In Japan products are often given anglicised names, not for their meaning or relationship to the product itself, but simply for how the words appear to Japanese eyes. The actual meaning of the words are… well… meaningless. Just as long as they look cool.
What other explanation can there be for gems such as:
The Charade wasn’t even Daihatsu’s finest hour. IMO, that honour goes to the Daihatsu Naked. It’s always going to be awkward when asked what you are driving.
Da-42 V1 – any potential customers put off by the V1 connotation? All signs point to No.
Likely not. But the PC brigade at Diamond took control, and after a short time, everyboy in the company had to pretend these are Roman numbers and had to call it the “DA42 Dash 6”.
Not to mention the car Honda Fitta, which after warnings from the Swedish distributor was renamed Honda Fit/Jazz. (“Fitta” means “c**t” in Swedish.)
By the time Honda realised their mistake they had already printed lots of marketing material with gems such as “Honda Fitta is small on the outside but big once you’re inside” and “Honda Fitta is a daily pleasure.”
It cost Honda several million euros to redo their marketing material…
Absolutely brilliant. That one has totally made my day 
I recall one computer mfg who named the system with a name (which I don’t recall) whose meaning was “god” in some languages. It didn’t go down too well.
The Mitsubishi Pajero had to be renamed in Europe/Americas as the Shogun, because “pajero” in Spanish means something I’d probably get censored for posting on a family-friendly forum :-) We have a lot of grey import Pajeros around here and I can’t help chuckle every time I see one.
The thing is with Socata, it’s an easy to say name and it’ll be intelligible even with bad radio reception. Daher not so much.
Google translate eventually came up with one of the meanings of “pajero”… I cannot believe Mitsubishi did that!
Volkswagen must have some of the work people coming up with names.
Their current range:
Lopo (brings up images of something that is looper (mad))
Bora (brings up images of something very boring to look at)
Passat (Well, I can’t help but hear it with the first a changed to an i)
Do they have a decent name in their range at all?
The Rabbit (“Golf” in Europe) – perhaps to celebrate the fact that 15.2% of the population were conceived in the back of one? The Ford Escort scored achieved a reported 45%, rising to 73% in Essex.
Their current range:
Lopo (brings up images of something that is looper (mad))
Lupo was the name and the car was discontinued like 10 years ago
Bora (brings up images of something very boring to look at)
That was a replacement for the old name “Jetta” which got a negative image in Europe. They continued with Jetta in the US but used Bora in Europe for a while and now went back to Jetta globally.
Passat (Well, I can’t help but hear it with the first a changed to an i)
A more educated consumer would conclude that VW use the name of wind systems for their cars… 
And then there is the VW Scirocco but that is only for junior pimps without the revenue to support a real pimp car. I don’t know anybody driving that car…
VW Scirocco … I don’t know anybody driving that car
I do … on this forum no less.
