Our Two Cents: How Do You Kill an Iconic Car Name?
Perhaps this was a question on par with the lowest of low-hanging fruit. Names have been recycled for decades in loads of industries, not just in the automobile-centric world of everyone here at Hagerty Media. There are only so many ways you can stretch the Star Wars franchise, or use classic architecture to kit out homes on the cheap.
Put another way, what iconic names have companies used for a car that didn’t earn it? I asked my co-workers what came to mind.
Town & Country
“I have never emotionally recovered from Chrysler’s liberal use of the vaunted ’Town & Country’ nameplate. How dare they use it on a minivan?” – Cameron Neveu
Dale Earnhardt + Monte Carlo
“This is pretty bad in retrospect: Two birds with one stone, I guess.” – Chris Stark
Gran Tourismo?
“I get irrationally angry at carmakers’ abuse of the ‘GT’ label. I like the original distinction that set Gran Turismos, or Grand Tourers, apart from other, lesser cars: fast, luxurious 2+2s with a long nose and a short deck designed for crossing continents at high speeds in great comfort.
Your Ram 1500 pickup truck is not a GT, Dodge. And neither, for that matter, is your Grand Caravan. Nor is your Cayenne Turbo SUV, Porsche. The list of offenders is much longer than this, but I’m just getting irrationally angry now…” – Stefan Lombard
The Less Super SS
“One could argue that Chevrolet’s trend in the mid-2000s of slapping ‘SS’ on everything killed that moniker. Malibu Maxx SS? HHR SS? The same could be said for the Ford ‘ST’ badging. Once it went on Explorer and Edge, it really jumped the shark.” – Todd Kraemer
“The HHR SS panel van is kinda cool though.” – Chris Stark
That Mexican Road Race…
“Porsche has used the ‘Carrera’ name so often, from its most sophisticated engines and models all the way down to the base 911, that the word has basically lost all meaning. We get it, you won a road race in Mexico 70 years ago, but you have plenty of other heritage to draw on. Pick a new word. But that’s not as bad as using ‘Turbo’ on your luxury EV that, you know, doesn’t have a turbocharger.” – Andrew Newton
Stop Blazing This Trail!
“I still get emotionally triggered at Chevrolet’s use of the Blazer name on their CUVs. As a massive full-size Blazer fan, I feel personally attacked at the fact that they would so mindlessly slap that name on a vehicle that doesn’t live up to the heritage that name represents.” – Greg Ingold
GTO
“Pontiac did a lot of things right when it revived the GTO model with a fifth generation in 2004: Rear wheel drive, manual transmission, and powerful V-8 up front. Sadly the styling just missed the mark, likely due to how many cars were going retro during that era, and those others did a better job calling back to the good old days.
The modern GTO is as GTO as ever when looked at for what it actually is, but when the Mustang and Camaro were the old name and at least some of the old looks, bringing back the legendary name with little of the legendary style doomed it from the start. Even before the death of Pontiac in 2009, the GTO was likely never to return.” – Kyle Smith
Road Runner
“Plymouth/Chrysler had a wonderful vehicle in the 1968 Road Runner; they even paid Warner Brothers $50,000 to use the name, and certainly the ‘beep, beep’ horn must have been extra. (And well worth it—I used it a lot on my 1973 model.) The car was golden in the first generation, good in the second generation, which included my ’73, but beyond that, a disaster.
For the third generation, starting in 1975, they stuck the name on a lame model of the full-sized Fury, but adding insult to injury, they used it on a Volare-based F-body model in 1976, which at least had an optional 360-cubic-inch V-8. That lasted until 1980, when the name quietly, and mercifully, died.
Hagerty values my favorite, a base 1969 Plymouth Road Runner, at $38,300 in #3 (Good) condition, which is down 8.1 percent but still too rich for my blood, assuming you can still find a ‘base’ car with the 383-cubic-inch V-8—many of them have been swapped out for a Hemi engine. Since even the base car is too rich for my blood, I’ll just admire them from afar.” – Steven Cole Smith
All of Pontiac?
“I’ll pile onto Pontiac. The brand was one of the biggest in the United States through the 60s and 70s AND had a distinct identity—very difficult to achieve. When GM management weakened the division structure in the 1980s, effectively making its brands marketing arms as opposed to semi-independent companies, Pontiac was probably the biggest victim.
Pretty much every car that wore the arrow head from the early 80s through the early 2000s was disappointing in some way, a watering down of the brand identity. By the time they got around to building rear-drive cars again in the Bob Lutz era, it was really too late.” – David Zenlea
“Sajeev asked about killing a model, and I think we successfully made a case for how to kill an entire brand with Pontiac.” – Greg Ingold
NUMMI Nova?
“I kinda thought someone would do the low-hanging fruit, but I’ll throw it out there. The great Nova name was killed with a vengeance when they put it on that 1980s Chevy-Toyota abomination.” – Todd Kraemer
Quad 4-4-2?
