Crowdsourcing the name of your new car | Axon’s Automotive Anorak

Beyond resorting to randomly rearranging a selection of letters from a Scrabble bag, deciding on a suitable name for a new car model can be just as stressful and problematic for the motor industry because many of the most impactful and memorable vehicle names are already spoken for, and legally registered as worldwide trademarks in many cases.

Recent history suggests that premium car makers tend to opt for a minimalist numeric and letter combination for model designations, like the BMW 745e, Audi A6, Lexus LS 500 and Volvo XC90. Some more mainstream models are named, like the Ford Focus, Honda Civic, Skoda Fabia, Fiat Panda and so on. High-end models often prove exceptions to the rules, adopting names rather than numbers, like Rolls-Royce Phantom, Bentley Mulsanne, Pagani Huayra, Cadillac De Ville and more.

Over the years a handful of car makers have come up with some ingenious solutions to choosing a name for a new model. In the early 1950s, for example, Alfa Romeo ran a competition internally to find a suitable name for its important new entry-level model, the 101-Series, better known as the Giulia, with a desirable 101 Bertone Sprint Coupe being the prize awarded to the lucky winning entry.

Alfa Romeo repeated the exercise a few years later to launch the convertible variant of the Giulia in 1966, except this time it opened the competition up to the Italian public at large. A write-in competition invited people to name the Pininfarina-designed two-seater with the winner receiving a car. More than 100,000 entries were received with the chosen winner coming from Brescia. Guidobaldo Trionfi proposed the name Duetto (Italian for Duet) to signify the romanticism of the pretty two-seater. Unfortunately this fell foul of trademark law and the car was officially named the Alfa Romeo Spider 1600, although the Series 1 boat tail became known popularly known as the Duetto.

Rather than taking more ‘obvious’ naming inspirations from a geographic location (such as a mountain range, like the Ford Cortina and Taunus, Triumph Dolomite, Dodge Aspen), birds (Suzuki Swift, AMC Eagle, Ford Falcon), the weather (the windy Maserati Mistral and Bora, Volkswagen Scirocco, Mercury Cyclone) or a favoured family member (such as Ferrari Dino, Ford’s failed Edsel or the Lotus Elise), British Leyland also took a leaf out of Alfa Romeo’s book by opening up suggestions in-house to all BL employees to submit a suitable appellation for the vital new Austin ‘supermini’ hatchback ahead of its late 1980 launch. The highly-appropriate Metro name (initially Mini Metro, to help reinforce the new model’s close connections to the celebrated city car) was the victorious selected tag in preference to Match or Maestro (the latter name used on Austin’s 1983 Allegro replacement), its BL employee originator proudly being handed the keys to one of the very first shiny new Metros built for his winning name proposal. 

Today, almost 70 years after its now-FCA/Stellantis colleagues at Alfa Romeo first created the idea Fiat’s successful Brazilian division is adopting a similar approach, embracing 21^st Century tech to help choose a name for a new smaller SUV B-segment model entry.

Brazil is a huge market for new passenger car production and sales, and a vital one for Fiat as its dominates this sizeable South American market, unusually beating its immediate rivals such as Volkswagen, Ford and General Motors/Chevrolet.

As a key Fiat market (second only to Italy), Brazil enjoys a number of special Fiat models specific to that country and its Latin American neighbours. These include the Uno, a historically familiar Fiat name attached to an all-new Panda-derived city hatchback, this being supplemented by the popular Mobi and Argos hatch models. There’s also the Fiat Cronos and Grand Siena saloons, plus the small Toros and New Strada pick-up models, essential for success in Brazil. 

Present in Brazil since 1973 (when it took over the local FNM heavy commercial vehicle company and began building its own Fiat-branded trucks, plus the Brazil-only Alfa Romeo 2300), Fiat set the Brazilian car industry ablaze in 1976 when it introduced its 127-derived 147, the Country’s first modern front-wheel-drive hatch, making Brazil’s previous best-seller, the faithful VW Fusca/Sedan (Beetle) instantly seem like an outdated relic of the past.

The Fiat 147 is notable too for being the very first car in Brazil built specifically to run on ethanol (E100) alcohol fuel, enormously popular in that country as an alternative to petrol as it is at least 25 per cent cheaper per litre. Such was the success of the Fiat 147 E100 derivative that the model quickly gained the nickname ‘cachacinha’ (little cachaça) as it had the smell of that drink when the E100 engine was running. The 147’s healthy career ran for eleven-years, long enough to establish Fiat as the number one car brand in the competitive Brazilian market, a position it still holds today.

To help chose the name of this new model, based on Fiat’s new MLA platform, a tailor-made mini-site (in Portuguese) has been created at https://suv.fiat.com.br/. Visitors to the website can leave their contact details and vote for their preferred name of this model among three proposals put forward by Fiat, the choice being between: Pulse, Domo or Tuo.

Until the final naming decision is made and announced ahead of this new Fiat SUV being more ‘formally’ launched this coming September, this new model will be known as ‘Progetto Fiat 363’. At launch Brazilian customers will have the choice between two engines: a 1.3-litre naturally aspirated 111PS (82kW) and 139Nm (103lb ft) unit mated with a CVT automatic, plus a 1.0-litre turbo with 127PS (93kW) and around 190Nm (141lb ft), attached to a six-speed automatic transmission.

For what it’s worth, given the limited choice of three potential names, the Fiat Pulse gets my vote. What about you?