What's in a name?

The 70s, a decade of naff trouserwear, dodgy disco tunes and fabulous car names. In fact, sometimes it seems as if the 70s stole all the great ones.
Today's car makers are saddled with barrel-scraping constructions like Mondeo, Insight or Kizashi, or simply opt out with letters or numbers. Frankly, 70s man would be appalled.
Back in the era of fuel shortages and long hair a trip to the showroom was a journey into automotive poetry. Avenger, Interceptor, Stag, Spitfire all names that just ooze pure hairy chested, get-in-the-motor machismo. Frankly, if you could buy a Vauxhall Interceptor now or a BMW Stag now, you would wouldn't you?
Sure, the 70s also gave us less illustrious names like Allegro, Marina and Princess but surely even these names, while not ideally matched to the cars they were nailed to, are infinitely preferable to the dull medley of numbers and meaningless conflagrations we are forced to endure nowadays?
Here, for the record, are my favourites from the 70s:
Interceptor - unsurpassed, the Nobel Prize of car nomenclature

Stag - if you must drive a v8 convertible you could hardly call it anything else

Granada - before cheap package tours, could an executive car name be more glamorous for aspiring boardroom dreamers?

Scirocco - German engineering meets Italian style, plus a wind-based name that just works. So well they eventually realised and brought it back

To get the Interceptor or Stag experience you can hire either from us from £195. Visit www.greatescapecars.co.uk or call 01527 893733. 15% off during October 2012.