With respect to antp, I wanted to create a tangent from the discussion on the page: www.imcdb.org/vehicle.php?id=83543

The idea came up that some model names don't really engage the potential customer to buy that particular vehicle, and this includes language minomers that work in one market but do not yield the same result in another.

My two favorites are the DeSoto Shopper of the 50s and the Mercury Commuter of the mid 50s-60s. Given the time, those are attractive names for station wagons--multi purpose civilian vehicles during a time of urban sprawl (expansion) and rampant consumerism. It's the same reason I have a postcard of the 1920s showing an escalator--at the time of publication this was technology to hold in high regard. Today, you couldn't sell any "Commuter"-named vehicle. Theres no energy such as is present with "Pathfinder" or "Outlander." So are there other "commonly-named" cars. I can guess there are a lot of older cars with the name "Standard." That was Studebaker's base model Lark in the 50s and 60s.

Cars used to be named by their engines with names like Six, Eight, or Twelve. Then we got bigger numbers: One Fifty, One Eighty, Series 90 (Buick Limited), then trim/body levels: 500, 500XL, Electra 225. Chrysler 300. I remember Pontiac had a special Bonneville SSEI. Now a lot of the luxury cars, or cars claiming to be them, have a seemingly-random string of characters: XG350, QX56. And what's the story with the Dodge Diplomat? Was that really the way Chrysler would have liked US Ambassadors to display American engineering (smirk)?


So where are we with vehicle names? Are Japanese and Europeans the only automakers to specify engine size within the series name? Trucks and SUVs are going to stress scale, rugged terrain, and durability. Sedans and minivans are going to stress comfort and prestige. Mass-produced sporty cars are going to be follow almost every trend that happens along. It will be interesting to see the names given to vehicles that are yet to be produced. Outdoorsy names will likely be just as popular now as in the 50s when Desoto used the Adventurer and Sportsman nameplates. Just some thoughts.

Letter & number names invoke power and envy; for example: why buy a BMW 750Li when you can have the BMW 760Li? Just a change in numbers, but too some people, having 60 tagged on the end of that 7 (and not 50) means all the difference.

I found, when Ford used "Expedition" for its full-size SUV to be quite appealing and outdoorsy ... plus the Expedition does live up to it’s name (as it can be taken on weekend "expeditions")

Yes, I'm really jealous of someone who drives a Rover 400! Saab 9000, big number but not necessarily the mightiest car ever. The numbering system some brand use is partly tradition (Mercedes, BMW) and also it can look elegant in it's simplicity and it means they don't have to spend time thinking up new names, some of which don't always sound good (like any Daewoo model), so it's a risk. But then some of the Rolls-Royce and Bentley have never used number names, but they've always come up with opulent-sounding names.

But then what's in a name? BMW's model names only sound good because you mentally associate that number with quality. A good name doesn't actually add a huge amount to the car, were the Mustangs and Thunderbird of the late 70s and 80s as good as the original models? Of course that name does help to sell them. I think with a crap car, it'll be crap no matter what name it has, if it happens to have a crap name, it just adds a little bit to it's crapness.

A lot of modern car names are meaningless really, I think some of the names are made-up, do the names RAV4, Almera, Tempra, Signum, Agila describe anything on their own? They only conjure up images in your mind if you are familiar with the car.

Well, Agila quite describe the car: it is supposed to be a car agile in the city, no?

The names I don't like are the quirky ones that are hard to pronounce. I mean, is Agila meant to be pronounced A-jigh-la, or Ag-ee-la or Ag-il-a? Doesn't matter to me though, because I'll never buy that little shitbox.

I said some people, not everyone (certainly not you if you don’t think that way) I don't ...

Sorry, I didn't mean to be cheeky. Anyway, every company that uses numbers has their own system to categorize their models, the numbers mean different things for each company. A Volvo 740 is not the equal of a BMW 740 (the Volvo doesn't have a 4 litre engine). Sorry if I'm stating the obvious.

If someone is dumb enough to take those numbers on face value, a used car dealer should sell them a clapped out Audi 5000, telling them it's the best they could go for! And the really dumb person would buy an Infiniti!

On the subject of Fords, Explorer and Expedition are fairly good names for 4x4s, but the word Excursion (the biggest, fattest Ford SUV) just means a short, leisurely outing, like going to the beach, not really on the same level as the words Expedition or Explorer. I guess they just couldn't think of any other descriptive words beginning with "ex" (if it was up to me I'd call that thing an Excretion )

Actually, I found the Excursion name quite fitting as it conjured up for me images of grand passenger trains or cruise ships of great size.

A good example of this is the VW Troureg (sp?) which is based on the Porsche Cayenne SUV. Didn't VW actually use the mispronouncability in its US marketing?

Yes, but Excursion doesn't sound as impressive as Expedition, does it? You can't call what Scott of the Antarctic did an "excursion".

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.