12 Of The Most Popular Cars & Trucks Named After Animals

It's tricky to say whether a name alone can make or break a car, but it certainly plays a big role in shaping buyers' perceptions of it. Some car names become legends after just a few years on the market, or become veteran models with decades of production history. On the other side of the spectrum, some names end up being cited as key reasons why the model didn't click with buyers — just look at the Ford Probe, the Mazda-powered coupe that almost replaced the Ford Mustang. 

Naming cars after animals is a relatively safe bet, as long as the animal itself reflects the spirit of the car. That's presumably why so many carmakers have chosen to do exactly that over the decades, evoking their namesakes' reputations for agility, toughness, speed, or any other desirable characteristic. American manufacturers have historically had a particular affinity for animal names, but these popular models hail from manufacturers all over the world, and some of them have stranger naming histories than you'd think.

The Ford Mustang might be one of the most famous cars to borrow its name from an animal, but the exact origins of that name are lost to time. Accounts differ on whether the car was named directly after the animal or after the P-51 Mustang fighter plane, and even Ford doesn't have a definitive answer. In a 2013 press release, the brand noted that many names had been bandied around for Ford's new sports car at the time. According to the release, designer John Najjar claimed that he had thought of the Mustang name, first seeing it used on the airplane but then realizing that its animal connotations fitted well with the type of car that the team were trying to create.

Ford intended for it to be a workhorse, with the brand's head of engineering explaining in 1962 that the car needed to be "equally at home on a city street or a race course." The brand also wanted to emphasize the homegrown aspect of the car to differentiate it from the European rivals from which it had taken inspiration. The 1965 sales brochure called it, "as American as its name ... and as practical as its price." The Mustang, a wild horse that roams the country, seemed like the ideal imagery for such a car. Whether the initial idea for the name came from the plane or the animal, it was certainly the imagery of the latter that saw bosses give it the greenlight.

Ford isn't the only American manufacturer to have a long history of naming cars after animals. Several of Dodge's most popular models also take their names from the natural world, including the Ram pickup, which evolved into a standalone brand in 2009. The association between the Dodge and Ram names goes back to the early 1930s, when Walter P. Chrysler was looking for a new hood ornament to fit his brand's upcoming 1932 Dodge model. He tapped the design expertise of Avard T. Fairbanks, a sculptor and the man who had previously designed the Plymouth flying lady ornament.

An excerpt from Southwest Art magazine republished in Old Cars Weekly quotes a member of Fairbanks' family as saying that the Ram design was pitched by the sculptor as "sure-footed; it's the King of the Trail; it won't be challenged by anything." Chrysler liked the idea and the emblem debuted on Dodge's new car in 1931. The image stuck around in various forms over the following decades, with the truck-based Ramcharger SUV first launched in 1974. It would take until 1981 for the D-Series pickups to be officially replaced by the Dodge Ram truck. The second generation Ram arrived in 1994 and the third generation in 2002, before the name was spun off into its own brand. That brand remains a highly popular one today, with CarFigures reporting that Ram sold 180,000 pickups in 2024.

It's known by many names around the world, but the one that has stuck the most for the original Volkswagen is the Beetle. Initially built in Nazi-era Germany, the car was first designated simply the Volkswagen, or "people's car." It was designed by Ferdinand Porsche under a government directive, with three different Series VW 3 prototypes trialled in 1936. These evolved into the Series 38 prototypes in 1938, with production planned to start over the following years. The Nazi declaration of war in 1939 saw those production plans halted, and over the following six years, a mere 630 examples of the Volkswagen had been built.

Taking over leadership of Germany in 1945, Allied forces saw the potential in the idea, and allowed the factory to scale up production. The first large order for the Volkswagen came from the British military, and soon civilian production also began. By the end of the decade, the first examples of the car had already been exported, and 50,000 examples had been built.

The car's unusual looks and bug-like design quickly earned it the nickname of the beetle in some of those export countries. In English-speaking countries, it was the beetle or the bug, but in other languages it was the käfer, coccinelle, or maggiolino, all referring to the same animal. By 1972, it had become the best selling car in history, but production eventually ended in 2019 with the Final Edition, pictured above.

