Here Are a Ton of Cars That Share Names With Pro Sports Teams

While the worlds of sports and cars doesn't always overlap—and no, we're not talking about sports cars —there are dozens of automobiles that share nomenclature with professional sports teams, both past and present. The list you see before you is nowhere near exhaustive, but even so it perfectly illustrates the idea that some names are good picks for cars and team mascots. Here are some of the most interesting cars that share their names with a professional sports team.

The release of the 2021 Ford Bronco was arguably the biggest new vehicle launch of 2020 . In addition to bringing back an automotive icon, it also means the Denver Broncos once again have a proper analog in the world of the automobile. The Denver Broncos are have been around since 1960, so they're actually five years older than the Ford with which they share a name.

The Los Angeles Chargers and the Dodge Charger have both been around since the 1960s, but neither of their names have much to do with plunging in at the mains and, well, charging. The Dodge takes its name after a horse that's ready to quite literally charge into battle, and the football team's name has a similar meaning. According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Los Angeles Chargers are named after the famous "charge!" chant that fans yell during football and baseball games after hearing a bugle sound off.

The Chevy Spark is an appealing little city car if you're after something that is small, affordable, and relatively practical. It's also the only small car that Chevy will sell you in 2021, as the company recently killed off its somewhat larger Sonic. The Los Angeles Sparks, on the other hand, is a L.A. 's WNBA team that has been around since 1997—when the WNBA was founded—and has won the WNBA three times in the last 23 years in 2001, 2002, and 2016.

Perhaps the most loathed team in all of pro football, the New England Patriots share a name with a Jeep that didn't rack up a lot of winning or praise. The Jeep Patriot was sold from 2007 to 2017, and in that 10-year span the Patriots made nine playoff appearances and won the Super Bowl twice. The Jeep didn't win any Super Bowls, but at least it had Freedom Drive II .

The New York Liberty is another founding WNBA team with an even higher title-win rate than the aforementioned Sparks, but they're all clustered early in the team's history. The team won the WNBA Championship in 1997, 1999, 2000, and 2002. The Jeep Liberty hasn't won much in the way of awards, but it was the first Jeep to use an independent front suspension since the 1965 Wagoneer—and for two model years also offered a turbodiesel engine.

Love them or hate them, the Los Angeles Rams are L.A. 's football team. The franchise was started in Cleveland in 1936 and moved to the City of Angels in 1945 where it stayed until it was moved to St. Louis from 1995 to 2015. In 2016 the squad returned to the West Coast, and it looks like they're here to stay this time—especially when you consider the multi-billion dollar stadium they're about to open. The Ram 1500 is younger than the team, but the full-size 1500 pickup is the brand's longest-running nameplate (counting the Dodge years) and turns 40 years old in 2020.

You'd be forgiven for having forgotten about this one. The Mistubishi Raider was a rebadged Dodge Dakota sold from 2005 to 2009; by comparison, the Raiders football franchise is ancient and much more widely known. The team was formed in 1960 and lasted until 2019 when it was moved out of Oakland and into a new $1.9 billion stadium in Las Vegas.

Interestingly, the Chevrolet Trailblazer is just one word, whereas the basketball team from Portland stylizes it as two words. Semantics aside, the latest incarnation of the Trailblazer is all new for 2020 . Though the nameplate was first introduced in 2001, the Trailblazer had been out of production since 2008. Now it's back in lighter-duty form and neatly fills the gap in Chevy's lineup between the Trax and Equinox.

The Nissan Titan and the Tennessee Titans both present in the same way: big and powerful. The Titan pickup has been around since 2004, but the football team predates it by 45 years and had one of its most successful seasons in recent memory last year.

The Ranger name has been used on plenty of Fords over the years. It just so happens that, at the moment, it belongs to Ford's smallest pickup . The Ranger reappeared in the U.S. market for the 2019 model year, ending an eight-year hiatus. The Texas Rangers, meanwhile, have occupied a spot in Major League Baseball continuously since 1971—when the Washington Senators moved to Texas—but in all that time the team has not once won the World Series.

The Chevrolet Avalanche was a truck based on the Chevrolet Suburban of the day, in production from 2001 to 2013. Sales peaked in 2003 when Chevrolet moved 93,482 examples of its unique truck-SUV mashup. After that high point sales sort of, well, avalanched until 2013 when Chevrolet killed off the model. The Colorado Avalanche, by comparison, have been going strong since the Quebec Nordiques moved to Colorado in 1995.

