FUTURE PROOF
Time for Horrell to clarify exactly how carmakers name their technologies
The R32 Nissan GT-R was intended only for its home market, but its fame travelled worldwide by the osmotic pressure of its amazing nature and powers. So why, if designed only for Japanese speakers, was its remarkable technical system called ATTESA E-TS? Because of the wonderful Japlish that took hold among JDM marketers in that era. It stands for Advanced Total Traction Engineering System for All-terrain, Electronic Torque Split. The R32 got a modified set-up, ATTESA E-TS Pro. Snappy eh?
Remember too that this was the age of Honda’s VTEC. It stood for Variable Valve Timing and Lift Electronic Control. Later there was a version incorporating cam-phase variation. That was i-VTEC, where the i was for intelligent. There was also, afterward, i-VTEC i. The second i was to do with direct fuel injection.
Mitsubishi had something similar called MIVEC, for Mitsubishi Innovative Valve Timing Electronic Control. I remember driving the little crazy-revving V6 in the grey-import FTO. So for Mitsubishi the i was innovative. They had a whole car called i. Which spawned an electric version called i-MiEV, for Mitsubishi innovative Electric Vehicle.
The Germans in contrast usually go for strange attempts at a universal technobabble, mashing up numbers and acronyms and
“AMERICANS ARE MASTERS OF GIVING DRY TECH A NAME THAT INVOKES SWEATY EXCITEMENT”
variations of -matic or -tronic. After Audi coined quattro, the rest had nowhere to go, so we got VW’s 4Motion, BMW’s xDrive and Merc’s 4MATIC. Oh they do love their uppercase in Sindelfingen: AIRMATIC, 9G-TRONIC, DISTRONIC. How badly I wished, when they introduced their driver drowsiness warning system, that they’d have trademarked it KAFFEETRONIC.
The Americans would have done better. I mean, this is the nation with a carmaker that can, with a straight face, name a vehicle the Challenger SRT Hellcat Widebody. Its wheels are Devil’s Rim Forged. Its engine is called Redeye.
In the Thirties, America’s first auto box was called HydraMatic. Oldsmobile had one, a two-speed, named Jetaway; Cadillac called it Strato-Flight. Chevy’s Fifties six-cylinder engine came in two versions, Thrift King and Blue Flame. Ford today has an engine called Power Stroke. Romantic name for a truck diesel, eh?
The Americans are the masters of giving cold dry technologies a name that invokes sweaty excitement. They brought us magnetorheological dampers, but they didn’t call them that: no, this was MagneRide. The triple-carb package on a Mopar muscle car was dubbed Six-Pack. Among all these pages of turbo engines, note the first was from Oldsmobile, and it was called the Jetfire.
So when you’re in a Mercedes and the headlights dip for oncoming traffic, you might be glad to have Highbeam Assist. But wouldn’t you be gladder if Merc had borrowed Cadillac’s original trademark for the system: Autronic Eye? And auto switch-on of the lights is now pretty much universal. But how much more safe and secure I’d feel, heading into the gloom, if it still went by Chevy’s original name: the Twilight Sentinel.