.W.D. firm had designed and built by Harry Miller. The cars had raced in several Indy 500's with a 3rd by Mauri Rose in 1940 representing the best result. Bill drove this same car again at Goodwood within the past year or two.

There is more of this ilk from the early days of American road racing but I will stop here before this becomes entirely boring.

[David McKinney]

Boring, Mike? Never!
Didn't the Four Wheel Drive Company also acquire the AJB, a 4wd Steyr-powered sprint car built by Archie Butterworth in England? I’m sure I’ve a photo somewhere of Milliken racing it, I would have thought at Watkins Glen, but perhaps in the Mt Equinox hillclimb. Wasn’t this also a Butterball Special?

[Roger Clark]

Originally posted by Mike Argetsinger

One such category is nicknames that were given to cars by outsiders - the public, the press, etc. - and the names stuck. An example of this category posted above is "Le Monstre" which the French race fans dubbed the special bodied Cadillac that Briggs Cunningham brought to LeMans in 1950. The press picked it up and the name is still associated with the car today.

[/B]

[William Dale Jr]

Don't know how interesting it is, but Dick Johnson, then Australian Touring Car Champion, called his best Ford Sierra his 'Eggenberger Eater' because he was taking it to England to run it in the Silverstone TT, where Reudi Eggenberger would be racing his all-dominant Texaco Sierras and Johnson's car was going to eat them for lunch.

For the record, Johnson put his car on pole by half a second from Andy Rouse then the first of the Eggenberger cars.

[Mike Argetsinger]

The wonderful picture of Briggs Cunningham's Le Monstre, posted above by Roger Clark, was taken on September 15, 1950. The car is seen exiting the corner at Stone Bridge which is roughly half way around the original 6.6 mile Watkins Glen road course. The driver at the wheel is my father, Cameron Argetsinger. Seated next to him is my grandfather, J.C. Argetsinger. It is the pace lap of the Seneca Cup and Le Monstre has been accorded the honor of pacing the field in recognition of its performance earlier that year at LeMans. The Seneca Cup was the first of three races that day - it was followed by the Queen Catherine Cup and the feature race of the day was the Watkins Glen Grand Prix for sports cars. My father raced his Silverstone Healey in the Grand Prix. This race was the third annual Watkins Glen sports car Grand Prix and it was the first year the race had a full international listing. Sam Collier was killed that day in Briggs Cunningham's Ferrari 166 SC. Erwin Goldschmidt won the race in his Cadillac-Allard.

[Falcadore]

William D,
I'm sure you also recall Brad Jones used to name his AUSCAR's and NASCAR's after Jetson's characters. Elroy, Judy, jane etc.

HRT went through a phase when the named several chassis as females,
The Ryan McLeod Chiko Roll car is "Beth"

The #67 VS Big Kev Commodore raced by Owen Kelly & Aaron McGill at Bathurst is "Vanessa"

The car destroyed by Jason Bargwanna in the morning warm-up for Bathurst '97 was "Veronica"

The 1996 Bathurst winner, since then much shunted rather badly by Greg Murphy before being rebuilt for Todd Kelly is "Gabrielle"

The car Todd Kelly crashed at Eastern Creek necessitating the rebirth of "Gabrielle" is "Steffi". "Steffi" was also Peter Brock last car and is believed to currently being rebuilt as such.

David Gittus and Maurie Platt's two ROH Wheels Commodore Cup cars were nicknamed Jake and Elwood. I can picture Maurie and Dave in the simple black suits while wearing sunglasses at night racing to Chicago in their excellently presented blue/red VH V8 Commodores. Maurie in particualr could do a passable lookalike of Belushi although Gittus is a bit too tall and heavy set to portray a period accurate Akroyd.

[dbw]

i always thought the cunningham team dubbed the aero bodied caddie "lemanster"[i guess a lemans/roadster or such]..after one look, the french press aptly rechristened her "le monstre" not a bad call i'd say.


how about the "monsterati" a west coast confection out of the late 50's....

[Walrus]

I remember Rosberg in Williams in mid 83 founding a text in his car (Laffite too) whit a womans name and after a line "Treat like a virgin." Guess they had broken too many cars...

[Roberto Lengruber]

I call car "Piquet"

[Rainer Nyberg]

Walrus,
The sign was installed in Keke´s 1981 Fittipaldi...
Keke was trying to keep this car on the limit to stay competitive and sometimes he went over the limit...




Rainer

[Mike Argetsinger]

Another car from the early days of post war American road racing with a great nickname was the "Flying Banana." I don't think the car's creator Kenneth Hill had the name in mind for the car when he built it, but the name became so popular with the race fans - and the car so well known by the name - that I wouldn't be surprised if he ultimately called the car that himself. He named the car a "Merlin" to recognize its Mercury and Lincoln lineage. It was an open wheeled special with a tube like body and tandem seating for two (doubtless where McLaren came up with the idea!). The name was a natural although there were a few other unofficial nicknames tossed around. By 1949 Hill had painted the car red but in its earlier days it was a sort of blue that inspired the moniker "the purple erection."

[ry6]

"Bloody Mary" comes to mind.
I think this was a car driven by John Bolster.
Rob

[Graham Clayton]

My earliest motor sport memory was attending the now defunct Liverpool speedway (1967-89) in south-west Sydney
Australia, in the early 1970's.
One of the categories was open wheel super-modifieds.
One of the top drivers was a chap called Sid Hopping,
whose car was nicknamed the "Beast". This was due to
its' rather evil handling characteristics.
When the track changed to asphalt from dirt in the mid
70's, his new car was nickamed the "Batmobile".
It had aerodynamic wings at the front, on top of the
roll cage, at the rear, and along the sidepods.
At the same time, George Tatnell was racing a speedcar/midget that was nicknamed the "wedge"
due to its rather squre body, compared to the
curved bodies of "normal" speedcars.

