Names For New Cars: What Will Work And What Won’t
Let’s imagine that we have been contracted to some new Asian car manufacturer who wants to get it right when it comes to car names and not come up with something ridiculous like the perfectly genuine Mitsubishi Mini Active Urban Sandal. What is going to work and what definitely won’t?
Of course, we could always go with the tried-and-true method beloved of European car manufacturers: that of using a combination of numbers and letters that tell you the engine size, the general class or type of car, and maybe the fuel type. This method works perfectly well for BMW, Mercedes and Volvo, with Lexus also getting on board.
More Than 2.5 Children?
Those with large families – and even those with average families with the standard 2.5 children – often go in for big MPVs with six or seven seats so everyone can sit in the car comfortably without squishing poor little Two Point Five who has to sit in the middle seat that’s been designed for 0.5 of a person in the average sedan (although I’m pleased to note that in larger sedans such as the Ford Fairlane sitting in my garage, there’s room for three kids over the age of ten plus the dog in the back seat, and nobody’s got knees in the driver’s kidneys).
Anyway, the MPV is the car of choice for a lot of families, especially if they do have larger than average families. The MPV is certainly a lot more stylish for getting about in than the standard thing you saw large families driving back in the 1990s: the van. In some circles, you occasionally heard about the “white van brigade” as a term to refer to families that (a) had more than three kids, (b) were usually somewhat religious in their outlook on life and/or quasi-hippy types and (c) homeschooled their many children. They all had white vans, such as the good old Mitsubishi Express or its earlier incarnations, the Mazda Bongo, etc, and you’d see a right row of these lined up in the car parks of some churches on Sunday mornings. They were good vehicles but they tended to be a bit bland and boring, even though they were practical. The MPV has changed all that, adding style and colour as options for big families.
Giving An Indication Of Your Intentions
My fellow-blogger Adam has recently written a few posts about in-car information and the battery of gadgets in modern cars to let you know what, when, where, how much, and so forth. Too much in-car information drives me bonkers, too, especially if some of the in-car information is not just being provided by a beeper or a light but by my teenage son sitting in the back seat and telling me how to drive (and he’s not quite old enough for his licence yet).
What I really would like to know and what I would like to see in cars which probably would make our roads a lot safer would be some way of telling me what the car in front of me is about to do. I don’t give a tinker’s cuss about the optimal level of revs to maximise my fuel economy when I’m approaching a busy roundabout or when I’m driving in heavy traffic; I want to know what the contractor in the Ford Transit in front of me is about to do. If car manufacturers really loved us and gave us what’s good for us rather than (or as well as) the fun things we want, they’d give us more ways to communicate our intentions to our fellow drivers.
Convertible owners: Enjoy it year-round!
With autumn finally providing those crisp, clear, blue-sky mornings in Melbourne, my thoughts have turned towards how best to enjoy them. Of course, with a mind so focused on motoring, there is the inevitable “I should take a car out for a country drive today” scenario which, as I sit tied to my desk this morning, has its merits. But which car would I take on my ideal autumnal morning drive?
Level 2, 9 Help Street