It’s quite clear that automobile manufacturers are struggling to come up with good names for their new models after 120 years of constant toil, judging by some of the atrocities that we are forced to read on trunk lids today. Motorcycle manufacturers largely rely on letters and numbers to describe the model and thus avoid the pitfalls of constantly coming up with new names, but there have still also been many instances of an actual name being applied to a motorcycle, with greater or lesser success. Just as with automobiles, some names are brilliant and just make you want to ride the bike, no matter how bad the bike might actually be, while other names have you wondering exactly what the marketing department was smoking on that particular day.
10 Best: Black Shadow
Vincent should be a case study for any student of automobile and motorcycle naming for there wasn’t a bad name anywhere, and they all matched perfectly the quality and speed of the motorcycles they were attached to. With names like Meteor, Rapide, Comet, Black Prince and Black Lightning, how could you possibly not be impressed? But the best of all was surely the Black Shadow: did ever a name invoke such mystery and anticipation, which was surely heightened when the bike was seen in the flesh, complete with its black-finished engine cases and bodywork. It also helped that it was the fastest production motorcycle of its day, with a top speed of 125mph.
9 Worst: Ulysses
A great example of a good name turning out to be a bad name because of the qualities – or lack thereof – of the motorcycle it was attached to. Buell made a specialty of creating motorcycles that were out of the ordinary and, for the large part, pretty good at being out of the ordinary. The names were pretty good too: Lightning, Thunderbolt and Cyclone. Then came an attempt to make an adventure bike with typically quirky Buell ideas incorporated, both in detail and in the overall packaging. It was a brave attempt but sadly doomed to failure, especially as the name was too easily altered to Useless, which matched the capabilities of the bike.
8 Best: Super Blackbird
In the early 1990s, outright speed was becoming an obsession with the Japanese manufacturers, often at the expense of quick and nimble handling as the bikes had to be long and heavy to be safe but, hey, top speed in a straight line stays in the public’s minds: corner speed doesn’t. Kawasaki fired the first shots, with the ZX-11, but Honda fought back with the CBR1100XX and what better way of evoking speed than borrowing the name of the fastest and stealthiest military jet aircraft ever built, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird? Genius, although it did set Honda up for a fall.
7 Worst: Deauville
Another name in the vein of the Buell Ulysses. It’s not certain that anyone actually remembers the Honda Deauville, even though it was in production for fifteen years. It wasn’t a bad bike, being a comfortable, well-equipped touring bike, powered by a rather weak-for-this-application 650cc or 700cc V-Twin engine. But if trying to inject a bit of glamour by giving it the name of a French seaside resort that no-one had heard of was not enough, the fact that the name could be altered to Dullville, which it was by the world’s press about ten minutes after the start of the launch event, probably was.
6 Best: Hayabusa
A brilliant example of putting your rival in their place, while simultaneously snatching a record. The aforementioned speed wars of the 1990s saw a no-holds barred contest that was only resolved when Suzuki’s GSX1300R Hayabusa was so fast that the manufacturers, worried that there would be a backlash against such bikes, signed a voluntary agreement to limit top speed to 186mph (300km/h). But why Hayabusa? Well, that is the Japanese name for the Peregrine Falcon, which reaches enormous speeds when diving after prey. The prey? Blackbirds, of course…!
5 Worst: K1200R Sport
BMW naming conventions are simple: R for boxer-engined bikes, F for singles and parallel twins and S for inline fours. BMW has also used K a couple of times, first for the K75 and K100, with their lay-down three and four-cylinder engines, then for its transverse four-cylinder sports models and latterly for the inline six-cylinder models. K1200R is bland enough to be inoffensive, but the problem arrives when you add the name ‘Sport’ to the end. If you say it to yourself you will understand their error.
4 Best: Tiger
Edward Turner of Triumph had a particular knack for coming up with great names for his designs: Speed Twin, Bonneville, Daytona were all perfect for the motorcycles they graced. However, there was one that was in existence before he joined the company that he continued to made good use of and that name was Tiger. There is something about the idea of a lean, lithe, sleek and muscular big cat that translates perfectly to a motorcycle. During Turner’s custodianship o the company, Tiger was used extensively, and it even provided the perfect name for the range of smaller models, the Tiger Cub. Today, Tiger graces Triumph’s adventure models and it works just as well there.
3 Worst: Cruiser Names
If there is one class of motorcycle in which the manufacturers consistently get the names so wrong, then it has to be cruisers. If you have a certain type of mind that sees innuendo in names, then the cruiser segment is a treasure trove: How about V-Rod? How about V-Rod Muscle? What was Harley-Davidson thinking? The Japanese are particularly good at it: Dragstar, Enticer, Vulcan 900 Drifter (really?) and, possibly the best (or worst) of all, the Intruder. Boulevard suggests cruising the streets looking for, well, something, while Virago has all sorts of kinky suggestions associated with a certain blue pill.
2 Best: Fireblade
It’s not often that a name that doesn’t officially exist and actually means nothing is successful, even though there are many examples in motorcycling and the automobile world. Known words or names are better as they convey instant meaning, although that isn’t always a good thing. But one of the best made-up names has to be the Fireblade, although it is hard to know if it is good simply for the way it sounds and the image it portrays or because it was attached to one of the most successful sports bikes ever produced. Perhaps the bike was so well received because of the name?
1 Worst: Funduro
We’ve already had BMW on this list but no-one said each manufacturer would only be called out for one name only. When BMW sticks to alphanumerical names, they’re largely in the clear (apart from the above example), but, every now and then, BMW decides that an actual name is required. Given the results, maybe they shouldn’t bother. ‘Scarver’ was one, and it was the name of the inmate who killed serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in prison. Montauk sounds like it should be the name of an American Indian tribe. Then there was the Funduro, which sounded more like a Teutonic instruction: ‘you will have fun, or there will be consequences.’ You can almost hear the slap of a cane against a jackboot as you say it!
Source
https://www.topspeed.com/the-best-motorcycle-names-and-that-should-never-have-existed/
