It's interesting how things like that stick in one's mind. With my grandfather, it was always his Ford truck (he was a big Ford fan). He had added heaps of after-market gauges and bits and pieces to it; there were probably two or three times as many gauges on the dash as the original would have had!
I've just done a bit of a Google and it looks like your father's name for it seems to be another shorthand for them (I can find a number of references and listings to "Heavy Duty Side Angle Cut Pliers"), similar to how I know them as "sidecutters". Makes perfect sense that he'd shorten the name that way.
