Whether numbers, letters or both – car manufacturers come up with a lot of ideas to stand out from the crowd with special car names. This is how they go about it.
If you take a look at the car market, you are confronted with all sorts of names. Whether city or animal names, numbers or letters – everything is there. One often wonders how such car names even come about? As simple and short as it may sound, the path to a universally suitable name is long.
Basically two philosophies
First of all, car manufacturers can be divided into two categories when it comes to naming: The first category includes car manufacturers like Opel or Volkswagen, who come up with real names to give their car models character and personality. The second group focuses on letters and numbers, such as AUDI or BMW. On the one hand, a car name must “sound new and fresh and attract attention,” as entrepreneur and advertising copywriter Manfred Gotta told the Kölnische Rundschau, but on the other hand, it must also “fit the brand.”
Sometimes there are up to 200 names that you come up with for a model. They are examined by an international committee from various company departments and external people. The verification usually has to take place in more than 20 countries in order to avoid linguistic, cultural and legal obstacles. Less than ten names remain, which are mounted on test vehicles and tested with test customers. In the end, the board decides how the new model will be named.
A lot of creativity is required
Finding a suitable name requires a lot of creativity, a feeling for language and imagination. Gotta, who supports major car manufacturers as a professional naming expert, sits with the new car in a quiet room and explores its “soul”. He then determines the product philosophy and the potential group. After that, the actual naming process can begin, involving both copywriters and other creative people.
Romance words and artificial terms are among popular target names. Name givers also use city names such as Opel Monza or Hyundai Santa Fe. Historical derivations are also popular: Jaguar chose the name F-Type for the small roadster, based on the C-Type, D-Type and E-Type. You make it easy if you choose a combination of numbers and digits, like Mercedes does. The series name (A to X class) is combined with a three-digit number.
However, a faux pas often occurs when names are not properly checked in different languages. The name of an AUDI model “AUDI TT Coupé” means “headless” (“Tête coupé”) in French. “Ford Kuga” means “plague” in Serbo-Croatian. Another example is the “Rolls-Royce Silver Mist”, where “Mist” was eventually renamed “Shadow”.
Editorial team finanzen.net
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