Oh, the barriers of language: how they amuse our empty, dirty minds! We're not talking about badly translated, slightly redundant instructions that end up sounding like Mojo Jojo ranting at the Power Puff Girls; we're talking single words that may mean nothing in most languages but make a doozy of a translation in the right tongue. A word in one language might mean nothing in another, or it can come out totally wrong when heard through foreign ears-usually to the detriment of profitability and a very confused marketing department. But they make for intriguing tales, which I am all too pleased to relay to you here.
The legendary example in American car folklore is the Chevy Nova, which never did very well in Spanish-speaking countries. "No-va", you see, translates into "doesn't go." Who wants to buy a car that doesn't go? The sporty little Pontiac Fiero, meant to invoke images of flames and heat, can connote "pot metal" or "junky metal" when pronounced "fierro" in Spanish. This is made all the more curious by the Fiero's plastic body panels.
Most of the more whimsical examples are a little more base-all belong to Japanese makers, and all will no doubt throw our managing editor into a tizzy by even daring to broach the topic in these pages. Tops among them is the Mitsubishi Montero, which is known everywhere but America and in Latin America as the Pajero. Not sure why the name stuck here, but in some Spanish-speaking nations, Pajero is a term reserved for, er, one who doesn't get out much to spend time with the ladies. Spends a lot of time at home, in fact. With his Palm Pilot and his magazine subscriptions. He's a Cyclone Ranger. Oh, fine, he's a wanker. A tosser. That's about the kindest way to put it. Remember that next time you're trapped behind one of these leviathans in your slammed Civic.
Toyota, while hardly cornering the market on such etymological silliness, certainly has contributed. The Toyota Supra was marketed simply as a stylized letter "S" in some Middle Eastern countries because Supra is a nickname for the male member-the Arab equivalent of "little Elvis". (Some would argue that this one was right on the money, actually.)
And then, there's the MR2. You know the car: sporty little two-seater from back in the day when Toyota actually made sporty cars. Sold a bunch worldwide. Except in France, where Jerry Lewis is a deity and even the cash exchange machines hate Americans. Known as Mister Two in many English-speaking circles, the French actually pronounce it emmerdeux (say "em-air-dyoo")-the root of that particular word being merde, which translates into...well...poo. Nice, eh? And all the more ironic, considering the shockingly crappy build quality of just about every French car ever to turn a wheel on these shores.
The MR2, especially in boosted form (first supercharged, later turbocharged), has endlessly proven itself more scrappy than crappy. Phillip Luis, at Toyomoto in Miami, has proven this as well, getting nearly double the stock horsepower out of the two-liter turbo engine, and about 60 more horsepower than Toyota itself made with a three-liter and two turbos in the '93 Little Elvis. The nitty-gritty of the parts list to accomplish this feat is detailed below, but suffice to say that Phillip, who has worked with the Toyomoto guys for two years, knows a thing or two about boosting boost and massaging the internals to maximize the extra huff.
One thing not done, though, was a head port job. We were surprised, considering the rest of what went into this slammed buggy. Phillip explains,"You only need a head port with more than 550 horsepower. The intake has a dual-runner set up with butterflies called TVIS, similar to what VTECs have; we removed the butterflies and doubled the airflow."