Mercedes to follow VW lead

That's what I've been wondering...whether this is a hoax or veriable by more than one source.

Doesn't Mercedes-Benz already have names for its vehicles? Viano, Vito, Vaneo, Vario, Sprinter, Actros, Axor, Atego, Econic...they're for vans, commerical vans, trucks, busses, etc.

Seeing Mercedes-Benz cars with names makes me shrug. I can't imagine how unprestigious those names would sound for passenger cars.

Oliver

Karl wrote:

Reply to
Ennui Society
Loading thread data ...

Mercedes to follow VW lead

Mercedes, in a surprise move, has decided to follow VW's lead in an area where European auto makers have a decided disadvantage. The issue is model designations.

For years, European companies except VW have designated models with meaningless combinations of letters and numbers. Meanwhile, Asian companies followed the American lead of designating models with descriptive and inspiring names.

VW fell into the practice quite by accident, when the public dubbed its Type 1 "The Beetle". Putting aside false pride, VW followed up with descriptive and inspiring names for its products such as "Squareback Sedan", "Vanagan", and "The Thing".

However, Mercedes and other European companies failed to act. When the Asians followed US practice of naming models, they quickly reserved the remaining good names. Names like Legend, Legacy, Maxima, and Altima would be perfect for Mercedes models, but Mercedes realized the importance too late.

But since names are registered with the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association, Mercedes now has an ample supply of good names. With the acquisition of Chrysler, it now has rights to all names previously used by Chrysler, Dodge, and even AMC and Hudson.

The E Class could easily become Satelite or Diplomat. The C Class might be named Valiant or Metropolitan. Gremlin is a natural for the SLK.

Descriptive and inspiring names are the key to Mercedes prevailing over other European auto makers. Mercedes Windsor is regally inspiring. In contrast, 9-3 and 323i sound like manufacturing date codes on packages of condoms.

Reply to
Comments4u

Date codes maybe, but such codes can also give some a piece of mind that they aren't going to be screwed (at least with any lasting consequences...)

Reply to
KWW

Gremlin in a Merc? That's more applicable to a version (all versions?) of MS Windows..

Diplomat was the name of the range-topping GM Opel.

The S-, E-, CLKs of this world live!

DAS

--

Reply to
Dori Schmetterling

In the good old days atleast, model numbers for Mercedes and bmw's represented their engine capacity aswell.

Atleast you can still laugh at the wanks driving their BMW 318i's thinking their cool with there base model pov pack.

consequences...)

Reply to
Bill

There was a Dodge Diplomat for a while. The posibilities are endless. Imagine some of the Stuttgart output being labeled such things as Hudson Hornet, Plymouth Belvedere, LeBaron, Imperial, Dart, Fury, Fury II, Fury III, Desoto, Rambler, Nash, Aspen, RoadRunner, Baracuda, Pacer, Eagle, . . .

As all old-car afficianados cringe . . . It's bad enough with New Thunder(bi)rd vs old Thunderbird. At least Ford hasn't come out with a new Model T yet, though they did make some replica 1914 models for the centennial

Charles in Palatine

Reply to
Charles Fregeau

And the American (motors) Embassador. I'll never forget site of that fat ass car with the chrome-script "American" on the side trying to weasle down a small alley in France. Like a scene from Felinni or something.

Reply to
jjs

And you can substantiate this info how?

Reply to
Karl

Where do you get this from? Sounds very unlikely to me. VW didn't give their models factory assigned names until they revamped the line in the early '70s with the Golf (Rabbit), Passat (Dasher), Scirocco, Polo etc. When you think about them, most of their names are pretty silly sounding.

Personally, I much preferred Mercedes' old pre 1994 system where each letter S, E, D etc had a clearly defined meaning. The numbers used have never been meaningless, and continue to this day to indicate engine capacity.

The current nomenclature where you have an E Class, A Class and C Class etc seems to have been arrived at mostly by accident, and in the past only the S (super) and SL (sports light) model designations were used to designate a particular series. There was a time when 'E' stood for fuel injection (einspritzung), although that seems redeundant now that all Mercedes cars have this feature. Now that J/S has decided that Mercedes needs to make a car for everyman, spanning almost a dozen different model lines, I suppose some further differentiation is needed. BMW had enough foresight to anticipate this need, and started to assign series designations to their model names in the early '70s, starting the model number with a '5' or '3' etc, while retaining the indication of engine size using the second two numbers.

Naming cars can really get you in trouble too, as it assigns a specific personality to a car, rather than letting the buyer define their own personality. Language issues can also cause problems as Chevy found out with the Nova (in Spanish "No Va" means "doesn't go", and Rolls Royce, who at one time planned a Silver Mist model, until the Germans pointed out that 'mist' is the German word for manure. Silver Shit anyone?