[Mike Argetsinger]

Welcome to TNF Graham. I hope that was the first of many posts by you on this Forum!

[Mike Argetsinger]

The Ardent Alligator is a car that should be mentioned here before this thread drifts away. That was what the Collier brothers -Miles and Sam - named the car that Miles drove to victory in the 1949 Watkins Glen Grand Prix. It was a very exciting race - Collier started the last lap in 3rd place and on that last lap (6.6 mile course) passed George Roberts in the Briggs Cunningham BuMerc (described above) and then passed Briggs himself in the Ferrari 166SC on the downhill in to town to take the victory. By the way, Bill Milliken was 4th in this race in the Miller 4-wheel drive drive "Butterball" that I described in a post above.

The Ardent Alligator started life as a 1929 Brooklands Riley. The Colliers had owned it since 1934 and just before the war they fitted a 3.9 liter Mercury flathead engine and drivetrain. It was very fast and was a great handling car. By 1950 (as described recently in the thread on Formula Libre) the car was ineligible to run in the sports car Grand prix in its existing form. Actually it would have been legal by fitting cycle fenders since technically it was a 2-seater. But Miles Collier chose to run it on alcohol and as an open wheeled car in the Seneca Cup. He finished 3rd against a very strong field. Of course later that day his brother Sam was killed in the Grand Prix driving Cunningham's Ferrari.

The name for the Ardent Alligator came in stages. It was originally pea green and the Colliers called it the Alligator in honor of the many alligators around their Everglades home. Noting the enthusiastic amorous pursuits of the animals, the Colliers soon added "ardent" to the name and the car to this day is known as the Ardent Alligator. By the way, the car was red with yellow wheels and carried #39 when Miles Collier won its most famous victory at Watkins Glen. It was later, and for much of its life, blue. The present owner restored it to the 1949 colors in time for the 50th anniversary of its' great win.

My father -Cameron Argetsinger - bought the car from Miles and I rode many miles with him in it. Today the car is owned by Peter McManus who races it in vintage events. It's still an awesome car!

[Catch 22]

On a personal note, the first championship I ever won came in a bug-eye Sprite christened "The Blue Meanie" (which dates it rather nicely, right Ray?) with a hand-painted picture of Max on the nose. Later cars included "Kamakazi" (a red Datsun 1600 Sports roadster) and "Shamu, the Killer Whale" (a BRG 1951 Jaguar Mk. VII sedan). These days, I drive either "Moose" (my Jeep Grand Cherokee) or "Squirrel" (my Mazda Miata), depending on the weather.

[Keith Steele]

Tom Bigelow campaigned the Genesee Beer Wagon for quite a few years at Indy.

[Graham Clayton]

The 4 wheel drive Nissan GTR that won the Australian
Touring Car Championship a couple of times in the early
1990's was nicknamed "Godzilla" after the famous
Japanese sc-fi monster.
The rules were changed to a V8 only series, in order
to stop further domination

[fines]

Well, Genesee Beer was a sponsor, not quite a nickname!

[Mike Argetsinger]

Originally posted by fines
Well, Genesee Beer was a sponsor, not quite a nickname!

No, but a very good beer! Although perhaps not quite so good as a Bitburger Pils.

[bobbo]

For what it's worth (darn little!!!!!) I had a 1965 Renault R8 Gordini (Hemi head, headers, 2 - 2bbl solexes, French Racing Blue with 2 thin white stripes, etc. Fast little bugger, oversteered like crazy!!) I called "Alice" and at the same time, a TR-2 I called "That Piece of S**t!" Had LOTS of good times in both of them. I could do a transmission change in the TR in less than an hour along the side of the road!! I kept a working one in the trunk and put the broken one (First and reverse) in the shop as soon as I could. (My Dad liked the TR, too.)

Bobbo

P. S. Maybe someone should start a thread on memories of our own cars fromDays Gone By . . .

[Falcadore]

Tomas Mezera's first Formula Ford was nicknamed the flying penis because of it's looks. Poor Tomas must have wondered what he was in for with that car.

[pancho]

Originally posted by Falcadore
Tomas Mezera's first Formula Ford was nicknamed the flying penis because of it's looks. Poor Tomas must have wondered what he was in for with that car.

I suppose he dialled in a stiff-chassis set-up!

[Frank de Jong]

Originally posted by Marcor
The 1977 F1 Renault turbo was ofter nicknamed The Teapot (by Ken Tyrrel for instance).

Well. as far as I remember the "Teapot" nickname was used for the 1976 Ligier JS5 in its original form (with the enourmous airbox, which looked like a teapot indeed).
Dutch sportscar racer Maus Gatsonides built a low sportscar in 1948, which was nicknamed "Platje" (flatty), which happened to be a popular name for a venerial disease as well.

Last but not least: the winged BMW 3.0 CSL touring cars of 1973-1975 were known as "Batmobiles".

[prettyface]

Originally posted by cjpani
"Little bastard"

Enough said about the nick...

Wasn't "little bastard" or "lil' bastard" James Dean's Porsche Spyder?

[Darren]

Some names for y'all to find the matching cars: Sabrina, the Tank, the Skateboard, the Breadvan, Jose.

[FlagMan]

The Breadvan was a special bodied Ferrari 250 GTO as I recall.

A few more for contemplation - from UK national racing

Big Bertha, Baby Bertha, Old Nail, Torrey Canyon, Run-Baby-Run.