motoring projects: cars with names

On this Blog.
by Pierre Martins

Some people say you should never get overly materialistic, emotional, or too attached to your cars. You should never give your cars pet names. Maybe they’re right, I dunno, but I do know that most people who say that are people who tend to change their cars as often as they change underwear. Now I’m not saying they’re right or wrong, but for some reason I’ve always thought that, if you’re a true petrol-head, there will always be certain cars that will leave a lasting impression on you, and maybe those cars should have names?

So call me a fool if you like, but I like to name the cars that I care to remember. Here are a few interesting names you’ll find on this blog -

White Puppy

This is Keith Rose’s pre-74 911 RSR. I’ve driven it numerous times during testing and in races, and I’ve always enjoyed this car thoroughly. It’s a cheeky little white fox-terrier, so I had to name it…

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Black Bitch

Yeah, I know. A crude name to start off with, but If you knew my Hungarian buddy Gabor and this particularly rough slut of a 944 turbo, you’d forgive me.

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Blue Mule

The Porsche 917 is the car of my childhood dreams, but the problem with the 917 is that it’s generally so far beyond the reach of mere mortals like you and I, that driving a 917 will always just be just that - a dream. And then a local company started building 917 replicas and guess what, I got to track test their test mule.

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Fat Bully

My Porsche 928 that I turned into a track racer. A German friend of mine, Olly Boecker, named the car one day at an open track day when I proceeded to to carve through some lightweight 911s with this heavy pig.

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Naughty Tyres

Another car that my mate Olly named. This little Alfa carries a lot of good karma. It was given to me as a road-going car by a friend who had no use for it. Olly and I turned it into a little side-line race car project, but we eventually grew tired of the car and I gave it to youngster to race.

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Red Lady

A classic plain, unmolested, stock-standard 911 will always grab my attention, but some 911’s are simply just more special than others, especially when they carry no mods whatsoever. This is one of those cars, Mario’s lady in red…

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Tabasco

I did a stint as a test driver and writer for a local rag for a while. This was one of the cars they asked me to test at Kyalami early one morning. A hot car on a cold winter’s morning, there could be no other name for this car…

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Team Anglia

My Old Man’s V8-powered Ford Anglia was probably the car that infected me with the dreaded disease. You know, that disease whereby you can’t think straight for too long without the whiff of high-octane race fuel.

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White Lady

My buddy Mario’s 911 goes by the name of the ‘Red Lady’ and somehow, somewhere along the line we just started calling Dave’s white 911 the ‘White Lady’. I can’t remember how it happened exactly, but perhaps it’s not just the name of a car that lingers in your mind, it’s the experience associated with the car that stays in your memory.

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Yellow Bird

There’s the famous Ruf Yellow Bird, and then there’s this one – My buddy Dave’s yellow RSR. Both are special, but I’ve had a hand in the development of Dave’s Yellow Bird, so that makes it very special to me.

You can read more about Dave’s Yellow Bird here and here.