I was wondering about the Ford Five Hundred. When was the last time an American auto maker, other than Oldsmobile, spelled out a number on a nameplate? I'm thinking about the early 50s and before with One-Fifty and Two-Ten spelled out instead of 150 and 210 in numeral form, respectively.

Well there's a huge difference between a BMW 518i and a BMW 540i, one costs about twice as much as the other.

I have no idea why acronyms are popular. None of them provoke "power and envy" really. Just random numbers. I know some car manufacturers use numbers to display engine size or power output. I think Infiniti does that. But still. Why do you need to know its power output from its name? Half of the new luxury brands that use acronyms just seem to be using random letters or numbers. Lincoln has MKZ, MKX, MKS and the MKR Concept. As far as I can tell, they are just random letters. Same with Cadillac outside of DTS (DeVille Touring Sedan) and STS (Seville Touring Sedan).

Either way, I just like easy to pronounce, simple, traditional names such as Taurus, Impala, Malibu, Stratus and so on. I don't even mind if the name has absolutely nothing to do with the vehicle.

I believe in English it is pronouced Twar-egg, or at least that's what I've heard. So if you are English, it doesn't take a big stretch of the imagination to get "toe-rag" (an English slang word) out of that.

In Spanish & French it has nothing to do with it, but in English it is quite different. Indeed maybe not including a part of "w", I should have said "closer to w". Hard to explain

the R includes part of a W hmm what do you mean? the sound of the R has nothing to do with the one of the W no? or does it? at least i dont see it.

I guess that the problems comes mostly from the "r" which is quite different in English than in French/Spanish. The English "r" includes a part of a "w" sound which is then redundant with the "oua" just before it (just a supposition - I do not know how English people pronounce that name).

in spanish it is Tua-reg as it sounds, i dont see anything wrong or bad in it, i find it nice and as antoine points out it makes reference to the Touareg men in the dessert so it fits ok with the car it is.

And if you think in english it sounds like toe-rag or twat-egg then you dont have any idea on how to pronounce it, but then try to say it correctly and not inventing it.

It makes reference to the desert, which is good for a SUV I guess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg
But I do not know about it pronounciability in English; in French it is OK.

Touareg is one of the worst names ever, to the English it sounds like "toe-rag" or "twat-egg".