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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.
The rest of the article is worth a read as well.
TFS wasn't worth the read, manishs. No need to bother going to The Verge to read the article.
"News nerds don't give a shit about. Stuff that matters only to marketdroids".
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
"The rest of the article is worth a read as well."
Well the summary was complete shit.
why is this a worthy topic? why is this a worthy article?
Gosh, I miss the good old days where interesting things were discussed rather than these stupid topics.
No, it really isn't.
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.
This signature is false.
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...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Someone doesn't like the name of a car?
Once upon a time, Volvos had a three-digit model number: the first digit was the series, the second the number of cylinders, and the third the number of doors. So you'd know just from the model that the 245 was the lower-end four-cylinder station wagon (the "fifth door").
When they ditched that system (in the '80s?), the first model was something like the 740; their own ad poked fun at themselves, asking "No doors?"
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!