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Comment by pxndxx | Hacker News Reader

Calling this car Nevera (fridge) makes it a great addition to the unfortunate car names in Spanish, next to the Fiat Marea (makes-you-dizzy) and Mitsubishi Pajero (wanker).

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However nothing beats in French the Audi e-tron, literally "turd". At least in the 00s Toyota prudently renamed the MR-2 ("shit") into simply "MR" to prevent problems.

@Wazoox Toyota joined this fun with their performance line 'TRD' (Toyota Racing Development) which they add in large letters to vehicles in the US, and which many enthusiasts of competing vehicle brands consider a good description of Toyota vehicle racing capability

Competitor enthusiasts? I have two Toyotas and think TRD is a stupid badge.

Toyota make terrific vehicles but their performance marketing is hilarious

I drove a taco terd for awhile. Not a bad little truck.

The worst part is that it's not just the name of a car, it's the entire EV sub-brand. So you have the Audi Turd, the Audi Q8 Turd, the Audi Q8 Turd Sportback the Audi Turd GT, and so on.

Unsurprisingly they don't seem to sell well in French-speaking countries :D

Maybe Ford Kuga, meaning "bubonic plague" in Slovenian.

Honda Fita

https://twitter.com/michal317/status/1554149869278953472?s=6...

> Honda Fita

Stretching a bit to fit a narrative?

There was never Honda Fita. In USA, that's Honda Fit, and in Europe the same car is called Honda Jazz.

The thread mentioned states that the name was changed to Jazz just before launch and that the problem with Fita was discovered pre-launch.

The classic business school case is Chevy's Nova. Literally means "No go" in Spanish. IIRC, it was a smashing success in US and Canada and a giant flop south of the border.

Nova means new, not "no go", unless you are actively trying to make a joke and read "no" and "va" as separate words.

I'm pretty sure "nuevo/a" is "new" in Spanish, not "nova."

No vamos, i thought?

If you are reading it, yes. If you say it out loud, it sounds like “no va”.

This is correct. It wouldn't be read as "no go" any more than you wouldn't buy a "notable" furniture set because it had no table.

That's the joke.

Nova means new in Portuguese. It's not a word in Spanish I think, which is why Spanish speakers would automatically split it into "no va".

Nova means new in Portuguese and in Latin...

> a giant flop south of the border

That's an urban legend. It sold fine.

I had to look this up. Ha! What a sham! Business school lied to me?! Apparently, it sold well in Mexico and Venezuela! The Nova lesson was in every marketing book I had to read in college.

I've always heard that legend but instead as the "el camino" which can mean "the walk."

I thought it was "the road" and el camino real was the royal road

I was always inclined to think it meant "the way" or "the road".

Yes and "The pinto" means "the exploding napalm fireball".

Nevera means "storm" or alternatively "squall" in Croatian, which is where the car got its name.

Not just any storm. It’s a storm on the Croatian coast that comes suddenly and doesn’t last long. When pronouncing the word, the emphasis is on the second syllable: neh-VEH-rah

Source: My Dalmatian father

TIL Dalmatia is a region in Croatia and the origin of the dog breed “Dalmatian”

Thank you for the explanation, my mind initially went to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...

>It’s a storm on the Croatian coast that comes suddenly and doesn’t last long

That would be neverin.

Nevera is a storm/thunderstorm in the Adriatic in general, not necessarily a short lasting one.

I wonder what the etymology is. Sounds superficially like "neve", Italian for snow, but it doesn't sound like it's an actual snowstorm.

>I wonder what the etymology is.

Yep, it's of Romance origin, etymological dictionaries list it as originating in Venetian nevèra, with an understandable semantic shift.

Same thing? The root of the word seems to be disbelief ne + vjera

>Same thing?

I was commenting on the "short lasting" part (and the nuances between neverin vs nevera, first one being for "short lasting" storms/thunderstorms, the latter being more generic).

