Shakespeare famously said, “A rose by any name would smell as sweet”. But, if the iconic car called Jaguar had been named Nano it would not have been the same.
A good brand name adds enormous character to any product. When George Eastman set up the once world’s largest photographic product company, he knew that Eastman was not a good brand name and had a contest to create a new one.
He specified that it should not have more than two or three syllables and have a hard consonant at the beginning and end to make it memorable. The winning name Kodak meant nothing, but was easy to remember and was unique.
The World War II Willy’s Jeep originally had no name and was simply called GP for General Purpose, but this was soon spelt as Jeep, making an excellent brand name.
Henry Fredrick Royce was actually a poor, uneducated orphaned boy but the surname Royce has a royal ring to it to make it very suitable for the classy Rolls Royce.
Mercedes Benz had been named after Mercedes, the daughter of an Austrian entrepreneur, in 1901. It became an elegant name for very elegant cars, but quickly became an unsuitable name for any young lady.
The names of many cars evolved to acquire strong personalities. Morris Garages was an unsuitable brand name for a sporty open-top roadster, but the letters MG made it a very good brand.
General Motors was also an unsuitable name, so a sub-brand like Chevrolet was much more acceptable.
The prestige car of their American rival Chrysler had been named Imperial.
It was a great car, but adjectives make poor brand names as one cannot be possessive about an adjective. You can like your Chevrolet but how can you be possessive about your Imperial?
Many automakers, however, liked the feelings associated with adjectives to loosely link them with their cars.
Thus, the Toyota Qualis faintly suggested quality just as Innova suggested innovation and Fortuner suggested good fortune.
Hyundai’s Creta is, however, a very strange brand name as it does not convey the SUV’s power or performance and faintly suggests some sort of creature.
Maruti Suzuki has quite memorable names like Alto, Wagon R, Ecco, Gypsy and Swift. Its odd spelling of DZire made a noun out of an adjective, but its Ciaz suggests very little in pride or performance.
Some vehicles of Mahindra & Mahindra have conventional brand names like Bolero, Xylo or Scorpio but many of the new ones only have alphabets like KUV100, TUV 300, XUV 500 and XUV 300, but they also have more conventional new ones like Alturas and Marazzo.
The elegant cars in the luxury range, however, have the most inelegant names.
Audi has the A3, A4, A5, A6, A8, Q3, Q5, Q7 and R8. BMW has the 3-series, 5-series, 6-series, 7-series, i8, X1, X3, X5 and X6.
Mercedes-Benz has A-Classe, B-Classe, C-Classe, E-Classe, GLE-Classe, etc. and Volvo has the S60, S90, V40, V90, XC40, XC60 and XC90.
There are however some good conventional names that survive like the Bentley Continental, Ferrari Portofino, Ford Mustang, Jeep Compass, Mitsubishi Pagero, Nissan Sunny, Porsche Boxter, Rolls Royce Phantom, Skoda Octavia and Tata Safari. Some company names like Ferrari, Jaguar, Mesarati and Porsche are so iconic that the names of their models seem rather faded by comparison.
Thus it is clear that the fragrant world of cars and bikes we so love have many more dimensions than the scent of a common rose.