Although its spelling differs slightly, the Porsche Cayman's name is borrowed from the caiman, an animal that's related to the alligator and lives in the tropics of South and Central America. Porsche says that both the car and animal are "powerful yet agile," and they're also the smaller cousins of more famous family members. The caiman looks like an alligator or a crocodile, but it's significantly shorter, with most caiman species around 4 feet to 7 feet long. The Cayman, meanwhile, looks a lot like the 911, but is pitched as the smaller and more attainably priced model.

The original Cayman was closely related to the drop-top Boxster, offering a hard-top option for buyers who wanted a cheaper alternative to the 911. Among a wider switch to electrified models, Porsche has confirmed that it's discontinuing the gas-powered Cayman, although an all-electric replacement is in the works. It was originally slated for launch in 2023, but delays caused by the financial woes of a battery supplier mean that it remains without an official launch date as of this writing.

Some carmakers spend weeks or months deliberating on the perfect name for a new car, taking suggestions from a team of designers, engineers, and marketing folk and then putting the top picks through focus groups until one name emerges victorious. Carroll Shelby didn't have time for any of that, and reportedly picked the Cobra name because he'd come up with it in a dream. In fact, the whole Cobra project was put together remarkably quickly, with Shelby only retiring from racing in 1960 and forming a new venture to build the car in 1962, having sourced body shells from AC Cars and V8 engines from Ford.

The Cobra was Shelby's primary consideration for a few years, as by 1965, he'd been hired by Ford to give the brand's freshly-introduced Mustang a high performance makeover. Buyer demand for the Cobra was also beginning to slow down, and revised FIA homologation rules meant that the Cobra had to compete directly against the Ford GT40 on the track. Since the GT40 was Ford's official race car, and was also under the development direction of Shelby, the decision was made to discontinue the Cobra. Various continuations have since been built, but none match the value of the originals, some of which have sold for $5,000,000 or more.

When Chrysler's designers were deciding on a new name for their lightweight, V10-powered supercar, an inevitable comparison came to mind. In many ways, the Viper was designed in the spirit of the original Shelby Cobra, and so the designers felt that the Dodge should also have a snake-inspired name. In an interview with Motor Trend, lead designer Tom Gale said that the name wasn't decided until the team flew to Italy to meet car designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, who they were working with on a separate Chrysler model at the time.

Asking for ideas on a name similar to the Cobra, Giugiaro suggested vipera, the Italian term for the viper family of snakes. Vipers are found across the world, including in Europe, and are the only venomous family of snakes found in Italy. Gale and his team were sold on the name, and pitched it to Chrysler leadership when they returned to America. Bosses agreed, and the car became the Viper, with the snake head logo used instead of standard Dodge branding.

A promotional film at GM's annual Motorama show in 1956 offered a glimpse into what the company thought the future of automobile travel might look like. It transported the car's occupants to a futuristic 1976, where self-driving cars, highway control towers, and jet-like vehicles ruled the roads. Of course, all those predictions proved to be far from reality, but across the floor at the same show sat a concept with a name that car owners in the real 1976 would come to love. It was the Impala, named after the agile African animal found roaming the savannas of Africa.

The original concept car was a larger, five-seat version of the Corvette, but when the first production Impala arrived for 1958, it was notably different. The name was used for Chevy's range-topping Bel Air, being the most upscale variant in the brand's full-size range. It was launched as a model in its own right the following year, and would remain popular throughout the following decades. So popular, in fact, that when 1976 rolled around, the Impala was the second bestselling car in the U.S. after the Oldsmobile Cutlass, with around 470,000 examples sold.

Every car enthusiast has heard the story about Enzo Ferrari calling the E-Type the most beautiful car in the world. However, fewer know the origins of the name of its maker. Unlike Mr. Ferrari, the creator of the Jaguar brand didn't name his company after himself. Jaguar originally evolved out of founder William Lyons' original business, Swallow Sidecar Company, which made motorcycle sidecars. Although the exact origins are unclear, the Swallow name probably refers to the common British bird known for its graceful flight.

Eventually, the company branched out into making automobiles based on an Austin Seven chassis. By 1930, Lyons had changed the name of the company to SS. The exact reasons for the name change are unknown, but it's been suggested that it was short for Standard Swallow, with the former name being the engine maker that Lyons had a contract with at the time.