We know the Ford Maverick used to be a compact car that wore the blue oval badge in the 1970s, and it certainly isn't the rendering of a pickup you see before you. But what's significantly more exciting is the possibility that the name will be coming back on a very small pickup —something compact like the Ranger from 12 years ago. Rumors have been swirling, and we hope Ford delivers on this little trucklet.

We might be stretching the link between sports team and car name a little bit here. The Carolina Hurricanes have been a hockey team since 1997, but the Holden Hurricane was a concept car that never came to life. That said, the concept itself is something to behold. Its bullet-like profile, central seating position, and complete lack of doors are wild by any standard, but especially the late 1960s when it debuted. For more on the Hurricane, check out a flashback piece we did in 2013 .

Even though the Ram 1500 TRX is now here to hunt down Ford F-150 Raptors , the badass off-road Ford truck was the undisputed king of the pickups for almost 10 years. Named after the same prehistoric creature as the Toronto Raptors, the Ford's current Raptor packs a 3.5-liter turbocharged V-6 that makes 450 horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 510 lb-ft at 3,500 rpm. But the F-150 got a big time refresh for 2021 , so we can't wait to see how Ford responds to Ram's 702-horsepower suckerpunch.

This entry isn't specific to a model so much as it is aimed at the entire Jaguar brand . Though both are named after the nimble jungle cat, their identities are quite different. Football is rough and tumble, but Jaguar's cars are more about elegance and prestige. Luckily, the Jaguar embodies both.

Let's play a guessing game with this one. One of these Astros is a blue collar van that has dedicated its life to service and good, honest hard work. The other is an organization that admitted to cheating to win the 2017 World Series. Can you figure out which is which?

The Mercury Mariner was a rebadged and luxed-up a Ford Escape , and it was just OK. The Seattle Mariners, by and large, are also just OK. The team has been around since the 1977 season and in all that time it has neither won the World Series nor the American League Pennant. That said, they still have the record for most wins in a single season when, in 2001, they finished with an incredible 116-46 record. Credit where credit is due.

The Dodge (or Plymouth) Colt has a pretty convoluted history, but it was always a rebadged Mitsubishi of some sort. In the early 1970s, the Colt started life as a Mitsubishi Galant. About eight years after its debut the Colt became a rebadged version of the Mirage, a smaller front-wheel drive sub-compact. It was in production from 1971—the same year the Baltimore Colts (who eventually moved to Indianapolis and became the team we know today) won their first Super Bowl—until 1994.

The AMC Hornet was an economy car for most of its life, but for one year it was a little oddball performance car . The SC/360 was an attempt to add a little spice to the compact Hornet package, but it's often forgotten about when you bring up the Hornet—which itself wasn't as popular as its rivals from Ford or Chevy. The Charlotte Hornets were founded in 1988 during the expansion of the NBA and as a result are one of the newest teams in the league. Sadly, the team's 32 year run has resulted in zero NBA titles.

Though Ford has used the Falcon nameplate all over the world since its introduction in 1960, the original U.S.-market Falcon only lasted for 10 years in the states. However, it wouldn't be an overstatement to say that, without the original Ford Falcon, we probably wouldn't have the Mustang. And without the Atlanta Falcons, we probably wouldn't have the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history when they blew a 28-3 lead over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LI.

Yet another example of us stretching the link between sports team name and car name, this isn't the name of a car at all. Instead, it's the name of the beating heart of the current Ford Mustang GT and F-150 . In its most potent guise—the engine found under the hood of the new Mach 1 —the Coyote V-8 makes a very beefy 480 horsepower at 7,000 rpm and 420 lb-ft of torque at 4,600 rpm.

The Tesla Raven powertrain is the most powerful example of a Tesla powertrain to date, and it's available on the Model Sand X . Essentially, the Raven powertrain couples the biggest battery you can get in a Model S or X with a powerful motor from the Model 3 Performance swapped onto its front axle. Unlike the football team, however, it has nothing to do with the bird. The Raven powertrain apparently gets its name from X-Men's Mystique (Raven Darkhölme).