Cars shouldn't be named Algernon. There is no way to properly scream
Algernon at a car which will not budge out of a snowbank.
The right sense of pleading for a car to start must still contain some dignity and the phrase "C'mon, baby baby Algernon baby" just doesn't have it. When you are careering around an icy curve there is little time enough to utter "HOLY crap!", adding "Algernon" simply delays things to the point that the 'non' arrives at the same time as your side door hits the guardrail. A shorter name does the job.
I recommend Spike. It can yelled while you are banging on the radio, attempting to extricate that borrowed CD from your sister that she doesn't know you borrowed. It can be cheesily extended when necessary to get to the gas station on fumes, "Spikey Spikey, hang in there Spikeyboy, SSSPIIIKKKEY!! " And it is name a machine can be proud of and, moreover, respond to.
A personal note: (ogod) I had a 1955 Ford two door two tone sedan named Spike. Spike, in a reversal of his more northern cousins, did not like to start when it was hot. Now this was in West Texas so it was more than occasionally above 110 degrees F. Spike would rather not make the effort at such temperatures, but I spoke to him by name.
Sitting there in the Git-n-Go parking lot with the groceries and the rest of the world melting around us I would address Spike thusly:
"Spike? Oh, Spike, I know you can hear me so just listen, Spike. Do you remember why I named you Spike? (pause) That's right. I named you after the four foot long pointed object I am going to drive right through your radiator if you don't start right now............ ."
He'd start right up. Wouldn't even cough. Seemed to show a little extra pep on the hills towards home.
Joe(he had white wall tires and a cherrystone radio)Nation
They are all light-hearted comic figures. 
