DETROIT (Reuters) - Judging by the massive amount of hardware on display at Detroit's international auto show this week, automakers are having an increasingly hard time coming up with attractive new names for their cars and trucks.

Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. may score a big hit with the mighty Titan, its tag for the all-new, full-sized pickup truck that it launched at the show Tuesday.

But the name could backfire on Japan's third-largest automaker. Environmental activists could change it ever so slightly to "Titanic," as part of their campaign against America's love affair with gas-guzzling sport/utility vehicles.

One of the most oddly named vehicles at the Detroit show is Volkswagen AG's Touareg SUV, which takes its name from a Nomadic tribe of the Sahara desert.

"The name may sound strange but we wanted to differentiate the vehicle from everything else," said Jens Neumann, a VW board member who is responsible for the U.S. operations of Europe's largest car company.

Kubang, which luxury Italian automaker Maserati says is the name of a wind over Java, was another bizarre sounding vehicle. Maserati is using it for a prototype or "concept" version of a new tall wagon.

There were many others including a vehicle from VW's Audi division dubbed Pikes Peak, for a car race in Colorado, and the Dodge Kahuna, a vehicle produced by the surf-crazy California design team of DaimlerChrsyler AG's Chrysler unit.

Chrysler also revived its lethal-sounding Magnum name and, apart from the Titan, Nissan had an SUV called the Murano, named for a type of Venetian glass.

For automotive journalists the worst names are scarcely names at all, however.

If you were shopping for one of the latest cars from the luxury Infiniti division of Nissan, for example, you may be asked to choose between an FX35, a Q45 or an M45. And at the end of media preview days at the Detroit show, even the most seasoned automotive journalists might have difficulty recalling all the differences among vehicles labeled SLK320, SL600 and C240 from Mercedes-Benz.

Bad names, or the reliance on a seemingly random selection of letters and numbers to brand new cars, highlights a larger problem with the global auto industry. It is overcrowded, and too many vehicles are competing for buyers as well as names.

"Because all the great names are taken...some of the names are made up now," said Jason Vines, an auto industry veteran and former chief spokesman for Ford Motor Co.

"What we're doing is taking foreign languages and half-way translating them to English in the market and getting a new name. In this market that's almost what you have to do because all the other names are taken," he said.

He said many lawsuits have been fought over rights to names in the auto industry.

Bob Lutz, the 70-year-old product czar and vice chairman of General Motors Corp., agreed that there is anything but an abundance of good names

"The problem is almost everything is getting used up," Lutz told Reuters.

"If you have a good name it can help. I've seen a lot of stupid names in my life," said Lutz, who has worked for all of Detroit's Big Three automakers.

Ultimately, names may not be all that important, since people can forget how bad they are so long as a vehicle is great, he said.

But he stressed that a lackluster car with a pretentious or lackluster name was usually a recipe for disaster.

"The late great Achieva" from GM's Oldsmobile division was one example of that, Lutz said.