The new carmaker quickly gained fame in Britain, launching the SS Jaguar sedan that undercut its rivals on price without compromising on luxury or refinement. The famous leaping cat logo was later designed for the car, reportedly because Lyons saw a customer add their own Jaguar emblem as an aftermarket piece. He thought it looked awful, and so enlisted his designers to create a proper one. The SS name became problematic in Britain during the mid-1930s thanks to its association with a Nazi military organization, and so it was eventually dropped, with the entire company rebranded under the name of its bestselling Jaguar sedan.

Wanting a car that could compete with Ford and Chevrolet's sports models, Chrysler decided to create a sportier version of the Valiant. The first iteration debuted in 1964, with a distinctive, curved rear window that bosses were hoping would be a selling point for the car. Initially, the car was marketed as a variant of the Valiant, but after 1965, it was repositioned as a standalone model. After all, the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Corvette were doing just fine being marketed as separate, sportier entities in their respective makers' lineups.

The exact origins of the Barracuda name weren't recorded, but given the fish's status as a feared predator, it's a fitting name for a sportier, more aggressive car model. That aggression was dialed up further with the introduction of the classic muscle high-performance 'Cuda variant later in the Barracuda's production run, but that wasn't enough to make the model a sales hit in the same vein as the Mustang. The Barracuda was discontinued in 1974 as changing buyer tastes and emissions regulations effectively killed the muscle and pony car market.

While most of the world knows Volkswagen's pioneering front-engine, front-wheel drive economy car as the Golf, in America it was originally called the Rabbit. There have been several theories as to why the Golf name was originally picked, either because it literally represented the sport or because it was derived from the German word for gulf stream, an ocean current. However, VW has said that the most likely origin of the Golf name was that it was borrowed from a horse owned by a company manager. Either way, it was deemed inappropriate for use in America, where golf was considered an exclusive sport for the wealthy. The car was to be marketed as an affordable, inclusive, and welcoming vehicle, so a new, friendly-sounding name was picked: the Rabbit.

VW also took the opportunity to change the Rabbit to cater better to what it deemed to be American tastes, but in the process, it lost a bit of what made the Golf special. The Rabbit was never a sales hit from when it launched in 1975 to when it was discontinued in favor of the Golf nameplate in 1984, but that didn't stop VW from bringing it back again in 2006. Sales once again proved slow, and the Rabbit name was axed in 2009, this time, it seems, for good.

Ford considered a range of different names for its pioneering SUV before launching it in 1966. One of those names was reportedly the Wrangler, a name that was later famously used on Jeep's replacement for the CJ. In the end, bosses decided that the Bronco was the best option, as it fitted with the naming theme that had proved so successful with the Mustang. Much like the Mustang, the Bronco name evoked imagery of wild horses roaming across the plains, mirroring the sense of freedom that the Bronco SUV was pitched as offering.

Similar to mustang, bronco was a definitively American word, reinforcing the all-American design and manufacture of the SUV and differentiating it from foreign products like the Land Rover. It proved to be another big success for Ford, with the Bronco remaining in production for a full three decades after its introduction. It was reintroduced at the start of the decade, and was given a suite of upgrades for the 2025 model year to make it even more appealing than before.

The Lamborghini Revuelto is different from most of the other entries here in that it wasn't named after a species or family of animals, but rather after one individual in particular. The car is the latest Lamborghini flagship to be named after a famous fighting bull, with Lamborghini president Stephan Winkelmann telling CarSales that the bull "fought in the arena of Barcelona in 1880. He was a wild fighting bull and jumped into the alley eight times in his time."

The name also translates to "scrambled" or "unruly," and is sometimes used to refer to a scrambled egg dish in Spain. Angry bulls and scrambled eggs might seem like a lot of conflicting imagery, but it was in fact a deliberate choice by Lamborghini. The Revuelto is the first Lamborghini flagship with a hybrid powertrain, hence the scrambling of power sources, but it's designed to be as unruly as ever. SlashGear put the Revuelto through its paces on track at launch, and found both those elements of its personality to work together more harmoniously than might initially be expected. Buyers have been equally won over, with the Revuelto having a reported two-year waitlist at the end of 2024.