From Lost Cities to Fantasy Worlds, These Cars Borrowed Their Names From Maps You'll Never Find
Car companies love a good origin story for a name. Sometimes that story is simple: a mountain pass, a coastal highway, a racetrack that made engineers weak in the knees. But every so often, a brand decides real geography just isn't enough. Instead, they reach into myth, literature, comic books, and the collective imagination of storytellers who never once thought their fictional kingdoms would end up badged on a fender. Some of these vehicles below rolled off assembly lines by the millions. Others existed as a single hand-built concept, shown once and never repeated. What ties all 20 together is that each one borrowed its identity from somewhere you could never actually visit, no matter how good your GPS is.
Eric Salard from Le Chateau d'Oleron, FRANCE on Wikimedia
1. Toyota Avalon
Toyota reached into Arthurian legend for this one, naming its flagship sedan after the mythical island paradise where King Arthur supposedly went to heal. It's a bold pick for a car best known for cushy seats and a whisper-quiet cabin, but there's something fitting about it too. Avalon is supposed to feel distant, peaceful, and a little bit removed from the chaos of everyday life, which is exactly the vibe Toyota was chasing with its most comfort-focused sedan.
2. Atlantis Motor Company A1
British designer Michael Booth took a very literal route with the Atlantis A1, a tiny-run neo-classic that looked like it had escaped from the 1930s. Only seven were hand-crafted, using Jaguar XJ6 mechanicals beneath bespoke bodywork. Atlantis, of course, is the legendary civilization said to have vanished beneath the sea, so the name gave an already unusual car an extra layer of mystery.
3. Sbarro Atlantis
Espace Sbarro used the same lost-city name for a completely different vehicle in 1996. The Atlantis is one of the more obscure Sbarro creations, with surviving records offering little more than period images and confirmation that it was displayed in Pontarlier, France. That lack of information almost suits it.
Tino Rossini from Toronto, Canada on Wikimedia
4. Mazda Laputa
Few automakers would dare borrow a name from 18th-century satire, but Mazda did exactly that with the Laputa, a tiny Japanese microcar from 1999. Laputa is the floating island from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, a place populated by absent-minded intellectuals who float above the world both literally and figuratively.
5. Pagani Utopia
If any name on this list earns a standing ovation for accuracy, it's this one. Utopia comes from Thomas More's imagined perfect society, a place so ideal it can only exist in theory. Pagani slapped that word on a V12 hypercar built with an almost obsessive devotion to craftsmanship, and somehow it just clicks. When a car is engineered around the idea of automotive perfection, calling it Utopia isn't marketing spin. It's basically a mission statement.
6. Méhari Club Cassis EDEN
EDEN takes the breezy Citroën Méhari formula and swaps in an all-electric powertrain. Méhari Club Cassis describes it as a modern reinterpretation of the original beach car. The name points naturally toward Eden, the paradise garden of biblical tradition.
7. Brooks Stevens Utopia
Pagani wasn't the first to use this name. Decades earlier, legendary industrial designer Brooks Stevens created his own Utopia around 1960, a futuristic design study meant to imagine what cars might look like down the road.
8. Aston Martin Valhalla
Valhalla is where Norse warriors go after death, a legendary hall of glory reserved for the bravest fighters. Aston Martin borrowed the name for its mid-engined supercar. As Aston Martin's first series production mid-engined supercar, complete with a plug-in hybrid powertrain, Valhalla had a name dramatic enough to match its engineering ambition.
9. Cadillac Eldorado
The Eldorado name drew inspiration from the legendary South American city said to have been built entirely of gold. It debuted in 1953 and stuck around for decades, becoming one of the most recognized nameplates in American automotive history.
10. Bentley Camelot
Bentley went deep into Arthurian territory with the Camelot, one of the highly unusual special models built for Brunei in the 1990s. Records indicate only two were produced. Camelot is the legendary site of King Arthur's palace and court, which gives this almost impossibly rare Bentley a suitably storybook name.
Greg Gjerdingen from Willmar, USA on Wikimedia
11. Daewoo Arcadia
Introduced in South Korea in 1994, the Arcadia was based on the second-generation Honda Legend and became one of Daewoo's flagship offerings. Its name taps into the idealized Arcadia of myth and pastoral tradition, imagined as a peaceful paradise far removed from ordinary life.
12. Honda Elysion
You wouldn't expect a family minivan to carry a name lifted from ancient Greek mythology, but Honda went there anyway. Elysion refers to Elysium, the paradise described in Homer's Odyssey, reserved for heroes and the virtuous.
13. Mercedes-Benz Viano Narnia Limited Edition
In 2008, Mercedes-Benz took its practical Viano van and gave it a name straight out of children's fantasy literature: Narnia, the enchanted world of talking animals and hidden kingdoms from C.S. Lewis's beloved series.
14. San Monique 007 Moke
San Monique sounds like it could be a real Caribbean destination, but it exists only within the James Bond universe. This fictional island appeared in Live and Let Die, and a white and blue Moke famously showed up on screen during Bond's visit there.
15. Rolls-Royce Arcadia Droptail
Arcadia is the ancient Greek ideal of untouched natural harmony, a peaceful paradise where life moves slowly and beautifully. This one-off Rolls-Royce was commissioned by an owner who wanted the car to feel like a personal escape from the noise of the world, so the coachbuilders leaned fully into that theme.
16. Italdesign Asgard
Italdesign celebrated its 20th anniversary in 1988 by unveiling a trio of concept vehicles, and one of them borrowed its name from Asgard, the mythical home of the Norse gods. This particular concept was a large MPV with sweeping glass surfaces and proportions that looked like nothing else on the road at the time.
17. EXEED EtlantiX
This concept SUV's name fuses a couple of things. While the "EX" symbolizes exploration, the "LAN" derives from the lost city of Atlantis. Furthermore, the "TIX" is related to the vehicle's electric capabilities, while also relating back to the Tesseract, a power source known in the Marvel Universe.
Retired electrician on Wikimedia
18. Rick Dore's Cadillac Shangri-La
Custom car builder Rick Dore started with the bones of a 1936 Cadillac and transformed it into a stunning, hand-formed coachbuilt roadster. He named the finished product Shangri-La, borrowing from the fictional hidden Himalayan paradise introduced in the novel Lost Horizon.
19. Pininfarina B95 Gotham
Straight out of the Batman universe, this one-off electric barchetta was designed around Bruce Wayne's public persona rather than his crime-fighting alter ego. Gotham City ties the car directly to Wayne's world, and given his reputation as a wealthy, gadget-obsessed car enthusiast in the comics, the connection makes more sense than you might initially expect.
20. Inferno Exotic Car
The Inferno Exotic Car went in the opposite direction from all those paradise-themed names. The word "inferno" traces back to the underworld or hell, which is about as far from a pleasant road-trip destination as you can get. With its jagged bodywork and almost absurd performance claims, the name didn't exactly undersell the drama.
