Top 5: Cars with hard-to-pronounce names

Five cars that will tie your tongue in knots - assuming you even know how to pronounce them at all.

Shelby Tuatara.

Shelby Tuatara

This Dh3.6 million American supercar will boast a carbon fibre body, a 7L twin-turbo engine producing a mammoth 1350hp and aims to rival the Bugatti Veyron to become the fastest road production car in the world when it hits the market later this year, but all that isn't as intriguing as its name. It's derived from the Maori word for a reptile native to New Zealand, of which there are only two surviving species left. They flourished 200 million years ago and are now useful to studies charting the evolution of lizards and snakes.

Lamborghini Murcielago

This two-seater sports car was the successor to the famed Diablo and kept with the Italian marque's tradition of naming its cars after bullfighting stars. Murcielago was a bull that survived 28 strikes from a sword in a famous 1879 fight in Cordoba, Spain. The bull fought with such passion that the matador gave it the rare honour of sparing its life. The bull was given as a gift to breeder Don Antonio Miura and Murcielago became the first in the famed line of Miura fighting bulls.

Volkswagen Touareg

In an attempt to associate its new SUV with the themes of travel and exploration, in 2002, Volkswagen decided to name its latest model the Touareg, after nomadic pastoralists who inhabit the harsh landscape of the inner Saharan desert in north Africa. About 1.2 million of these Berber-speaking travellers exist today in the arid lands of countries such as Mali, Algeria and Niger. The Touareg V10 holds a world record for pulling a Boeing 747, no doubt another reference to the resourcefulness of the nomads.

Nissan Qashqai

Not to be outdone, Japanese firm Nissan named the compact SUV it first produced in 2007 after the nomads of southwestern Iran. There are about 1.5 million Qashqai people still alive today and some still spend their lives travelling with their flocks of animals from highland pastures north of the city of Shiraz in summer to lower and warmer lands each winter nearer the Arabian Gulf. However, Nissan chose to name the car Dualis in Australia as it feared Aussies might end up calling it "cash cow".

Pagani Huayra

Arguably the most difficult of the five to pronounce, the Huayra (pronounced wai-rah), this mid-engined sports car will succeed the Zonda when it goes on sale next year. Having noticed that naming cars after people and animals was getting a bit old hat, the canny Italians named its AMG V12-powered flying machine after a South American wind god, Huayra-tata. The "Father of Wind" - no rude jokes please - had two heads, was surrounded by serpents and was worshipped by Andes peoples before European colonisation.