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.That will go down in history as the stupidest name of all time even though Fiat have tried for the title more than once.Their seventies hatchback became known in Britain as the ‘Strada’ (road) because the original name, ‘Ritmo’, was shared with an American sanitary towel.Since then, we’ve had the Fiat One, the Fiat Type and the Fiat Point which are all fantastically wrong.But for almost unbelievable wrongness, look no further than Japan where I see the new, and completely bland, five-door Mitsubishi is called the ‘Carisma’.That’s like calling the Rover 400 the ‘Power Blaster’.Mitsubishi have been in trouble before, with the Starion, which was going to be the Stallion until an American importer misunderstood a Japanese person’s attempt at pronouncing the ‘l’s.Daihatsu take the Japanese honours though for calling one of its new cars the ‘Clever Little Fellow’.This is not a bird puller, but is better, I guess, than the Nissan Spam.It hasn’t happened yet but there’s time.There’s time.I mean we already have the Nissan Silvia, the Nissan Gloria and the spectacular Nissan Cedric.All of which proves that letters and numbers are always going to be more successful than names, if the car is in any way serious.BMW, for instance, would never dream of giving one of its Teutonic masterpieces a silly name.No, a 5-series car with a 3.0-litre engine becomes a 530.Very German.And it’s the same story at Mercedes where you have the C class, the E class and the S class.You know where you are.But even this can lead to problems.I can never help smiling while driving along behind a BMW diesel because the badge says TDS, and that, as anyone who can do speed writing knows, is a short form for tedious.Citroen came a cropper too with its Visa Diesel which it tried to sell here as the VD.And what about the BX diesel which they called the TRD.But if you want the best name story of them all, you need to go back 40 years, to Japan, where Toyota was busy designing a new small car which would be sold in America.And it wasn’t until the very last minute that the American importers convinced their Japanese masters that Toyopet would make the car more appealing than the intended name: Toyolet.Hello.I drive a Toyolet.You sure do buddy.You sure do.Clarkson on CarsBull Bars Should be BannedTo a geo-stationary satellite above Britain, I will have looked like a giant pinball over the past fortnight.With my wife operating the flippers from our Battersea bunker, I’ve been despatched to the flatlands of Lincolnshire, the pastoral splendour of Dorset and the rain-lashed horror that is Birmingham.I’ve been to Bath, Sheffield, Northampton, Worcester and Eastbourne too.In the course of these travels I’ve seen many species which were officially human but which didn’t look that way.In Sheffield, everyone seemed to slouch.In Eastbourne, half the population was dead or very, very close to it.People in Bath have had their friendly genes taken out so that if you stop and ask for directions, they act like you’ve just trumped, and strut off.In a contest to find the rudest town on earth, Bath would walk all over Paris.I have seen much in the way of countryside too.Lincolnshire was best and the farmers have thoughtfully chopped down all the trees so you can see more of it.No such far-sightedness in Somerset where each 200-year-old oak, you just know, is shielding Jethro; someone with one eye and a penchant for camouflage trousers.He says his ambition in life is to ‘murder someone’.Blackpool was fascinating.In my experience, every single town in the whole country has been changed out of all recognition in the last fifteen years.Out-of-town superstores have killed off high streets, which are now dominated by building societies and estate agents.But Blackpool is exactly the same as I remember it as a child, which was a pleasant surprise.There have been different roads too, including the M1 which I simply cannot believe.Anywhere else in the civilised world, the man responsible for this ramshackle half-built and hopelessly inadequate country lane would have been killed and fed to his family.Who would then have been shot.But no, the man in charge of the M1 lives in Surrey, as do all his relations and friends.He was born in Godalming, educated in Woking and thinks the north is a barren place where people eat mud, so every penny at his disposal is spent on the Surrey section of the M25.This makes him something of a hero at local dinner parties where he is seen to be spending wisely
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