Automakers have long reached into the dark corners of the dictionary when naming a car. Some names came from folklore, some from a famous fighting bull, and one from a gnome blamed for broken machinery. Here are twelve cars whose names call up devils, ghosts, spirits and gremlins.
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1. Dodge Challenger SRT Demon: Drag Strip Devil
Dodge’s Challenger SRT Demon made up to 840 hp and was built 3,300 times, running the quarter mile in 9.65 seconds. Those figures belonged to the 2017 and 2018 model years, when the Demon was sold as a factory drag-racing special based on the Challenger.
The short production run and the blistering time gave the Demon an outsized reputation among muscle car fans. A name that bold needed numbers to back it up, and this one had them.
2. Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat: Hellcat Arrives
The supercharged Hemi in the Challenger SRT Hellcat made 707 hp and 650 lb-ft of torque when it arrived for 2015. Dodge billed the coupe as the most powerful muscle car ever, and the name suggested a feline with a wicked streak.
The Hellcat set a new bar for factory horsepower in its class and opened a whole family of supercharged Dodge models. For buyers, it turned the Challenger from a retro cruiser into a headline act.
3. Lamborghini Diablo: Bull From Hell
Diablo is Spanish for devil, and the Lamborghini Diablo carried the name through a run of 2,903 cars from 1990 to 2001. It was the first production Lamborghini to top 200 mph, and its name echoed a ferocious bull raised in the 19th century.
The wedge-shaped Diablo bridged the Countach era and the modern V12 flagships. Examples from its decade-long run remain among the most recognizable supercars of the 1990s.
4. Lamborghini Murciélago: Bat With Bloodlines
Murciélago is the Spanish word for bat, and the name traces to a fighting bull that survived an 1879 bullfight. The Lamborghini Murciélago used a 6.2-liter V12 that made 572 hp.
Lamborghini has a habit of naming flagships after bulls, and this one fits the pattern. The bat connection is a quirk of the story, a creature of the night attached to a legendary survivor. Owners get a V12 supercar whose name carries a piece of bullfighting history, which adds a layer of storytelling to an already dramatic car.
5. Rolls-Royce Phantom: Ethereal Flagship
Rolls-Royce uses ethereal names to evoke near-silent running, and the Rolls-Royce Phantom is a prime example. The first New Phantom arrived in 1925, giving the nameplate a history that reaches back about a century.
For owners, the name signals the top of the range and a calm, hushed ride. The ghostly branding is deliberate, and it has stayed consistent across generations of the brand’s largest sedans. The name appears again and again in the brand’s story, and it positions the largest Rolls-Royce as a car meant to glide rather than shout.
6. Rolls-Royce Ghost: Silver Ghost Legacy
Today’s Ghost descends from the 1907 Silver Ghost, named for its silver paint and near-silent running. The name was used on every 40/50 H.P. chassis until 1925, as the Rolls-Royce Ghost press history describes.
That makes the modern Ghost one of the longest-running ideas in the brand’s catalog. Buyers get a name with more than a century of heritage, rooted in the idea that a luxury car should barely be heard.
7. Rolls-Royce Wraith: Wraith Whispers
Rolls-Royce says Wraith sits alongside Ghost and Phantom as an evocation of silence, refinement and mystery. The Rolls-Royce Wraith naming belongs to the same family of spectral names the company has used for generations.
The Wraith shares its spectral theme with the more formal Ghost and Phantom. Its name is another example of the marque preferring spirits over bulls, bats or beasts. Between the three spectral names, the company has built a recognizable naming habit, and buyers can tell a Rolls-Royce lineup by its ghostly vocabulary alone.
8. Rolls-Royce Spectre: Electric Apparition
The first battery-electric Rolls-Royce revived a name first used on the 1910 Silver Spectre. Rolls-Royce chose the Spectre name for a sense of mystery and otherworldliness.
An electric drivetrain suits the brand’s long-running obsession with silence. Naming the first EV after a spirit from 1910 ties a new technology to a very old idea of how a luxury car should feel. The choice also gives the brand a story to tell about heritage, even as the powertrain itself represents the most modern direction the company has taken.
9. AMC Gremlin: Gnome Trouble
The AMC Gremlin is named for the gnome blamed for equipment failures. The AMC Gremlin went on sale April 1, 1970 at $1,879, and 671,475 were built.
An April Fools’ Day debut for a car called Gremlin suited the car’s cheeky image. At that price it offered American buyers a small, inexpensive alternative to imports of the day. The name is a fitting joke on a car that was meant to feel playful, and it remains one of the most memorable monikers in American automotive history.
10. Plymouth Fury: Christine Was A Fury
A 1958 Fury, sold only in buckskin beige with a 290-hp V8 available, became Stephen King’s killer car Christine. The Plymouth Fury name suggests rage, and the novel gave it a supernatural villain’s role.
Fiction made a mild-mannered full-size Plymouth into a horror icon. The story keeps the Fury in the conversation long after production ended, for reasons its engineers never imagined. Readers who know the book or the film will recognize the car instantly, and the connection keeps the name alive in popular culture.
11. Aston Martin Valkyrie: Norse Hypercar
Aston Martin named the Aston Martin Valkyrie after the Valkyries of Norse mythology. The 1,160-hp hypercar was built just 275 times between 2021 and 2024.
Few road cars of any era come close to that output from a production line. The tiny build run makes the Valkyrie one of the rarest names on this list, and a mythological one at that. Owners and fans value the mythic branding as much as the speed, and the name suits a car that was built to feel like an event rather than a commute.
12. Ford Thunderbird: Sky Spirit
Ford named the Thunderbird for the supernatural thunderbird of Indigenous North American lore. Over its life the Ford Thunderbird reached more than 4.4 million built, starting with 16,155 sold in 1955 against Corvette’s 700.
That opening-year gap shows how decisively the Thunderbird won the early personal-luxury race. The legendary bird remains one of the best-known mythical names ever applied to an American car. It is a reminder that even mainstream American nameplates borrowed from legend, and the Thunderbird kept that legend alive across the decades.
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