From Porsche Taycan to Bugatti Chiron, why these supercars have these names

There’s a reason behind supercar names like Porsche Taycan or Bugatti Chiron.

Some automakers choose to only use numbers and letters to avoid controversy.

Other car brands, though, go the extra mile and try using compelling supercar names that sound great and mean something.

But there’s also a car with a name that would be impossible to explain if the automaker hadn’t told us.

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One of the first car supercar names that springs to mind is Bugatti Chiron, which is sometimes misunderstood.

The name Chiron can refer to multiple things.

It’s a celestial body, something halfway between a comet and an asteroid, but it’s also the name of a centaur in Greek mythology, a creature with a human torso and horse legs.

And yet the automaker simply named the Bugatti Chiron after Louis Chiron, a Monégasque racing driver.

Moving on, there’s Porsche.

The German automaker doesn’t have a strict policy when it comes to its naming scheme.

We’ve had cars with numbers – like the 911 or the 944 – and also models with actual names, like the Porsche Taycan or Cayenne.

Some of these names are a tribute to exotic locations, like Panamera – as in Pan-American – but the Porsche Taycan name has a different story.

Taycan is a word of Turkish origin that, roughly translated, means ‘soul of a spirited young horse’.

There’s a trifecta in the name.

It sounds good, it refers to a young creature with a lot of energy, which is what Porsche wanted the Taycan to be, and it’s also a nod to the Porsche emblem.

But there’s a supercar with a name that would’ve been impossible to guess, and that’s the Lamborghini Countach.

There are two reasons for this.

First, Countach derives from an archaic expression in a very specific dialect that only a few people still speak.

Second, it’s a Lamborghini, and most car fans know Lamborghinis are often named after fighting bulls, like Gallardo or Aventador.

Interestingly, even Lambos with a name that actually means something are named after a fighting bull.

Murciélago, for example, is the name of a bull, and also the Spanish word for bat.

But not the Lamborghini Countach.

The name originated from the expression ‘contacc‘, which is more or less the Piedmontese equivalent to ‘dang it’ in English.

But Piedmontese is only one of hundreds of dialects in Italy, and the Piedmont region isn’t even geographically close to Bologna, where Lambo is based.

Ironically, the expression is no longer common, but it’ll always live on thanks to the Lamborghini Countach.