Car Trend Chronicles
Should There be Limits to Preserve Car Names?
Building a strong image for a name takes time and money, but is that enough reason for automakers to use them on any model?
- Making a name strong in the market demands a lot of time, money and effort
- Every once in a while, automakers release new cars using old, proven names
- In some cases, the new car to use the name has nothing to do with the old one
Image is one of the strongest assets one can have in the modern-day market. Manufacturers and products will always need an attractive balance between quality and price, but their image is precisely what defines what is considered attractive. As a result, building a strong image has become more difficult and expensive over the past years — and companies are going further than ever to preserve the ones they have.
Names are one of the most direct expressions of an image. A strong name may represent decades of hard work and earn public acclaim around the world. On the other hand, names weakened by technical problems and/or cultural issues are doomed to fail no matter how much effort their owner dedicates to them. As you can imagine, this situation is difficult enough to encourage companies to take unusual actions at times.
How do automakers work with names?
Basically, by preserving them as long as the car does well in the market. Once that happens, its maker attempts to keep it attractive by carefully planning its next updates: the usual practice is to make small visual changes and focus on adding equipment while it is new, then giving it an all-new generation whose design is heavily based on the outgoing one; it is what the automotive world refers to as evolutionary design.
On the other hand, when the car performs badly, for any reason, the company frequently prefers to wipe the slate clean. It stays in line for as long as it brings any profit, then gets phased out and replaced by something entirely different. Automakers also invest in “revolutionary” designs like that when they want to perform any big changes on themselves, like the electrification trend that has appeared in the past few years.
Sometimes, they go the other way around
According to the previous paragraphs, the product’s success makes the image strong at first. However, there are times when the maker simply cannot afford the necessary time and/or money to go through that. They are the times when it takes a strong name in the first place and apply it to an upcoming product in order to raise its chances of success. All the models shown on this Chronicle’s photos are examples of that.
Things usually go well when the new car model is similar to the old one in any way. It is considered a new version, even a modern-day interpretation in some cases. When it is too different, reactions are often negative because it does not generate any sense of familiarity; people see the new model and simply fail to see the qualities which made that name famous beforehand. That situation is precisely this Chronicle’s topic.
Can you give examples of that?
Besides the ones shown at the photos, the Ford Puma is a quite representative one. It was first released as a Fiesta-based coupé in 1997 and made moderate success in Europe for over four years. Eighteen years later, the name was used again on a compact crossover. Even though it once again has that genetics and sporty intentions, they are entirely different models which represent entirely moments of Ford’s history.
In the 2000s, Fiat used its short-lived partnership with GM to create a full-size station wagon whose project had no other products. Quite a contrast when we remember that it shared the Croma name with a sedan released twenty years earlier which came from a joint project between the Italian company and Saab and also generated the Alfa Romeo 164, Saab 9000 and Lancia Thema, two of them with more body styles.
Are all cases like that?
Not at all. Some nameplates are recycled simply for being a proven option: the automaker skips new research work and has already learned how to deal with eventual risks such as becoming a pun in some regions. Chevrolet Monza used to be a North-American 2+2 coupé which had a moderate sales performance. Years later, the name reappeared in Brazil as a badge-engineered Opel Ascona and had much more success.
Chrysler made a similar choice on purpose. The plan was to replace the Town & Country with an entirely different minivan, more suitable to modern times. Pacifica turned out to be an interesting name because its previous owner was a crossover whose market presence had been neutral enough not to cause any problems but still looked sportier than a typical minivan. Simple, but effective example of image engineering.
As you can see, taking names from one car to another is quite common among automakers; the problem appears when those cars are sufficiently different to cause strangeness. What are your opinions about that? Do you think there are no limits to reuse a car name or would you prefer to see automakers following some ground rules in this regard? Feel free to share your thoughts on that by using the comment button!
