What Are The Oddest Automotive Words?
Words have meaning. But in an ever-evolving environment like the automobile that has a vast array of technically descriptive language, it can be hard to keep up with the meaning of words, especially as new ones emerge or are created through common use. Anyone who’s said “the PRNDL” while pronouncing it “perndle” and using it as a noun will understand. And that’s where the Hagerty Community comes into play—collectively, we have deep knowledge reserves of all things automotive. That includes words in the automotive lexicon that might be considered odd or completely unfamiliar, especially to an outsider.
With that, we want to know your choice for the oddest automotive word you’ve ever heard. I have mine, and it’s something I recently said at my favorite local car show when a handful of C4 Corvette ZR-1s joined the show, with their posteriors bathed in red light.
CHMSL (Center High Mount Stop Light)
I told everyone around me to look at the CHMSL (pronounced ch-im-sul) to quickly spot a C4 Corvette ZR-1, as a “regular” 1991-1996 vette has the same squared-off tail lights but with a skinny center light mounted between them in the bumper. Sure, there are plenty of other differences that loyalists can immediately spot, but that brake light perched atop the hatchback is the easiest tell.
One of my friends (whom I consider to be savvier with cars than myself in many metrics) had never heard the phrase CHMSL, instead only knowing it from the more common term of “third brake light”. Both are right, but one was the internal name for wonks that soak up inside terminology for the car business.
So now I kick the question back to you, esteemed Hagerty Community member: What are the oddest automotive words?
“NoS” was Mike Thermos’s business name for “Nitrous Oxide Systems.” The original logo shows the “o” in lower case font under the arrow.
cat whiskers
Bundle of snakes for a particular design of exhaust pipes. Ripping canvas to describe the exhaust note of a Ferrari and others. Dog tracking to describe the off set track of a vehicle that has been clobbered!
How about “Three in the Tree”?
Am sure it must have been mentioned already by another reader.
Had myself (thanks Grandpa!) an inline 6 Chevy II with three in the tree!
I remember it as “three ON the tree”
Yes. One of my big sister’s boyfriends flipped the lever over to the left side, so he’d have his right hand free for other adventures.
I concur
If you didn’t have “Three on the Tree”. You might have “Four on the Floor”.
Well, in between the two, you might have to settle for three-on-the-floor until you could save up some cash…been there and done that.
Another horseless carriage leftover…
Rocker panels that do not rock
Running boards now only used as steps
Giubo – I thought Sam Smith made this up but it’s a real thing. Apparently a portmanteau of the Italian words giunto (‘joint’ or ‘coupling’) and boschi (the surname of the Italian engineer who designed and patented the first flex disc, Antonio Boschi!
While this term was never used by a manufacturer or any other , some cars used a hood latch assembly that had a shaft bolted to the hood that would then insert in to the bottom radiator support assembly. I’m thinking now of a 65 Mustang, 67 Cougar and, for instance ( Part # C5ZZ- 16929- A ). We called it the ‘Hood Penis’ . Anyone familiar with this part probably called it something like that too. Needless to say all too easy to then use blue humor … ” Don’t forget to grease your hood penis and the…”
The better term is P—er Bolt
(ps) for those seeking to do an original restoration they were never plated or chromed like a bumper hitch.
Repeat after me: Prindul. (PRNDL)
Toyotas TRD…..I call it a turd.
“Spanner”. (English for wrench.)
Close – Tubular Spanner for socket, Ring Spanner for a box-end wrench. A Tubular Spanner included in the boot for removing lug nuts will be accompanied by a Tommy Bar – which also is used to prise off the Nave plates
Now THIS may just be the winner of the oddest automotive words award – except to someone in the UK who is probably saying, ‘yeah, so what?”
GM VATS! I had to go to RadioShack and buy the right numbered resister to bypass the key resister number to start my car. Y’all know what I’m talking about!!:)
Speaking of “Center High-Mounted Stop Lamps”, who knows the first car to officially have a CLMSL…instead of a CHMSL?
Waiting…
The Chevy/Oldsmobile/Pontiac “dust buster” minivans of the early 1990s. Find a photo of the rear end of any of those, then read on.
The year those minivans debuted, I attended the GM automotive long leads at the company Proving Grounds in Milford MI.
(For those two don’t know, “long leads” were for monthly press writers/photogs to have access to the next year’s models about three months before the cars’ on-sale dates…to better serve a typical monthly magazine’s three-month lead time required between writing an article, getting it printed, and on the newsstands.)
So, at the GM long-leads that year, after the lengthy presentation enumerating all of the new minivans’ technology, including a PR person talking about how the designers smartly integrated the “center high mounted stop light”, I asked if they intended to call it a “clum-sul.” The room went silent.
“What do you mean, ‘clum-sul?'” one of the PR staff replied.
I said that if a “center high-mounted stop lamp” was a CHMSL (pronounced “chim-sul”) then wouldn’t these new GM minivans’ much-lower-than-taillight-height center brake light logically be called a “clum-sul.”
After a couple of very long seconds, (most of) the room laughed.
I wondered why GM had to put the third brake light in those vehicles at all. Their regular taillights were positioned super-high, purposely so they’d be clearly visible above the roofs of following vehicles. That was part of the press briefing we’d just sat through.
Wouldn’t that alone satisfy the government stipulation for a CHMSL?
We all know the answer to that.
I always found “third member” amusing…
Can’t believe no one mentioned “Frit”. Is what all the little dots around the windshield are called.