>The root of the word seems to be disbelief ne + vjera

The word is completely unrelated to disbelief, it's of Venetian origin (< nevèra, meaning snow blizzard).

> Source: My Dalmatian father

And confirmed by Miro Zrncevic when he and Nevera appeared on Jay Leno's Garage.

He spent about a minute explaining the term in detail and you nailed it.

Isn't that "Bora"?

Bora is the wind that blows from coast towards the sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bora_(wind)

If Rimac makes a car with that name, it’s probably going to be Bura because that’s how we write it in Croatia.

> If Rimac makes a car with that name

There already exists Volkswagen Bora, which was a sedan version of Golf 4. (Basically, a renamed Jetta; just like Vento in the generation before)

No. Bora is strong wind and can last for days.

> Bora is strong wind

Fun fact: Jugo (another frequent wind on Adriatic coast) is even stronger wind, but what makes bora/bura special are strong sudden gusts.

> Fun fact: Jugo (another frequent wind on Adriatic coast) is even stronger wind, but what makes bora/bura special are strong sudden gusts.

I saw it jack-knife a semi truck on my way back from Dalamatia to Istria, all my Life I ave seen the aftermath of the Santa Ana winds in SoCal but I've never seen it happen in person, but I was stalking that truck for at least 15 mins keeping my distance as the the carriage swayed hard left an right as the Bura got stronger as we got higher in elevation.

Eventually the hitch thing that attaches to the front part of the truck snapped and sent it flying into the air and then sliding down the road, it blocked the entire 3 lane road. I checked to make sure the guy was fine and then left when the police showed up.

Ironically, I had a Bura beer [0] with my food at a cafe as I was waiting for the rain to stop. I got hme to Istria pretty late, and all my patio furniture was tossed up, The Bura is no joke, but it has a cleansing effect; everything felt lighter after that storm.

0: https://www.burabrew.hr/our-beer/

> semi truck on my way back from Dalamatia to Istria

I can guess that was under Velebit, where bura is often very strong and at those times the road is closed for motorcycles, campers, double-deckers and vehicles with trailers.

But people regularly ignore those restrictions because they are not aware of the danger.

> But people regularly ignore those restrictions because they are not aware of the danger.

Possibly, I couldn't tell you where exactly it was to be honest.

I'm not stranger to driving in 100MPH winds (Santa Ana), and I even did my Motorcycle endorsement in 70mph winds (I dropped their bike coming to a stop due to a freak side gust) but my little under-powered Golf was being tossed around by the Bura so bad that I was just waiting for the thing to jack knife as there were no exits for like +30km.

I took the toll road the rest of the way back to Istria as it wasn't worth it in the end.

Bora can be a part of Nevera.

> and doesn’t last long

oh well

Google translate unhelpfully suggests it's "infidelity" (Nevjera, not even the same word!), so thank you for clearing that up.

I'm always frustrated (and I'm not even a native Croatian speaker) that automotive journalists often pronounce the company name "Reemack".

Nevera can also be a variant for nevjera in the ekavian* dialect, eg. serbian language would use it (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nevera#Serbo-Croatian). Although the stress is different (/něʋera/ vs /něʋeːra/).

(*) dialects on wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialects_of_Serbo-Croatian#Div...

One of the provided examples has variations of the word "vjera" meaning faith in each dialect, ne-vjera is basically non-faith.

> faith věra vera vira vjera

Wiktionary is often the best dictionary for this kind of query: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nevera

It's a dialect word at that - which is probably why google translation doesn't check out

in another Slavic language, Slovakian, "nevera" means outright infidelity. In Czech its almost same word, "nevěra"

Also since we're on the topic of weird meanings: Škoda which is a Czech brand also can be read as "damage" in the Czech language.

Doesn't beat Hyndaui Kona, they had to change the name in Portugal to Kauai, because Kona means "Pussy"

In Polish, "Hyundai Kona" roughly translates to "Hyundai is dying in agony". They did not change it.

