What’s in a (car) name? Less and less these days
Confusion reigns with Xs and Os on car trunk lids
Developing a new car takes years of designing and prototypes, and it’s such a big job it gets an internal name, usually a jumbled series of numbers and dashes reflecting the many stages it takes to birth a car. But once all the final details have been sussed, the company will christen the new vehicle a Corvette or Valiant and we’d all know what they were talking about.
At least, that’s what the final step used to be.
I long for those days. Instead, I’m stuck madly Googling the current differences between the BMW series one through seven, some Xs, a Z and the bur geo ning“i”s. Names used to be hinged on engine displacement, door count or chassis length; now all the letters and numbers go in a Yahtzee cup. Mercedes- Benz did a do- over a few years back, ditching a system we’d become used to, with the aim of making it easier. It didn’t.
They swapped GLK for GLC, and my inside-my-head memory trick ( the word “Gluck”) was useless. Infiniti did the same thing and I remember staring blankly as the product tech explained which combinations they’d shifted to make room for more combinations. “It’ ll be so much easier,” she enthused. It isn’t.
A colleague recently did a review of the Mini Countryman Cooper SE All4. They almost had to weld some more car onto it to fit the name. Some manufacturers get away with the laziest effort possible, like the Maserati Quattroporte; it may appear sexy, but calling a car “four doors” sounds like it was made by Sesame Street.
Securing a name for a car is a time- consuming, expensive proposition for car companies. Names have to be checked for existing trademarks, cross-referenced into any language ( including all possible slang) in markets it will be carried, and focusgrouped to see if the masses will buy your Dodge Dolphin or your Honda Hobbit. In fact, it’s that increasingly difficult task of finding the perfect name that I believe has made manufacturers reluctant to venture into new fields.
It’s why you see a Dart or an Impala or a Pacifica pass you on the road and wonder if you’ve done a bit of time travel.
The problem with that, of course, is the badge of an old car slapped on a new one brings with it the detritus from the past incarnation. The latest Dodge Dart may be cute, but it’s nothing like the mean muscle cars of the early 1970s, and the new Pacifica is a minivan, not the crossover it was over a decade ago. Bringing back either of those names means pounding out some negative connotations before presenting the new versions or giving the new car an impossible level to live up to. Some things, of course, are never coming back. I’m quite sure we’ll never see a new version of the Cougar.
You may never have owned a Gremlin, but you probably know what it was. Same with the Ramblers and the Cutlasses, the Pacers, the Omnis and the Fairlanes; even the Rabbits and the Beetles, before Volkswagen started calling cars things like Touareg and Tiguan, which sound more like Ikea bookcases than cars. That said, I’ ll still take names I have to repeatedly spellcheck over a random string of numbers and letters.
A group I follow on Facebook is for new owners of a certain vehicle to discuss how best to differentiate their rides. Apparently, the manufacturer doesn’t tag their rear ends enough to satisfy some customers, who feel the need to declare to all in their wake that they spent top buck. Some have even had their own lettering made to adhere to their car. I have often contemplated removing logos from my cars, but never adding any.
True aficionados and gear heads, of course, know the minute differences. You’ ll know them instantly, when they discuss things such as the 1964 ½ Mustang. I admire this knowledge; I also just call it a Mustang.
The nationality of a car company needn’t factor into their naming game. If you only looked at the right side of many Hyundais, you’d swear you were in Arizona ( Tucson) or New Mexico ( Santa Fe); the South Korean company claims other names from Latin to Greek sources. Hyundai is good at names.
I want names. I know it’s time- consuming and expensive, but I want names. And I don’t want recycled names, I want new ones.
I always liked Chevrolet naming everything starting with aC, at least for a time; I find comfort in the Ford Escape-Explorer - Expedition-Excursion run. And you know a Subaru just from hearing the model name.
The Merriam- Webster dictionary adds hundreds of words every year, so there is little chance of running out.
It’s not like I’m asking you to bring back the Gremlin.
NOW ALL THE LETTERS AND NUMBERS GO IN A YAHTZEE CUP.