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Letters of Note
May I submit UTOPIAN TURTLETOP?
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May I submit UTOPIAN TURTLETOP?

In which Marianne Moore attempts to name a new car

Shaun Usher's avatar
Shaun Usher
Mar 21, 2022
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Letters of Note
Letters of Note
May I submit UTOPIAN TURTLETOP?
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The car that could have been the Ford Utopian Turtletop. Photo: Getty.

In 1955, as they failed to pluck from the ether a name for their hugely anticipated new car, Ford Motor Company decided to ask the most unlikely of people to assist in the matter: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Marianne Moore. In a letter to Moore, the company’s marketing research depar…

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