How Car Brands Got Their Names

The Toyo Cork Kogyo company, later to be named the Mazda North American Operations (MNAO), was founded in 1920 by Shinpachi Kaizuka. One year later, Jujiro Matsudo became president of the company. MNAO, which was first located in Hiroshima, Japan, originally produced cork, and then manufactured machine tools, but produced its first car in 1931, which…

The Volkswagen brand has gone through a number of iconic iterations since its launch in the late 1930s. There was the original Type 1 Beetle that became symbolic of West German restoration in the wake of World War II. There was the hippy Volkswagen van and flower power Beetle that was emblematic of the American…