The 12C’s underpinnings and engine are flexible enough to spawn a number of different cars, McLaren says.

McLaren MP4-12C: great car, shame about the name.

Some car names are iconic - 911, Golf, Mustang, Defender - and because of that carry a certain cachet of quality and expectation.

Other names, though, are not.

Despite all the focus groups and millions spent on marketing and research, cars sometimes hit the market with a dud name.

That doesn’t mean the car’s no good, just that it may elicit a "what the?" when people first hear it. And unfortunately for the car it doesn’t have the option of changing its name when it turns 18.

So here, in no particular order, are five of the worst names currently on the market.

 

Kia Pro_cee'd GT

It’s a safe bet this car won’t win the English Teacher’s World Car of the Year award given its abuse of grammar.

Someone at Kia either has no idea about the proper use of an apostrophe or they just really hate the English language.

Aside from the unnecessary underscore and redundant apostrophe the name itself isn’t even very good - Proceed.

What do you call it when it breaks down? The Fail_ur’e to Pro_cee’d?

It’s a shame because it’s a good hot hatch behind that very silly name.

 

Ford Kuga

What’s worse than a bad name for a car? A bad name for a car in Australia that has a good name in other markets.

Although Ford of Europe believes that misspelling Cougar is a good idea, Ford in North America is smart enough to call this quality compact SUV the Escape.

Stupid spelling aside what does Kuga mean? That this is a car of illiterate older women looking to pick up younger men?

Escape is a brilliant name for a compact SUV, it gets a across a feeling of freedom and versatility which is what these cars are all about. And, if you remember, the predecessor to this car in Australia was called the Escape.

 

Mini Paceman

This is a classic example of what happens when a car company expands its range too far.

Having named its first variant the new Mini Clubman after the original Mini variant, the BMW-owned brand decided to continue down the "something-man" naming path.

It worked OK for the Countryman SUV but when Mini decided to build a two-door SUV (why they did that in the first place deserves its own analysis) it seems it was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

What exactly is a Paceman? Why not just call it the Mini Pacman? That’s retro.

 

Tata Xenon

Xenon is a colourless, odourless, unreactive gas. Hardly inspiring stuff.

It certainly doesn’t sound as rugged and hard-working as Ranger, Colorado and Triton. But that didn’t stop the Indian brand naming its truck after the gas.

Will Tata’s expanding range also get gas-based names?

Tata Boron. Tata Chlorine. Tata Oxygen. Or, my personal favourite, the Tata Tungsten Hexafluoride.  

Given the popularity of xenon headlights (which the Tata doesn’t have, ironically) perhaps future Tatas will also be named after car parts?

The Tata LED. Tata Rear-view. Tata Bonnet.

 

McLaren MP4-12C

This is a classic example of a great car with an average name. Supercars should have cool names like Diablo and Viper. Or, at least, a name that in some way defines what's going on under the skin (the Ferrari 458, for example, has a 4.5-litre V8).

Supercar names should not be decided by a “vehicle performance index” that factors in power, weight, emissions, efficiency, blah, blah, blah...

As for the MP4, that's a tag associated with all of McLaren's race cars since 1980 and one that - even though it features in the official name of the car - is silent when executives talk about the 12C.

McLaren can get it right though, as the F1 and P1 have proven. Short, sporty and to the point.