“I was gonna bring up Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais Quad 442, but then I remembered just how much effort they put into the last of these muscular coupes. Yes, it was a blocky little body driving the wrong wheels with too few pistons and too many camshafts. But at least those camshafts were unique, tunes for more power and a lumpier idle in the proud tradition of hot-rodding American cars.
I’m not even going to bring up the rarer W-40 and W-41 option packages. I regret bringing these little rocket ships with rocket emblems up because they were a valiant effort. Or at least, they were better than what I am now thinking about.
Ah heck, I guess the Mustang Mach-E is the one for me. It’s certainly not a Mustang, it’s more like a genetic mashup of a Taurus SHO and every yawn-inducing CUV on the planet. Of course, the regular Mustang Pony Car isn’t dead, but the sooner the Mach-E goes away, the better in my book.” – Sajeev Mehta
Question for those familiar with trademark law: How much does name reuse fit into legal reasons for keeping a name under brand ownership? For example, I believe action figure IP owners like Hasbro have to keep reusing names to maintain ownership of them within the Transformers and GI Joe lines.
Here’s a page with the basic info – https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/maintain/keeping-your-registration-alive
The 1975 Roadrunner was not based on the full-sized Fury as the Fury nameplate had moved to the mid-size Plymouth for 1975. It was still the same B-body platform as the 73/74 Roadrunners underneath with most of the same engine options and even the hallowed RM21 designation in the VIN. Fun fact: The car was supposed to carry on as a 1976 model (AMT even released a 1/24 model kit of a B-body 1976 “Fury” Roadrunner) but Chrysler decided late in the game to make it a trim option on the Volaré instead.
Absolutely correct. I actually liked the 1975 Road Runner even though it was mostly just a trim package on the Fury coupe.
As a huge Pontiac aficianado, I will agree with you regarding almost everything they made from 1982 on, with the exception of the Holden based GTO, the 1989 Turbo Trans Am, and most especially the 2002 Trans Am WS6. They put everything into that last T/A and it was a legitimate player.
The absolute worst name killer is by far Blazer…GM really blew it with that one, especially after what Ford did with the Bronco nameplate.
What about when a name is nearly killed but then redeemed? I remember when I told my friends that my dad had a Charger, they all thought it was a cool car. No, not that one, I had to explain. The ’80s one. But later, Dodge did right by the name and remade it to what it was supposed to have been all along.
A four-door sedan? We’ll have to agree to disagree.
It really boils down to two things: One, it’s less costly to simply pull an old name from the dust bin instead of going through the search and legal expense to make sure new name use doesn’t trample on existing brands. Two, manufactures either mistakenly think memories are short, and rebadging will not conjure up prior model memories, or maybe they do and feel that these memories will enhance the new model badging. Regardless, it makes for an often times amusing and many times a mystifying occurrence.
My bet is that the target market for the newer cars is too young to remember the old cars (not exactly your “memories are short”, but close).
Add the unattractive E-Mustang to the upper part of the Hagerty list. I think it was an ill-considered decision by Ford to paste the Mustang brand onto that “Electric-station wagon”. Would have been better to resurrect the Ford “Probe” name and re-use “Probe” onto the E-Mustang. Some will remember that decades ago, Ford gave advance notice that they planned to put the Mustang name on the new Probe. After many complaints, that’s when Ford wisely reconsidered and named it “Probe”.
You could always take a legendary Japanese sports car that was your flagship like the Toyota Supra and then have someone else have a contractor build it for you. Sure it’s a good car but you have now soiled the name of the car and a bit your company when all your reasons for doing it have been undone by a Corolla.
Using the iconic Ford ‘Lightning’ truck name, with its supercharger engine, on the EV pickup…BLASPHEMY!
How about Rolls Royce dropping their iconic Radiator grill and replacing it with with a mobile tombstone?!
That radiator grill was not particularly aerodynamic.
Oh Boy GM is the real sticker on this. Berlinetta? Corsa?
Just great examples of how far car design has fallen among other things in the last 40 years.
A couple. First of course is the e-tang which just looks ugly, as most e-cars do. The grille is/was the most iconic feature of a vehicle, so removing it for a blanking plate is just marketing 0. Dumb mistake.
Second – the Crysler Pacifica. I remember when it was the last true Behemouth they sold. It was HUGE. Then it vanished only to reappear a few years later as a … minivan. Worse, the spokesperson was Celine Dion – great singer but hardly a “soccer mom”, which is what this new minivan was.
Probably my most eggregious is the pretending that a german mini is still a mini (i.e. why they allow those things to enter “Classic British Car Shows” is beyond stupid, IMO). The Austin mini was a classic, and the thing they sell now is just another example of what happens when they make a cheap plastic replica of classics. (watching videos on engine repairs on the new bmw mini is great for a laugh if you don’t have to pay for the work!).
If you want a better laugh, watch Davin’s Redline Rebuild of one of the old ones. The clutch is a larger copy of a Triumph motorcycle clutch.
Any post-1972 Z-28 Camaro.
How did you miss Maserati Ghibli?
I have been a Jaguar fan for over seventy years and have owned four Jags to date. I think they just signed their death warrant with the Ultra luxury EV model.