Welcome To Alphanumeric Car Hell (theverge.com)

Jason H. Harper, writing for The Verge: Et tu, Hyundai? Until recently, the Korean brand offered two upmarket cars, the Genesis and the Equus. The first name had biblical shades and the latter shared a title with a play where an adolescent likes to get naked and straddle horses. So while the connotations were a bit muddled, at least they were memorable. Now Hyundai has spun Genesis into its own luxury brand, akin to what Toyota did with Lexus decades ago. And in so doing, it has cast off those memorable names in favor of an alphanumeric naming strategy. The Hyundai Genesis is reborn as the Genesis G80 and the Equus sheds its horsey homage to become the G90, which guarantees that I won't remember the new names. I'll just call the G90 the Model-Formerly-Known-as-Equus. And while the two models seemed well differentiated before, now the distinctions are hazy. The G90 apparently has 10 more units of something over the G80. Perhaps it is 10 percent better. Ten percent bigger? Ten grand more expensive? Welcome to Alphanumeric Hell.The rest of the article is worth a read as well.

Comments

With a reason?

[jxander]

So long as there's rhyme and reason to the numbering scheme, I have no problem with it.

BMW does this, and it's awesome. The first digit is the body style (3 is small, 5 is mid, 7 is large), and the next 2 digits are the engine displacement. They add letters on the end for extra little features: i for Fuel Injection, s for Sport Package, L for Luxury Package, etc. So a 328is is a small car with a 2.8L engine, fuel injection and sport package.

They recently added even numbers to denote 2-door variants, and left odd numbers for 4-doors. They've also started putting x or i in front for SUVs or Electric/Hybrids respectively, but the concept holds. The alphanumeric scheme serves a purpose.

Re:With a reason?

[almitydave]

BMW does this, and it's awesome. The first digit is the body style (3 is small, 5 is mid, 7 is large), and the next 2 digits are the engine displacement. They add letters on the end for extra little features: i for Fuel Injection, s for Sport Package, L for Luxury Package, etc. So a 328is is a small car with a 2.8L engine, fuel injection and sport package.

Except when they don't, and put a 2.0 liter engine in a *30, or a 3.0 liter engine in a *28.

They recently added even numbers to denote 2-door variants, and left odd numbers for 4-doors. They've also started putting x or i in front for SUVs or Electric/Hybrids respectively, but the concept holds. The alphanumeric scheme serves a purpose.

The odd/even thing is stupid, especially when the 4 series is just a 3 series with 2 fewer doors, but the 6 series is not related to the 5 series stylistically (other than sharing a platform). The fact is that BMW is prone to marketing nonsense in their names like every other manufacturer. Hyundai is switching to alphanumeric model names, because that's what all mass-production luxury car makers do (it's true of BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Lexus, Infiniti).

Re:With a reason?

[Anonymous Coward]

BMW's inconsistency isn't even new. In the 80's the 325i had a 2.5L, the 325e and the 528e both had the same 2.7L, the 535i had a 3.4L, and the 745i had a 3.2L (with a turbo).

Re:Numbers Are Easy

[i.r.id10t]

Numbers are easy, until marketing and/or legal gets involved.

Porsche numbered their cars based on project number. So the iconic 356 is the 356th project that Porsche Engineering undertook.

Except Ferry didn't want his first customer to think they were the first... so the first project was #7, so the 356 is actually project number 349 (this is where marketing kicked in for him).

This carried on with sub assemblies - the 744 transmission, etc.

Then the 901 was introduced. And after they made 34 cars, Peugeot called their legal department and it was decided that they had an issue with any other car maker making a car and badging wtih a 3 digit number where the middle number is a 0. And so overnight the 901 became the 911.... of course, one of those first 34 cars with the 901 badging are VERY collectible, even over and above any other early 911...

Re:Math is hard

[TechyImmigrant]

No, English is imprecise. If the G80 is 80% good and the G90 is 90% good, than the G90 is 10% better than G80 even though G90 isn't 10% better than G80 is.

90% of something is 12.5% more than 80% of something.