The faithful companion

My wife and I have a dilemma. Not a serious one, mind you, but a dilemma all the same.

We are considering whether to part company with our faithful automotive companion of 11 years. Our dilemma is: we can’t keep its potential replacements straight.

Out in autoland, the descriptors all sound pretty much the same. We’ve got the Subaru Outback, Forester and Crosstrek. Then there’s the Chevrolet Trax or Traverse, the Ford Escape or Explorer, the Mini Countryman, the Nissan Pathfinder, the Honda Crosstour, the Dodge Journey, the Toyota Highlander or the Mitsubishi Outlander. Do I detect some sort of pattern here? To me, all these ho-hum attempts to indicate a vehicle with an innate tendency to seek out back-of-beyond type places just nullify one another. But wait—I have not been entirely truthful. It’s not the Subaru Crosstrek: it’s the Subaru XV Crosstrek. No, I don’t know what it stands for either. My wildest guess is that it is supposed to indicate that the car fits 15 ancient Romans. A more likely thesis is that it can then compare itself with the Toyota Rav4, Honda CRV, Lincoln MKX or MKT, Lexus RX or GS 460 or LX 570, Mazda CX-5 or CX-9 or even the Mitsubishi RVR. Does anyone understand all this numero/lettero stuff?

And it only gets worse once you decide on the model you want. Let’s suppose I have chosen, after careful consideration, a Nissan Murano (perhaps because I imagine my new car to be as delicate as a freshly blown piece of Venetian glassware). I then have to choose which sub-model I want. Do I want the S, SV, SL or Platinum? What do I say? “Well, I can’t have just one lonely letter to describe my beaufiful car, so the S is out, and the Platinum makes me sound like an oil sheik; then again the SV sounds like I’m trying to save money, so I’ll go with the SL.” Of course, I’ll then discover that if I want a heated glove compartment, I’m pretty well stuck with the top of the line model, even though it comes with a high-definition ejector seat I would spend the next 11 years trying to disable.

If we have to give code names to our cars, why can’t we at least code them consistently? In other words, whether I choose to buy a Kia Sportage or a Jeep Compass, if I compare the XKV195 model from each manufacturer, I would know instantly I am looking at a vehicle wherein XKV stands for an all-wheel drive, automatic transmission model; 1 stands for the number of comfortable seats, 9 for a standard continuous play cassette player and 5 for the number of useful square feet of storage space.

How much are these companies paying their marketing people to come up with such unimaginative names? Do they sit at their conference tables all day long, armed with up-to-the-second consumer opinion polls, brainstorming as to whether to call a vehicle the ‘Uploader JK5’ or the ‘Frontiersperson XQRP77’? I suppose they would say I am not giving them enough credit, I am overlooking the fact that they have come up with such incredible meaningless names as Venza, Prius, Stanza and Sentra. Okay. Let them take all the credit they want.

Have they ever considered a broader range of affinities? You have a few vehicles named after animals, such as the Chevrolet Impala or the Ford Mustang. A few named after exotic places, such as the Chevrolet Orlando and the Kia Sedona. Why not keep going on this more evocative road? Why not name cars after plants? Wouldn’t the Ford Bougainvillea XGJ350 sound like your type of car? Or how about foods: the Dodge Rigatoni ABY500 sounds like just the kind of car that would add a little spice to my humdrum life.

So what should other important factors be in choosing a car? My wife and I figure that if we are going to spend more than we need to to get a new car, it better be in a colour that appeals to us. And yet, according to one recent survey, almost 75 per cent of new cars are white, black, silver or gray (in that order). Red, blue, brown, gold, green and orange (orange!)— again, in that order—fight out the remaining quarter. In other words, you can have pretty well any colour you want, so long as it’s probably black, gray, silver or white. It’s all enough to make us stick with our 11- year-old faithful companion. Even if it doesn’t have a heated glove compartment.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca