LRIGHT, SINCE I WORK FOR A CAR
company it won’t be right for me to comment on
cars produced by other firms. That said, as an
honest car enthusiast I can dwell a bit into the car
names, right?
Where do I begin. Ah, the Hyundai Venue. Brilliant isn’t it? Venue
is okay, considering that they would certainly have discussed
‘auditorium’, ‘hall’, ‘theatre’ and even ‘ground’ before reaching
there. But then, this is the car company that created a decent car
and called it ‘Creta’. I haven’t gotten over that yet. Soon Hyundai
will launch their first EV that answers to the name, hang on tight,
‘Kona’! Seriously, the nomenclature division at Hyundai has gone
on a long holiday and the accountants are having a ball. Why
accountants? Because I hate the bunch.
When a Chinese-owned British brand makes an SUV for Indian
roads, the name it gets should come from Greek
history, right? That explains Hector for you.
Wasn’t it the British who taught us that cars are
feminine?
I am seriously cross with Tata Motors too.
See, Harrier is an iconic name and when I hear
it, images of jump jets taking off from INS
Vikrant come to mind. It is not right to use it for
a car. I really don’t know the logic of Tigor and
Nexon too but they are okay, Harrier is not.
So Toyota is badge-engineering a beautifully-
named Suzuki called the Baleno. And, drum
rolls, what are they calling it? Glanza! Is it meor do you also think of internal organs of the human body when
you hear Glanza?
Audi, like Mercedes and BMW, normally sticks to alpha-numeric
names, but got a bit creative and called their electric stunner
E-TRON, which translates in French as sh**. Deal with it.
Perhaps I am nit-picking but why should anyone call a car Ciaz –
even if the car has a reasonably good-looking rear end?
The electric two-wheeler start-ups are mushrooming in India. As
they swim like manic sperms to reach the goal of financial funding,
they need to have sophisticated names for their mock-ups, right?
So, you have Revolt, Ultraviolette and Lightning striking our roads
soon. That said, I do think Harley-Davidson got a nice name for
their electric bike – Livewire!
While on the electric theme, if you think the Tesla models are
named S, 3, X and now Y for no reason, you are wrong. Tesla is bent
on putting the ‘S3XY’ ness back on cars. Got it?
Jaguar launches an all-new electric car and
swept the World Car of The Year Awards. But
what the I-Pace won’t win, in my opinion, is
the Name Of The Year Award. (Quite a piece of
kit, this one, by the way, with the equivalent of
394bhp and a range of 350km – Ed, can I drive
one soon?)
While Superb, Octavia and Rapid are
excellent names with er... superb recall, Skoda
lost it completely with the Yeti. I really don’t
know what prompted VW to call its sub-4-metre
car Ameo though Vento is somewhat passable.
After building the Miura, Countach,
Jalpa, Diablo, Murcielago, Aventador, Gallardo and Huracan,
Lamborghini could only come up with Urus for their SUV. Slightly
sad.
Rolls-Royce always stuck to names related to the ‘spirits’ after
they earned the nick-name Silver Ghost some 100 years ago. And
what stunning names – Phantom, Wraith, Dawn.... Alas when it
came to building an SUV, the German owner threw history out of
the window and called it ‘Cullinan’ after the largest rough diamond
ever found. I personally think they should have never succumbed
to building an SUV in any case!
On a personal note, I got a chance to name two customised
Mahindra Thars – the first one was the Midnight and what followed
was, obviously, Daybreak. And if you insist, I could have come up
with a better name to the Innova contender of ours. Perhaps next
time! LBijoy Kumar is the founding editor of BS Motoring magazine and now heads Mahindra Adventure@bky911Ramblings
BIJOY KUMAR Y
Bijoy mulls over manufacturers’ odd logic when it comes to naming cars
A
‘Why should
anyone call a
car Ciaz – even
if the car has a
reasonably good-
looking rear end?’
64 http://www.evoIndia.com | July 2019