There must be something lost in translation. The English-language version of Korea's Maeil Business web site is reporting that Kia will introduce a "premium large-sized" SUV in the U.S. next June. It'll have either a V6 or V8 engine (which would be Kia's first). So far so good. Then they give the original name of the vehicle as "Mohave," which we can only guess is their phonetic spelling of "Mojave," the concept vehicle on which it's based. BUT… now Kia is changing the name from that to "Borrego," after "a desert situated in eastern San Diego, California." The reason for the name change? "Because the word 'Borrego' is more familiar to Americans than the original name 'Mohave.'" I wonder if they got that information from their design center in Irvine, California, which designed the Mojave Mohave Borrego. If so, their marketing mavens need to get their heads out of Southern California and get in touch with the rest of the country before making such an assumption. Just sayin'.
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I live in Canada and I have never heard of Borrego. Much more familiar with Mojave though. maybe they should call it, say; Sahara or Gobi or Death Valley.
Or, better yet,’The KIA jaut (just another ugly truck)’.
And stop assuming that truck buyers want plastic fender extensions, fake carriage bolts, ricer scoops and beltlines so Mack-truck tall you can’t grab anything from the side of the bed without a frickin’ step ladder.
There, I feel better now.
Fonetik(?)
Meeh, meeeh…. Borrego is a Spanish word for Lamb…
When I hear Borrego I think of coyotes smuggling illegal aliens across the border…
I don’t know why that is. Maybe I saw it on a TV show…
There really is an Anza Borrego Desert State Park in California. You learn something new every day.
shades of the Nissan Fair Lady
It is actually Anza-Borrego State Park. Beautiful area.
Doesn’t GM has the Sonora?
Dea, I think your thinking of Rainbow Six: Vegas. That was the last time I heard that phrase.
And I’ve never heard of Borrego. Are they taking the GMC route and naming their products after State Parks now?
That’s nothing against the Nissan Pajero, which is an SUV I think only sold in Europe. In Spain, the Pajero is marketed under another name, since Pajero means “wanker” in Spanish (so I’ve been told).
Giving vehicles geographic-linked names seems to be a popular trend lately. Let’s see… there’s Colorado, Sonoma, Sierra, Canyon, Malibu, Sedona, Rio, Santa Fe, Tucson, Veracruz, Lucerne, Tahoe, Aspen, Sebring, Dakota, Durango, Yukon, Milan, Montego, Reno, Avalon, Acadia… can anyone think of any more that are currently in use?
The actual new Borrego vehicle is yet another on-frame oversized SUV, not pickup truck.
I’m guessing that the actual Mohave name will be used on a pickup truck version of same (assuming that these new vehicles will eventually be coming out of Kia’s upcoming US plant – in order to avoid the “chicken tax” of 25% of fully built-up pickup trucks imported into the US).
Martin Schwoerer :
That’s nothing against the Nissan Pajero
Actually it’s the Mitsubishi Pajero, which is sold here as the Montero.
“Mohave”, aka “Mo’have” is street vernacular for “more have”, the awkward translation from Korean meaning “to possess more attributes than the competition”.
I think they should’ve stuck with Mojave (although I think Hyundai might’ve had a problem since all of thier SUV’s have a southwest theme when it comes to names).
They need to work on that Fisher-Price styling, though. It looks as toyish as the Suzuki X-90
3 cheers for brainless executives deciding such things as naming through a big committee. “What? Patty in accounting hasn’t heard of the Mojave? Whoops, better get the creative team on the phone and schedule a teleconference…”
Maybe they should have focus-grouped it, too.
They need to get much more creative with names. How about “Urban Decay” or “Swamp” and who wouldn’t want to drive a Dodge Wetland.
Wow, just wow. First let me say as a Spanish speaker that Nova doesn’t sound like a joke in Spanish – yeah, “no va” means “doesn’t work” in a few countries (not all), but “nova” has the same astronomical meaning as in English.
But Borrego DOES mean lamb or sheep and there’s no other meaning, no way for me to not think of lambs when I see or hear it. I can’t take this SUV seriously!
(As for Pajero, maybe it’s a colloquialism in a few countries, but I think it’s a bit of a stretch. In Spain at least, “echar una paja” is indeed “to wank,” and -ero is the verb suffix for “one who…” so it’s technically correct. But it’s like the college trend of saying “I am homeworking” – a word based on standard grammatical rules that’s totally made up and just sounds silly.)
The Pajero is actually a Mitsubishi, sold as the Montero in the US and most Spanish speaking markets and the Shogun in the UK. Speaking of which, Borrego Yellow was a Land Rover Freelander paint color.
Call it the Burrito and do a big copromote with Taco Bell.
Glenn beat me to it – Kia announced the Borrego as a body on frame SUV, not pickup.
Found a reference to it on *gasps* Autoweek.
As far as misspellings go, I live in a sub-division where all the streets are named after Native American tribes. Sometime about two years Navajo was turned into Navaho.
carlisimo, you made me laugh! What’s with these car companies, don’t they stop and check things out in other languages?! “Yeah, I got me a Kia SHEEP SUV!”
What about when GM named their Buick the LaCrosse, which was fine until someone found out that it meant “wanking” in Quebecois….
Or how about the Honda Fit? I actually took the trouble to write to them and ask if they wouldn’t consider calling it the Jazz, as they do in much of the rest of the world, instead of Fit – maybe it’s my age? But FIT means “seizure” to me – perhaps it is because I had a late cousin who had epilepsy real bad, is why I think of the word that way… but Honda didn’t even respond to my letter, and it’s a Honda FIT. And yeah, I can’t bring myself to buy a car which makes me think of seizures! Not exactly a happy connotation. Perhaps Honda thought I was only some LaCrosse…
The actual new Borrego vehicle is yet another on-frame oversized SUV, not pickup truck. Kia announced the Borrego as a body on frame SUV, not pickup. Well… uh… yes, as the post states, "Kia will introduce a 'premium large-sized' SUV." The styling is supposedly based on the Mojave concept pickup, which is what is pictured.
California place names are all the rage.
Many of the attractive locations have already been used, but that leaves plenty of hellholes in the Central Valley up for grabs:
How about the Ford Fresno?
Buick Bakersfield?
Lexus Los Banos (The Toilet)?
Mitsubishi Manteca (Lard)?
Kia Kettleman?
Giving vehicles geographic-linked names seems to be a popular trend lately. Let’s see… there’s Colorado, Sonoma, Sierra, Canyon, Malibu, Sedona, Rio, Santa Fe, Tucson, Veracruz, Lucerne, Tahoe, Aspen, Sebring, Dakota, Durango, Yukon, Milan, Montego, Reno, Avalon, Acadia… can anyone think of any more that are currently in use?
How about Chevy Eutopia for the car that runs that run 40miles on batteries alone at 70 mph?
can anyone think of any more that are currently in use?
Toyota Tacoma (I drive one.) As the folks at Edmunds said when it came out, it was undoubtedly intended to invoke the image of a rugged Western locale, but it was also obvious that the people who named it had never actually been to Tacoma, which has always been generally considered the ugly stepsister of Seattle.
And lest the Tacoma (the city) lovers come out of the woodwork here, I was stationed near Tacoma from 89-91 (Fort Lewis) and quite liked it. It did have something of a pollution problem with the big paper mill on the North side of town (the first thing visitors from Seattle would encounter, which probably counted for much of Tacoma’s sad reputation) but was otherwise a very charming small city. And the view of Mt Rainier from Tacoma is much more spectacular than from more distant Seattle.