Assignments in loops

Greetings all. Any help with the following would be appreciated.

I want to create a data frame for each file in a directory. The following
code does not work but it may show what I am trying to do:

carmakes <- c('BMW','Chrysler','Citroen','Fiat','Ford','Holden','Honda',
'Mercedes','MG','Mitsubishi','Nissan','Peugeot','Renault','Subaru','Toyota',
'VW')
for (brand in carmakes) {
   fyle <- paste("c:/data/cars03/",brand,".txt",sep="")
   brand <- read.table(fyle, header = TRUE, sep = "\t",na.strings = 
            c("-","POA"), colClasses=c("character",rep("numeric",7)),
             comment.char = "#")
}

I need something like an unquote() function that will allow the "brand" on
the LHS of the assignment to be treated as an object name instead of a
character string.

Murray