A car by any other name would smell a lot sweeter - Irish Independent
But coining a name that conveys the same amount of allure and panache across different cultures is something entirely different. Over the last few decades, consumers have been targeted with cars named after Jet Streams (Jetta), a city in New Mexico (Santa Fe) a ring of petals (Corolla), Greek goddesses (Yaris) and a trade wind (Passat) to name but a few. Generally car naming has followed predictable routes - they can be named after fast-moving animals, Ford Mustang and Cougar and Jaguar. Then there are host of meaningless names ending with an 'o' - a feature of Japanese car companies in particular, who seem to struggle the most in this area. Four-wheel-drives have adventurous names that suggest heroic journeys - the Ford Escape, Nissan Pathfinder, Land Rover Discovery, Ford Explorer or Subaru's Outback. What were Ford executives thinking of when they named their 1990s sport compact Probe. No doubt lunar and Mars probes were foremost in their minds but there was little hope the oddly intrusive-sounding name, conjuring images of back-end invasive medical procedures, was ever going to be synonymous with sleek and sporty. I doubt too many escorts would be seen in an Escort but it did nothing to hamper the success of this car. Source: www.independent.ie
