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M6 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 22 SEPTEMBER 2019 MOTORING WHEN you create a company of any kind you have to give it a name. There are many forms of inspiration for this, but one easy choice is to use the name you already have yourself, or perhaps that of a relative or someone you ad- mire. This has happened very frequently in the motor industry, and sometimes even in the case of individual models as well as the brand. What follows is a list of examples of a car or company which were named after a person. Aston Martin When Lionel Martin and Rob- ert Bamford set up a car dealership in 1913, they decided, reasonably enough, to call it Bamford & Martin. The decision to build cars of their own led to a change of policy. Only Martin's name was used now, while Aston refers to the hillclimb at Aston Hill in Buckinghamshire, where both Martin and Bamford had competed. It is sometimes said that Aston actu- ally refers to the nearby town of Aston Clinton, but this is not true. Audi Audi is named indirectly after the German engineer August Horch, who began building Horch cars in the early years of the 20th century. In 1909, Horch was forced out of the company by its board of directors, so he set up another one. He couldn't use his own name again, but he cunningly converted it into Latin. Horch is the German word for 'listen', and its Latin equivalent is 'audi'. Both Horch and Audi became part of the Auto Union in the early 1930s. Neither brand survived the Second World War, but new owner Volkswa- gen decided to drop the downmarket DKW name in the 1960s and replace it with the better-sounding Audi. In a sense, August Horch had finally won the battle he appeared to have lost in 1909, but he didn't live to see this happening. He died in 1951. Bentley Having first joined forces in 1912 to sell cars made by the now almost com- pletely forgotten DFP company, Wal- ter Owen Bentley and his brother, the less well-known Horace Millner Bent- ley, created a manufacturing business of their own after the Second World War. After early success, including five wins at the Le Mans 24 Hour race be- tween 1924 and 1930, Bentley went into liquidation and was bought by Rolls-Royce. W.O. stayed on only for as long as he had to and then moved to Lagonda. The company bearing his name out- lived him (he died in 1971) and is now part of the Volkswagen group. Bugatti Ettore Bugatti, born into a family of artists, was an Italian engineer who set up a car company in Molsheim, then part of Germany but now, after a bor- der change, definitely in France. Bugatti built many successful road and racing cars, including the fabu- lous Royale, but the company faded when Ettore died in 1947. The name has been revived twice. It is currently owned by Volkswa- gen, which builds today's Bugattis in Molsheim. Chevrolet Louis Chevrolet was a Swiss-born professional racing driver who, in 1911, co-founded the Chevrolet car company with William Durant, who was the creator of General Mo- tors and an early investor in Frigid- aire. Chevrolet pulled out of the business named after him within four years and set up some other, less success- ful ones, as well as continuing with his motorsport career. He died in 1941. Nearly 80 years later, the Chevrolet brand is still one of the most success- ful car brands in the United States. Citroen Andre Citroen was a brilliant and innovative engineer who formed the Citroen company to build cars in a factory previously used for the manu- facture of armaments during the First World War. His products included the first com- mercially available passenger car with a diesel engine and the brilliant front- wheel drive Traction Avant, also known as the Light Fifteen. Citroen was also a clever publicist. From 1925 to 1934 his name appeared in illuminated letters between the sec- ond and top floors of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The Traction Avant was very suc- cessful, but its high development costs bankrupted the company and forced its sale to Michelin in 1934. Andre Citroen died a year later. Ferrari Enzo Ferrari worked for Alfa Romeo in the 1920s, first as a racing driver and then as manager of the race team. He founded his own company in 1939, but this did not produce a car bearing the Ferrari name until 1947. Ferrari died in 1988 at the age of 90, shortly after the launch of the F40 su- percar. A successor to the F40, the 2002 En- zo, was named after him. Famous cars named after people