"Kauai" wouldn't be much better, as the first part of this word translates to turd.

Maybe keeping the name would help sell the Santa Fe

Toyota MR2 in french is pronounced Em Air Deux, very close to "merde" which means "shit".

MR2 in French is pronounced as emmerdeur, which means PITA. Just as good as a Vauxhall Nova.

The Vauxhall Nova ("no go") was pretty poorly named.

I always got the impression this was more of a thing English speakers picked up on but not Spanish speakers. Kind of like how pillow could be seen as "pill" & "ow" (pill = unpleasant, ow = "that's painful"), which would be ironic to a person with rudimentary English skills, but just a normal word to a native speaker.

A better example is therapist: in any other sentence you wouldn't notice what I'm getting at, the pun is there but the stress on the words is different. Dr. Pornestach, Therapist, it's possible to push the conjunction but we mostly don't.

"No va" is just "it's not going", which is about as awkward a way to describe a non-working vehicle in Spanish as it is in English. If my Nova broke down, yes, I'd make the pun.

Now, if they'd tried to sell the Chevy Es Chingado...

I'll take swords for $400, Alex.

Oh, that's a really good one.

I'm an Adriatic sailor. Nevera -> fridge??? Stupid google translation, hilarious. Don't rely on this. English word in meteo world is "sudden storm", Italians say "Burrasca". It's not cyclone. Speciality of Adriatic sea, if you will sail there. It happens when we have lifting of warm and humid air, for example on a cold fronts. Cold air is denser and it goes under warm and humid air. Warm air lifts up. Every 100m you can count on -0.5 °C (Buys Baillot). And on some level under special condition (look for CAPE and LI), you will get monster cloud looking like anvil from distance, travels 20nm to the east, sucks the air up, and down on it's front. Italia, Croatia, oh we know.

> I'm an Adriatic sailor. Nevera -> fridge??? Stupid google translation, hilarious.

In Spanish.

I will add the Nissan moco (snot, nasal mucus).

There's also:

  Toyota Premio (prize)
  Suzuki Alto (tall)
  Mazda Laputa (well, yeah, it's an island, but if you read it quickly it sounds like "the wh\*re")
  Lamborghini Reventón (It's the name for a bull, but it means puncture or tire blowout)

AFAIK, the Laputa being a Kei Car hasn't been sold out of Japan, and the equivalent to the Premio has been the Avensis. I've seen Altos, and not much Lamborghinis :D

Ford Kuga

kuga means "plague" in bosnian/croatian/serbian/slovenian

Long time ago a friend oof mine told me that Passat is a horrible choice for a car name, because it sounds like "Pas ça!" (=not that) in French. Can any native French speakers tell me if this really sounds awkward, or is it just a name like any other?

I'm French and it doesn't sound weird because we (and the advertisements) have always pronounced the "t" at the end.

On the other hand, the Audio "e-tron" changed its name in France because "étron" means excrement in French.

Audi didn’t change the “e-tron” name in France, as you can see from the Audi homepage : https://www.audi.fr/fr/web/fr.html

It also sounds like "to pee" in Russian

More like "to piss" rather than "to pee"

ford nova (no va!)

wasnt that one chevrolet

Another example is Ford Kuga - "kuga" means "plague" in slovenian.

Actually "marea" means "tide" in Italian and also Spanish - from which I guess the alternative Spanish meaning evolved: "tide" -> "sea" -> "seasick" -> "sick"?

“Marear” is a verb - to make dizzy or motion-sick. “Marea” is the third-person singular present form of the verb.

“Mitsubishi marea” translated literally from Spanish as a full sentence and not as “make and model of a car “ is “Mitsubishi makes you dizzy”.

Oh don't forget about Mazda LaPuta.

Don't forget the Vauxhall Nova (no-go/not going)

Add the Chevy Nova (no va - doesn't go) to that list.

FWIW, that never happened, it's just an old wives tale.

Nova (don't go) has entered the chat

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