It's an urban legend.
The chevy Nova sold fine there. The word "Nova" implied newness to them just the way it does to us.
It's interesting about domain name importance. However, check out the figures below - here are the top five most expensive domain sales in the last few years:
Business.com – $7.5 million
AsSeenOnTv.com – $5.1 million
Altavista.com – $3.3 million
Wine.com – $2.9 million
Autos.com – $2.2 million
I am not sure how such an investment – paying millions of USD for a simple name – can be recovered and used to produce profit. There was a story about Coca-Cola, which said that if the company lost all its infrastructure, but kept the name and brand characteristics, it could bounce back in about 4 years. However, if the company managers were left with all the infrastructure, but lost the Coca-Cola name, the company would be very likely to go bankrupt. Do you think this is also true for domain names?