I am sure that you must have wondered on several occasion on how does a car company come up with a name for their new car. Well, one of the more powerful marketing tools available to a car company is the choice of their new car model name. Words that can evoke power, performance and elitism are routinely selected, but so are letters and numbers, provided they can be combined with a masculine sounding terms which resonate with the predominantly male auto buying public.
Will the sale of a car be independent of its name? Will mini-cooper had the same sales, if its name was bunny? Maybe — or maybe not. At their core, cars are essentially appliances to get from one place to another. And yet, we want our cars to protect and project a certain image. As J Mays, Ford’s chief designer recently told Esquire, “Anybody can make a toaster toast. Very few people can make a toaster something you covet.”
A car’s name is part of how automakers make their cars worth coveting. Get it just right, and the car’s image can be projected in a single word. Get it wrong, and the car can become the butt of jokes and a sales nightmare.
Naming car also brings in another challenge of not offending the customers. An imaginary and meaningless name may mean something offending in another language!
Therefore car companies like to play safe and use a few letters and numbers that have less of a risk of offending consumers. According to Forbes, with number/letter names part of the goal is for owners and buyers to “think and talk of the brand, and not the nameplate.” That works well for automakers with focused lineups.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t trends in the letter names. Odds are, if there’s an X in the name, you’re looking at a crossover or SUV (Lincoln MKX, Volvo XC90, Infiniti EX, BMW X3), though there are a few exceptions — like the Jaguar XF and Acura TSX.
Tacking a few numbers onto a car’s name not only helps it sound cool, it can tell savvy shoppers exactly what the car is packing. The Infiniti QX56 gets the “56″ from its 5.6-liter engine and the Infiniti G37 has a 3.7-liter engine. However, the pattern doesn’t always hold. While the BMW 3-Series has 3.0-liter engines across the line, so does the BMW 1-Series. And while we’d love to see what a giant engine could do in the BMW 7-Series, that model only has a 4.4-liter V8, not 7.0 liters.
Car makers also dig through several foreign language dictionaries to come up with a name which is cool and also reflect its character.
The Porsche Carrera means “race” in Spanish — a fitting and flashy name for a hot-performing luxury car. The Hyundai Tiburon got its name from the Spanish word for “shark,” giving the entry-level sports coupe a dash of mystique and animal magnetism. Prius is Latin for “to go before,” perfect for a car that Toyota hoped would change the automotive landscape.
Of course, the problem with using foreign words and phrases is that they may not work in all markets. For example, the Buick LaCrosse may give Americans an image of European refinement, but LaCrosse is slang among French Canadian teenagers for a certain private act. Ever hear of the Mitsubishi Pajero? Probably not. In the U.S. and Latin America, it’s known as the Montero — because Pajero is Spanish slang for a man who engages in that private act that French Canadian teenagers call “LaCrosse.”
Another very popular option and avenue used by car companies is to use animal names with strong personalities. Examples are Mercury Cougar, Ford Mustang, Chevy Impala and Dodge Ram. The Ram takes its theme even further; while a Ram is simply an uncastrated male sheep, Dodge offers its Ram truck in a Bighorn edition, which is a larger mountain sheep species.
So, car makers have tried-and-true naming conventions, but how do they finally christen a car? They let consumers decide. Before a name hits the market, automakers go through rounds of testing where focus groups react to possible names. Some carmakers are even more democratic. For the Tiguan, VW let readers of Germany’s Auto Bild magazine vote on the name — and 350,000 did, selecting Tiguan over names like Nanuk and Rockton.
For most cars, the naming process can be pretty boring. According to Beverly Braga, a Product Public Relations Manager with Kia, the process for choosing the name for the Kia Borrego was pretty straightforward. “Although there is a loose connection to the Anza Borrego Desert in Southern California,” Braga says, choosing the name came down to two factors: “What vehicle names were not already trademarked?” and “What names were received well in focus groups?”
