Too Fast for Vowels Trivia Quiz

Answer: Bugatti

Bugatti was a French brand of automobiles founded in Germany in 1909 by Italian Ettore Bugatti. The brand was well known for its racing cars and was very successful in the Grand Prix racing circuit. The company, unfortunately, folded in 1963, especially since there was no successor to the Bugatti line (Ettore's son Jean had passed away, tragically, in an auto accident).

In 1987 the brand was acquired by an Italian investor Romano Artioli and started making cars once again. Unfortunately, the market hit a recession and the company folded once again in 1995. In 1998 the brand was acquired by Volkswagen and continued to make luxury cars like the Veyron, Chiron, Divo, and Centodieci, amongst others.

Answer: Ferrari

Born in 1939 out of Italy, Ferraris have been one of the most expensive yet luxurious sports cars on the road. Known for their cherry-red colour, known as 'rosso corsa', or, racing red, these cars have been on the racetrack winning very often, especially in F1 races.

With such a rich history, there have been many famous Ferrari cars. 812 Superfast, Testarossa, Berlinetta, Pista, LaFerrari, Enzo, the list goes on and on... Their logo, a rearing horse, comes from founder Enzo Ferrari's love of horses, and the fact that he won a stable about ten years before he founded the company.

Answer: Maserati

Maserati is an Italian luxury car manufacturer that was started in 1914 by five Maserati brothers: Alfieri, Bindo, Carlo, Ettore, and Ernesto. Wait, what? No brother that started with a 'D'? Anyway, the cars were synonymous with racing and one even won the Indy 500, the first Italian car to ever do so. The company's logo is a trident, taken from the Fountain of Neptune in Bologna.

The company experienced ups and downs, but was eventually bought out by the FIAT group. A longtime rival of Ferrari, it seems ironic that they are now under the same parent company. Some of the current Maserati models include the GranTurismo, GranCabrio, Quattroporte, Ghibli, and others.

Answer: Koenigsegg

Koenigsegg is a car manufacturer of hyper-fast cars based out of Sweden. The founder, Christian von Koenigsegg, had a dream of making sports cars since he was young and managed to realize that dream by making it happen himself. The company was founded only in 1994, yet, they have developed some amazingly fast and beautiful cars.

Some of the more popular models of Koenigseggs are the CCX, the Regera, the Agera, all of which had very limited production. While all able to produce a lot of power, all models were designed to be street-legal. Koenigsegg cars are well-known for breaking speed records for production cars.

Answer: Jaguar

British car manufacturers Jaguar are actually in partnership with Land Rover, but each brand produces its own vehicles. The Jaguar brand was established in 1935 when it became independent of the Swallow Sidecar Company. In 1965 it was sold to the British Motor Corporation, regained some temporary independence in 1984, and in 1990 was acquired by Ford. However, Ford unloaded Jaguar to Tata Motors, and Tata merged Jaguar with Land Rover.

Jaguars have always been luxurious cars, and the three-dimensional leaping cat on the hood of the car was a favourite car ornament for people to steal. Now that jaguar is on the back of the cars. Some of the more impressive Jaguar models include the XJ220, the F-type, and the XE, XF, and XJ full-sized sedans.

Answer: Marussia

Marussia was a short-lived Russian car manufacturer who produced Russia's first supercars. The strange-looking B1 was able to top 300 km/h and had a 3.2 second 0-100 time. The successor, the B2, looked a lot like the Batmobile right out of the "Dark Knight" movies and was even more powerful than the B1.

The company was active from 2007 to 2014 but it opened the doors for supercars to be built in Europe outside the traditional centers (Italy, Germany and England, mostly).

Answer: Alfa Romeo

Alfa Romeo was founded in 1910 as ALFA, an acronym for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili. In 1920, the "Romeo" part of the name was added to reflect the directorship of Nicola Romeo, as the company had returned to car manufacturing as a primary product. The company logo is a combination of two heraldic logos associated with Milan, where the company was founded, and the four-leaf clover logo was the logo associated with the high-performance models that the company produced.

Some popular modern models for Alfa Romeo are the Giuletta, the Giulia, the Stelvio (the company's first SUV), and the 4C Spider.

Answer: Maybach

Maybach was an independent British car manufacturer until the name merged with Mercedes to form Mercedes-Maybach in 2015. While it was founded in 1909, it had a period with no independent production from 1960 (when it was acquired by Daimler-Benz) until 1997 when it unveiled its first car in almost forty years. For a while, Maybach was considered an upscale Mercedes.

The Maybach cars were aimed at people with chauffeurs, which likely led to declining sales. Nevertheless, they were very luxurious and stylish, though a bit cumbersome on the road. Some good models included the 57S, the 62, the Landaulet, and the Mercedes-Maybach S-series.

Answer: Aston Martin

Aston Martin is a British luxury car model that James Bond famously drove in several of the movies. It was founded in 1913 as Bamford & Martin, but when the two split, and since Lionel Martin's car production was on Aston Hill, the name of the company changed to Aston Martin.

James Bond, in the novels, had purchased an Aston Martin DB5 as his own personal car. This car also featured in several of the Bond films, amongst other Aston Martin cars that Q equips for Bond. Some of the more contemporary models include the One-77, Vantage, Vulcan, Virage, Vanquish, amongst many others (not all of them starting with a 'V').

Answer: Audi

Audi is a German luxury car manufacturer that is part of the Volkswagen group. August Horscht worked for the Wanderer brand, then went off and started his own brand under his own name. When he got sued for trademark infringement, he was barred from calling any new company "Horscht". The idea for the name "Audi" came from Horscht's son, who was studying Latin. 'Audi' is the imperative for 'listen', same as the name 'Horscht'.

Audi has made many successful and reliable cars like their A-series, their Q-series, the TT Roadster, the R8, and their S and RS models. Their logo is a series of four rings.