[Keith Collantine]

We all remember the fun and games last year with Ferrari trying to call their car the F150 and then having to change it because Ford already sell a very popular vehicle with the same name.

Yesterday Toro Rosso announced their new car will be called the TR7 (not STR7, interestingly). In the seventies Triumph built a notoriously unreliable sportscar with the same name.

I wonder if there are many other examples of F1 cars and road cars sharing (or almost sharing) names?

The only other such story I can think of involves Jordan’s first season in 1991, when Eddie Jordan announced he was going to call his car the 911, which obviously conflicts with Porsche. It was eventually dubbed the 191, though apparently Jordan managed to blag himself a 911 from Porsche when agreeing not to use the name!

[Dan Thorn]

The first one that springs to mind at the moment is the Hesketh 308, but that appeared before the Ferrari 308.

There’s last years Sauber C30, which clashes with the Volvo C30, but at the moment I can’t think of any clashes where the road car came before the F1 car (otherwise there’s a veritable field day with early Arrows’!)

[Anonymous]

My mum loved her british racing green TR7… even if it did try to kill her.

Anyways, the only one I can think of is Jaguar’s First F1 car in 2000, which was named the R1, same as the Yamaha racing bike. Too few wheels, but still.

[Joey-Poey]

Interestingly, our local British Car Show used to have lots of TR7’s show up every year. Were/are they that common out there?

[Bullfrog]

What about the new McLaren MP4/…whatever it’s called? Was there a racing one, some time in the 90s?

[Mads]

@Bullfrog
A quick look on google tells me that there was a McLaren F1 car named MP4-12 in 1997, though I don’t know if they had a MP4-12C version of it.

[Fer no.65]

Well, off the top of my head, there’s almost every early Arrows matching the Audis now: A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A8. And then the Ferrari F10 and the BMW M5 F10 (dunno why they put the F10 in that car tho…).

[matt90]

@fer-no65
It signifies the model generation.

Can’t think of any extra F1 ones. A pretty obvious non-F1 one would be the Audi R8’s though.

[Lotus49]

Was last year’s HRT hoping to go faster by being named after a jet fighter… F111, and Volvo trucks produced an F10 model in the eighties.

[Bullfrog]

The Alfa 159, named after the 1950s F1 car.

[Keith Collantine]

@mads They didn’t have a ‘C’ version of that car.

[Adriano]

Hi everyone! Do you know the new Formula Santander promo? You can get some Ferrari prizes! Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/formulasantander

[Author]

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