I do wish car manufacturers would stop coming up with automobile names from mythology.  It’s disturbing to those of us who are sensitive to other dimensions and Simple Green All-Purpose products.

“Would you buy a car called Saturn?” I asked an astrologer friend of mine.

“Never!” Just the thought of it provoked her to do an energy clearance whoosh.

Saturn is the planet where everything goes wrong.  I believe that when General Motors first launched the Saturn, it was full of quirks and cantankerous parts.  On the other hand, if you work through Saturn energy—and we all have it– over the course of a lifetime, you can look forward to a peaceful old age.  It’s not the most appealing advertising campaign for a car, but it’s useful advice for a human being.

Then there’s the Ford Scorpio.  A Scorpionic car would hover suspiciously in the shadows, taking back streets and side alleys, obsessed with its own inner workings.  Its advertising slogan would be “Afraid of the Open Road!”

The Dodge Aries is an interesting juxtaposition of images because Aries energy doesn’t dodge anything.  It just tanks over whatever is in its way.   Driving is dangerous enough without cars that confuse the archetypal forces.

The Leo.  No, wait.  It’s Geo. Never mind.

Jowett Cars Ltd. made a Jupiter sports car.  I don’t know anything about cars—I am only writing this because since I don’t own an i-pod, I notice parked cars when I walk in the neighborhood—but sports cars are small, no?  Jupiter is a gaseous, bombastic energy.  Whereas Aries charges over whatever is in its way, Jupiter merely expands until it has obliterated what was there before.  That doesn’t sound like a sports car.

Mercury is a good name for a car, but I would expect a car called Mercury to be fast and zippy which I don’t believe the Ford Mercury is.  Mercury is the Roman name of the Greek god Hermes.  Quick, lithe, and tricky, he travelled in and out of the underworld, shape-shifted, and made mischief.  He was a fast talker.  He’d make a good sports car or car salesman.

Taurus suggests something that is well-crafted and reliable.  The Toyota Corolla of many years ago could have been called Taurus and brought verisimilitude to its archetype.  I don’t know if Ford Tauruses are particularly reliable.  Forgive me for repeating the obvious: I don’t know anything about cars.

My neighbor Gwen who knows something about just about everything, knows quite a lot about cars.  Once while dining, my guests and I watched her replace a transmission in her, I don’t know, Porsche, in her side yard.  My guests knew enough to refer to it as a “tranny.”   Gwen tells me that I could not have seen a Jowett Jupiter while walking in the neighborhood.  They haven’t been made for years and if someone actually had one, it would hardly be left out on the street.  She accused me of researching cars on the Internet.  Busted.

I do know that cars carry us and our stuff around.  Words do much the same thing.  Meanings and usage change as our world changes and as more and more students graduate from high school without knowing how to write a sentence.  Then again, what I think is the bastardization of our language could be Mercury at work.