Ferrari has taken an interesting tack, and now gives most of their cars both a name and a number, and the number even denotes the engine size, albeit in a rather contrived way.

Michael Trei

1969 300SEL 6.3 (630 SEL??) 1985 280TE

----== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----

formatting link
The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! >100,000Newsgroups

---= 19 East/West-Coast Specialized Servers - Total Privacy via Encryption =---

Reply to
Michael Trei

This author is ignorant of what he is writing about. Automakers typically use different names in different markets for the same car. Mazda 626 in the USA, was the Cosmo in Japan if I remember right. Various VWs had names in the USA but often had different names in europe. Aston Martins have names, Ferraris have names and numbers, some US made cars in the US market have numbers. There is no consistancy.

Reply to
Brent P

In the U.S. market, Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Acura, Audi, Infiniti, Jaguar (and probably more in the same class) use a combination of letters and numbers for their model designations. Lexuses (Lexii?) are actually Toyotas with names in Japan, but they change it for the U.S. So it's no coincidence that the naming conventions of these Luxury cars are as they are. Look at Hyundai, they're trying so hard to make "luxury" cars that even they've adopted this naming convention.

Giving these luxury car manufacturers' different models regular names would take away from the effect. It would almost sound silly. I seriously doubt Mercedes is even considering such a thing (at least for the US anyway).

btw, the "meaningless combinations of letters and numbers" aren't really meaningless:

600 > 500 > 430 > 320 > 280 > 220 etc. 430 > 400 > 330 > 300 > 250 etc. 330 > 328 > 325 > 323 > 318 etc. A8 > A6 > A4 etc.

Point made.

Reply to
JQ

You guys have all been taken in again.

"Comments for you" is fundamentally an idiot who likes trolling the MB NG. I think he's a Toyota/Lexus shill.

h
Reply to
H

The Cronos, and it was the 626 Cronos in Canada. The Cosmo name has been applied to various 2-door sports Mazdas over the years. Some of them were sold in North America in the early '70s.

Jetta vs. Bora, Rabbit vs. Golf...

DS

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

Yep. The only lead "American's" care about is the lead of other Asian venders that have figured out how to make reliable and durable vehicles for a reasonable price. DaimlerChrysler has come a long way, but it still has a few hills to climb.

Richard.

Reply to
Richard

Saw a model range photo the other day: FIFTEEN. No wonder the management is losing control over teh engineering.

The current style of nomenclature began, it seems to me, when the 190 came out.

That was the first problem. A two-litre engine but in a smaller body. There already was a 200 (W123) so it became 190.

Then we got 190 1.8 and 190 2.3 and 2.6 and 2.5D and total chaos.

So the old standard-sized Merc became E-Class, the letter E becoming available because, as you say, all Mercs had fuel-injection engines. It was obvious to change the S-Klasse with a suffix to the S-Klasse with a prefix. And the 190 was succeeded by the C-Class.

But of course the numbers no longer always mean engine size so we have more chaos. Maybe one day some sensible engineer will bang on tables and reintroduce a consistent nomenclature.

DAS

--

Reply to
Dori Schmetterling

"Comments4u" wrote his usual semi-plausible and entertaining comment.

Suckered more this time than usual ;-)

Huw

Reply to
Huw

The only important Mercedes already has a name.

Unimog.

Nothing else really matters.

Reply to
Paul Hovnanian P.E.

Actros matters.

DAS

--

Reply to
Dori Schmetterling

Daniel, don't be so pedantic. "Mercedes" is a widely accepted abbreviation of Mercedes-Benz, which continues to exist as one division of Daimler Chrysler. It is Daimler-Benz that has ceased to exist. As the original poster's message discussed proposed changes in the naming of Mercedes Benz models, his original heading "Mercedes to follow VW lead" is perfectly accurate.

Michael Trei

1985 280TE 1969 300SEL 6.3

----== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----

formatting link
The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! >100,000Newsgroups

---= 19 East/West-Coast Specialized Servers - Total Privacy via Encryption =---

Reply to
Michael Trei

Well, except for the 190 that was actually a 2.0 liter, unless is it was a

1.8, 2.3, 2.6 or 2.5 liter. Now we have the ML350 that is actually a 3.7 liter. It was first rumored that "370" is a bad luck number in German, but the reality is that it indicates the torque (in nm) rather than engine size and looks to tto be direction of future MBZ nomenclature.

"L" also strood for "lang" or "long" as int he "SEL" models.

This is actually an urban legend:

formatting link

Reply to
Rodney T. Grill

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.