A year and a half ago, SC mentioned a story questioning whether the Chrysler 300 was a good name for a car, and noted the trend toward meaningless alphanumeric strings. Now, courtesy of SC's favorite car talk forum, a Detroit News Article covering a legal spat between Ford and Honda. It seems that there might be too much confusion between the Acura MDX and the forthcoming Lincoln MKX.
On one hand, these strings are so hopelessly semantically bleached, it's hard for SC to see how anyone is going to be fooled into thinking they're buying the wrong vehicle by virtue of the name alone. The vehicles look nothing alike, and there isn't exactly much cross-shopping between these brands at the moment. On the other hand, at just one letter off, it certainly does look like the difference between a $10 streetcorner "Polex" and a genuine Rolex. Then again, Ford claims that MKX is short for "Mark X", and Lincoln's historical claim to being associated a series of vehicles named "Mark (number)" long predates Acura's existence. But then, they also haven't had a "Mark" since the cancellation of the Lincoln Mark VIII in 1998, and as Ford knows all too well from having to rename the GT40 to just GT because they didn't protect the name, you have to protect your trademarks to keep them. And just as Cadillac executives insist that "S" doesn't stand for Seville in the new STS, despite its replacing that vehicle, nor "C" for Catera in the CTS, Ford doesn't even lay claim to the Mark name in their own press release.
In short, SC's view is that whatever MKX's virtues are as a name, it doesn't stand for "Mark X" (which did make the rounds as a concept car). But that doesn't make the wrangling over a letter less asinine.
MDX sounds like a rapper, which fits more with the street-mod-associated Acura.
I'm sure that's what they were going for.
Posted by: eric morse | February 01, 2006 at 03:19 AM