Yesterday I discovered that the Swedish for car is bil [biːl], which is related to the Icelandic bíll [bɪtl̥]. At first I wasn’t sure where these words came from, then realised that they are probably abbreviations of automobile.
The Swedish word does in fact come from automobil, according to Wiktionary. The same word is also found in Danish and Norwegian. In Faroese the word for car is simliar: bilur [ˈpiːlʊɹ].
The word automobile comes from the French automobile, from Ancient Greek αὐτός (autós – self) & the French mobile (moving), from the Latin mobilis (movable). In French this can be shortened to auto [source].
For details of the word car, see this post.
Something similar happened with the word “American”, where the French have “Les Ricains” and the Germans have “Die Amis”.
And ‘bilar’ (the plural for ‘bil’), is as likely to refer to a type of candy as a mode of transport.
The same principle (of using the final syllable to make the abbreviation, rather than the first) can be seen in the Norwegian word ‘trikk’ (‘tram’), originating from the last syllable of the English word ‘electric’.