Lyrical Naming

When Toyota and General Motors, two auto manufacturers who have... deserved or not ...reputations for grey-flannel corporate stodginess, launched a joint manufacturing venture here in the U.S.A., they called it NUMMI, which is an appropriately dull and stodgy acronym.

When Mopar and Mitsubishi did likewise, a few years later, the outfit was called Diamond-Star Motors, officially a reference to Mitsubishi's triple diamond logo and Chrysler's Pentastar.

But you know that the latter name was really because some audacious dude in marketing was a Marc Bolan fan and managed to get away with it.

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