Namin a car has always been a tough call, but now the industry is running out of ideas, writes James Mackintosh.
The Ferrari Testarossa. Lamborghini Diablo. Ford Thunderbird. Chevrolet Corvette. The names tell you all you need to know about these cars: they make your pulse race. But, a century after Gottlieb Daimler named his new car marque after Mercedes Jellinek, the daughter of his biggest customer, the motor industry is starting to run out of ideas.
"It's becoming really difficult to pick really good names, just because so many have been used," says Phil Dykewicz, director of market research at General Motors Europe.
Anything remotely positive named after an animal, Greek god, mythical creature, sign of the zodiac, tree, town, planet or even aspirational job (think Dodge Diplomat, Nissan President, Austin Princess, Pontiac Executive or Chevrolet Celebrity) has already been tried. Even some of the less positive animals have made it, albeit not very successfully (the VW Rabbit and Mitsubishi Dingo, for example).
The problem is becoming acute in Europe and the US, where the number of models on sale has soared in the past two decades. As well as the problem of finding so many more names - there were 313 different car models on sale in Britain last year, up by a third in 10 years - rapid globalisation of the industry means the names also have to work in foreign languages and not breach trademarks elsewhere in the world.
"You can come up with a name that might be fine in Britain or Ireland, but by the time you have covered the rest of the European markets, the chances are that someone, somewhere, will have registered it," says Paul Jee, a product marketing manager at Ford, who is about to leave to set up his own naming agency.
As a result, naming cars has become a very serious, and expensive, business involving a lot of lawyers and made-up words. But there is still romance in the nomenclature of some of the smaller companies. Three years ago, Ferrari named its €610,000 limited edition sports car Enzo, after the founder of the company, while his late son Dino also had a car named after him in the 1970s.
The Lotus Elise emerged when Romano Artioli, owner of the British company, decided to name it after his granddaughter. "To start with, we weren't sure about it," says Alastair Florance, group PR manager at Lotus. "But when we thought about it, we decided it was cute and, of course, it began with an 'E', which is very important, as all Lotus road cars start with an 'E'."
Lotus took full advantage of the name, with baby Elise, by then two-and-a-half, standing in the car's driving seat at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1995 when the silk wraps were taken off.
Bigger manufacturers have moved beyond their founders' names. The last time Ford, the world's third-largest carmaker, tried this was in 1957 with the Ford Edsel, named after the son of founder Henry Ford. The car was the most dismal failure in Ford's history and became a case study on how not to design, build or name a vehicle.
The idea of naming cars after places where senior executives have just been on holiday - as is the rumoured source of the Ford Granada - has also been consigned to history. Jee says: "Where we are dealing with a car that it going to be sold in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of countries around the world, we need a more rigorous approach."
When Jee was put in charge of finding a name for the Ford Mondeo saloon, currently Britain's seventh-best-selling car, he turned to a specialist naming agency: "We had four 4-inch binders that charted all the work that had been done and the hundreds of thousands of dollars we spent," he recalls.
Mondeo, like many recent car names, is made up, because there are so few words left unused that have positive connotations. It beat the runner-up, Lyrus, partly because Lyrus was close to a German sausage brand and partly because the Mondeo was planned to be sold globally, and the name was close to monde, French for "world". The US division scrapped the name anyway, in favour of Contour.
Ford now saves money by generating names internally, and Jee can often be found browsing a dictionary. But the company still has to go through a tortuous legal process to ensure no one owns the right to a name or similar sounding names; only 20-30 per cent of names survive. Jee also has to persuade the European board, which frequently rejects names it doesn't like, and get the approval of Ford president and chief operating officer Jim Padilla.
The length of the process is linked to the importance of getting it right. Peter Pfeifer, manager of image and communication research at GM Europe, says a name can enhance the character of a car. "If it doesn't match, you always have the feeling that the personality is not expressed properly."
Other companies have similarly long-winded processes, yet big mistakes still get made, mostly because of sexual or scatological slang in other languages.
The easiest way for companies to avoid language difficulties is to use an alpha-numeric code, a system adopted by almost all of the premium carmakers, from BMW and Mercedes to Lexus and Jaguar. But there are problems even with the universal language of numbers.
First, there is little emotional appeal to names such as 5-Series, GS 430 or 407. Second, the numbering systems can run out: what should Peugeot do when the 409 is replaced? Move to 410, breaking its -0- style, or revert to 401? Third, and most difficult, the launch of new cars means some of the stricter numeric systems are running out, too. Peugeot has been forced to name its new people carrier the 1007, breaking away from its neat series which ran 107, 207, 307 and so on.
It has also had to insist that people call it the "one thousand and seven", to avoid potential legal objections from the owners of the rights to James Bond's 007.
"We were concerned that the dealers might go overboard with it and have stuff like 'For your eyes only' and James Bond lookalikes at the launch," says Andrew Didlick, head of communications at Peugeot UK. "The legal advice was it could cause difficulties."
Perhaps carmakers shouldn't try so hard. The success of the Golf, for 30 years one of Europe's best-selling cars, suggests customers can get used to anything.
- The Financial Times service