Fancy Cars Parade

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Limousines

This is the world's longest Ferrari

This is, believe it or not, the world's first-ever Ferrari stretch limo: a 23-foot 360 Modena with eight seats and the biggest electric gullwing doors we've ever seen. It's the handiwork of Style Limousines in Manchester, which spent more than 200,000 British Pound modifying the rear-engined 360.

All eight of the seats are carbon-fibre buckets with five-point race harnesses - which might sound excessive until you discover that the 3.6-litre V8 remains, its 395bhp propelling the mega-Ferrari to 60mph in under six seconds. Could prove a challenge not to spill your cheap champagne.

Those gull-wing doors are nine-foot long and were designed by one of the teams responsible for the Mercedes SLR McLaren!!

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Most Unfortunate Car Names

Mazda LaPuta (in spanish: "the whore")

The car's name actually derivates from the book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, but go explain this to spanish speakers. For them, it means "the whore".

Mitsubishi Pajero (in spanish: "wanker")

The Spanish version ended up as "Montero", but still many spanish-speaking customer do have a wanker.



Nissan Moco (in spanish: "booger")

It was only marketed in Japan as such; otherwise it would have been a bad (nose) pick for spanish speakers.



Opel Ascona (in Spain and Portugal: "female genitalia")

Why couldn't the "Opel Ascona" mean "little flower" or "cute worm," which would have been cause for just mild embarrassment? Instead, it means female genitalia in Northern Spain and parts of Portugal.



Buick LaCrosse (in French: "masturbating teenagers")

When Buick launched the "LaCrosse" in Canada why couldn't it have come across as "the fancy pen on wheels," or something to do with archery? Nope, in French-speaking Quebec, the meaning is, of course, masturbating teenagers.

"LaCrosse (...) means two things: either the act of masturbating (teenagers or not) or to trick someone."

Honda Fitta (in swedish and norwegian: "cunt")

So why can only spanish speakers have genitalic cars? Here's one for up there: the Honda "cunt".

Honda however, caught that mistake before releasing the car, and instead markets it outside the US (including Norway) as the Jazz.

Mercedes-Benz Vito (in swedish and norwegian: "cunt")

Mercedes-Benz Vito, which also means "cunt."

Ford Bronco

That's not how I want my vehicle to ride. I'll hold out for the Ford Draft Horse, myself, or perhaps a nice Ford Clydesdale. 'Swinger' also was weak; you could instead have used the incredibly ironically named 'Reliant.' You could rely on it to shed bits of trim... and the occasional piece of drivetrain. How about the fact that Yugo once offered a GT model?

Chevrolet Nova (in spanish: "It Doesn't Go")

General Motors had a very famous fiasco in trying to market the Nova car in Central and South America. "No va" in Spanish means, "It Doesn't Go".

Daihatsu Charade

It's not really a car, it's just pretending! This was one of those econo-boxes that was not merely humiliating to drive, it embarrassed its owner each time its name was uttered. "I drive a Charade." Good-bye, prom date!

Dodge Swinger

You'll also find ads for these on the back pages of adult magazines. Okay, it was the '70s, but still - why not just call it the STD?

AMC Gremlin

Do you really want to own a car named after annoying small problems that are next-to-impossible to fix? Courtesy of the same folks who brought you the Pacer.

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How Big Names Started

GM

General Motors Corp the world's largest vehicle manufacturer, employs about 325,000 people globally. Founded in 1908, GM has been the global automotive sales leader since 1931. GM today has manufacturing operations in 32 countries and its vehicles are sold in 192 countries.

In 2003, GM sold nearly 8.6 million cars and trucks, about 15 percent of the global vehicle market. GM's global headquarters are at the GM Renaissance Center in Detroit.

The GM Group of global partners includes Fiat Auto SpA of Italy, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., IsuzuMotors Ltd. and Suzuki Motor Corp. of Japan, which are involved in various product, powertrain and purchasing collaborations. In addition, GM is the largest shareholder in GM Daewoo Auto & Technology Co. of South Korea. GM also has technology collaborations with BMW AG of Germany.

Porsche

In 1931, Ferdinand Porsche founded the Porsche Engineering Office in Stuttgart. Porsche's production operations are housed in a collection of established buildings on a mixed industrial estate in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen.

The Carrera GT and the Cayenne models are produced at the Porsche factory in Leipzig. In 1944, the engineering arm was moved from Stuttgart.



Air Deccan

Bangalore-based Air Deccan has struck a deal with R K Laxman, India's most famous artoonist, to use his legendary 'Common Man' character as the airline's mascot. The mascot exemplifies the fact that air fares are so low now that air travel is no longer the privilege of the elite few but is very much within the reach of the 'common people'.



Sun Microsystems

The correct answer is Stanford University Network. In 1981, Bavarian-born Andreas Bechtolsheim was licensing rights to a computer he designed. Named Sun for Stanford University Network and using off-the-shelf parts, it was an affordable workstation forengineers and scientists. In that year, he met Vinod Khosla, who convinced him to form a company and expand. Khosla, Bechtolsheim and Scott McNeally, all Stanford MBAs, founded Sun in 1982.



Duracell

The story of Duracell begins in the early 1920's with an inventive scientist named Samuel Ruben and an eager manufacturer of tungsten filament wire named Philip Rogers Mallory. Duracell is the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of high-performance alkalinebatteries. Duracell also markets primary lithium and zinc air batteries as well as rechargeable nickel-metal hydride batteries.

HMV Dog

Nipper the dog was born in Bristol in Gloucester, England in 1884 and was so named because of his tendency to nip at visitors' legs. When his first master Mark Barraud died in Bristol in 1887, Nipper was taken to Liverpool in Lancashire, England by Mark's younger brotherFrancis, a painter. In Liverpool Nipper discovered the Phonograph, a cylinder recording and playing machine and Francis Barraud 'often noticed how puzzled he was to make out where the voice came from.'

Three years after Nipper died Francis committed that memory to canvas.

Adidas

When the founders of the German sports shoe business 'Dassler Brothers' went their separate ways in 1949, no one would have guessed that they would start two of the biggest global brands of the century.

Rudolph founded Puma, while Adolph started Adidas - a combination of his nickname, Adi, and the start of his last name. The famous three stripes were introduced to the shoes in 1949.

Nike

Bill Bowerman, the legendary University of Oregon track & field coach, and Phil Knight, a University of Oregon business student and middle-distance runner under Bowerman, founded Nike.

Nike, when it came into being in 1962, was known as Blue Ribbon Sports. Its first-year sales totaled $8,000. In 1972, BRS changed its name to Nike, named for the Greek winged goddess of victory.

Reebok

In the 1890s, Joseph William Foster made some of the first known running shoes with spikes in them. By 1895, he was in business making shoes by hand for top runners; and before long his fledgling company, J.W. Foster and Sons, developed an international clientele ofdistinguished athletes.

The family-owned business made the running shoes worn in the 1924 Summer Games by the athletes celebrated in the film Chariots of Fire. In 1958, two of the founder's grandsons started a companion company that came to be known as Reebok, named after an African gazelle.

Bata

Bata was established on August 24, 1894 in Zlin, Czechoslovakia by Tomas Bata. The company first established itself in India in 1931 and commenced manufacturing shoes in Batanagar in 1936.

The Batanagar factory is the first Indian shoe manufacturing unit to receive the ISO 9001 certification in 1993.

Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc has been known for generations as the maker of the best writing instruments the world has known. The German company, over the last couple of years, has expanded its range to include writing accessories, luxury leather goods and belts, jewellery items and eveneye wear and watches.

The correct answer is Simplo FillerPen Company. The company was originally called Simplo FillerPen Company.

The company expanded its presence to Paris, London, and Barcelona three years after it was founded and was present in most of the fashionable capitals of Europe.

In 1934, the company's name was changed to Mont Blanc Simplo GmbH, after the tallest peak in Europe.

Three Germans founded the company in 1906 - Hamburg-based stationer Claus-Johannes Voss, Hamburg banker Christian Lausen and a Berlin engineer, Wilhelm Dziambor. The company's international headquarter is in Hamburg.

TCS

TCS was founded in 1968 as an internal arm of the Tata conglomerate. The company, which has locations in 32 countries - employed some 30,000 workers at the end of 200.



Fakir Chand Kohli, former deputy chairman of Tata Consultancy Services, is universally regarded as the father of the Indian software industry. He has been instrumental inscripting the success story of company. Kohli has been awarded the Padma Bhushan, one of India 's highest civilian honours, for his contribution to the Indian software industry. Kohli currently serves on the TCS' executive committee.

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