The thesis that name and form are inseparable, a truth endorsed by both the Theravedan Bhuddist text Visuddhi-Magga and Paul Niedermeyer, has found new support in the recently-released Polk Loyalty Study (PDF) (via PR Newswire). Studying brand repurchase and defection rates in Q1 2008, Polk and Co found that 55 percent of owners whose model was discontinued prior to re-entering the market defected to another brand. That compares to 47 percent defection for owners of non-discontinued models from the same brand. The elder Niedermeyer was particularly prescient in pointing out how this dynamic has hurt GM in particular, thanks to its pathological renaming of mid-sized and smaller offerings. This “same name dividend” is as high as 12.7 percent for compact cars according to the report, but fades to a “negligible impact” for large cars and pickups. The Cavalier to Cobalt transition in specific is said by the report to have cost GM “millions in potential sales.”
Still, I can’t wrap my head around normal people who thought “I’d like another Cavalier”. Masochists maybe, but not normal people.
^^^ True that. But still, I can’t think of any reason to discontinue a model and then replace it with something that competes in the same class other than to admit, “This car is so obsolete that we need to bury it and start all over again.”
I don’t know about this one. Without seeing the survey, it’s kind of meaningless. Another perspective is to consider that GM might have figured out that the Cavalier was turdly. So one day after aimlessly wandering through the tool aisle at The Home Depot, it occured to them to use the name “Cobalt.” Heck, it’s working for The Home Depot, right?
That defection rates for owners of discontinued/renamed models are higher is a fact.
That the the discontinuation/renaming is causing the defections is an assumption.
My alternate hypothesis is that cars are being discontinued/renamed because they are horrible and have low quality, and that owners are defecting because said cars are horrible and have low quality.
The name changes are being driven by the same horrible low quality as the defections, but they are not causing the defections.
The Cavalier buyer switched to a Civic, etc., or upgraded to a Camcord, etc., because the Cavalier sucked, not because he went back to Chevy dealer, could only find Cobalts, and left in confusion.
The Civic has always been good, so customers have come back, and Honda has never tried to rename it out of embarrassment.
Slush that sounds reasonable.
But the Impala still outsells the Bu.
People are creatures of habit. Most of them don’t know a good car from a bad and purchase cars in a state of fear and ignorance, with primordial instinct as their only guide.
This study is total garbage. You need to track the purchase behavior across brands — and then look at it by eliminated model.
The “case study,” on the Pacifica, borders on the absurd — yep, no more Pacifica at Chrysler, they buy a similar model elsewhere.
The “case study” on the Cavalier totally ignores the cross brand impact overall in this segment. Nor does it factor in any way, owner satisfaction. (e.g., “I’m fed up with my Chevy, I’m buying a Toyota”) — once burned after all? I’m sure the data is there – but then Polk wouldn’t want to bite the hand that feeds it after all.
Much more helpful would be a study that looks at shifts in US vs non US brands… after all, you’d think that if the US automakers wanted to recapture (or hold) share — they’d figure out what models owners of their cars found MORE attractive!
I agree with no_slushbox. I’ve worked on re-named models, like Windstar to Freestar and Monterey. I think the renaming is entirely due to the fact that the car was a stinker and everybody knew it.
Bob
ps The Monterey was the Mercury version of the Windstar.
So one day after aimlessly wandering through the tool aisle at The Home Depot, it occured to them to use the name “Cobalt.” Heck, it’s working for The Home Depot, right?
Actually, it’s not working as well for The Home Depot as it is for Lowe’s. The Home Depot carries Husky brand tools, Lowe’s carries the Cobalt name.
I have thought about this more than once, and can’t see how changing a name helps sales. Whether a good car or not, Cavalier was a well known name, and if they had kept the name and improved the car —which incedentally, they really didn’t— then the Cavalier would have sold just fine. Instead, they’re about to have yet another name on their compact car, just as people get used to Cobalt. OTOH Ford kind of figured it out and brought back the Taurus name. I guess time will tell, but I’d say good or bad, name recognition means something.
As crappy as some recent domestic offering were I think it was stupid to keep changing names willy nilly. What’s wrong with evolving a product, even through its neglected stages, and keeping it in the public’s consciousness.
Were the Camry and Accord perfect when they were introduced, are they perfect now… no, but keeping the same name allows the public to recognize and notice all the Camry and Accords they see and that company is constantly updating them.
Ford, especially, made the ridiculous decision a few year ago to have all Ford models start with the letter F, hence the Fusion, Five Hundred, Freestyle, Freestar, and Flex. Goodbye Taurus and Windstar… while the last itinerations were not great at least the names had some equity. At least the Taurus name is coming back.
Look at the Mustang in particular, it’s had some stinker years design wise, but the name stays the Mustang evolves and is an icon for Ford the same way Camry says Toyota and Accord says Honda.
Also, doesn’t dropping a model name kill re-sale.
Maybe this is what prompted Ford to go with the naming – dumping and renaming – then digging the old name out of the trash re-naming fiasco they tried with the Taurus…
“Oh, you were looking for the Taurus? Well, this Five Hundred here is the same car…Why didn’t we call it a Taurus then? Well, ummm, because it’s better. If the old Taurus was a 99, this is a five hundred! Lot’s better, you see? What? You really wanted a Taurus? Ummm…uh, hold on, let me see if I’ve got an old name badge sitting around in back somewhere…”
@Sparks
that fiasco was funny as hell.
Ford kept the Taurus name with the idea they could continue selling 100k+ cars with no investment… something like Towncar, etc. Didn’t exactly work out that way as what remained of Taurus sales was further split between 500 and Taurus. One of the first things Mulally did was rename the 500 the Taurus.
Sad part, the kewl looking European B car is now named Fiesta :( What a marketing non genius move that was! Don’t get me started on the whole MKa-z crap. When the executives can’t keep the names straight, you know the customers never will.
How much do you think deep sixing Cutlass cost Gener Motors? How about Caprice,Cavalier,Celebrity,lumina,Bonneville,LeSabre,Metro,Vega,Corsica,Ninety Eight,Grand Am, Grand Prix,Barreta. All great names , cars ( not so good ).
Customer: Hello, I’d like to buy a Windstar.
Ford Dealer: Sorry, they stopped making it.
Customer: [click]
I think there is a lot of truth in this. The first car I bought myself was a well used Datsun 1000. That was followed by several 510’s, a 1200 several 620 pick-ups and finally a near new 200SX.
The next car would likely have been a new Datsun, but of course Nissan announced that they were phasing out the name. I vowed never to buy a Nissan and I never have. Was there any difference apart from the label? of course not, but as a consumer I was offended and tok my business elsewhere. (Toyota)
Cracks me up. Go over to Polk.com, and what are the headlining stories? “Polk Announces Automotive Loyalty Winners.” Not a story about discontinued models. But who won?
Rod Panhard: Kobalt tools are sold at Lowe’s. HD carries the “Husky” line. I’m surprised GM didn’t rename the Escalade to the Husky. Truth in advertising!
Jeffer: you’re kidding right? You realize that you were buying Nissans all that time, right? That Nissan just decided to use the company name for their cars, instead of an old brand name derived from a company they acquired early last century?
I’m still aghast that GM managed to kill off Oldsmobile, the oldest surviving American marque. (Having first used it to demonstrate the fragility and unreliability of diesel engines)
MichaelJ: Uh yeah, those awards are wacky. “Ethnic Market Award?” Huh? GM wins “Manufacturer Loyalty,” while Honda wins “Make Loyalty”? Huh?
Still, look at the GM products that “won” their categories: Silverado, Suburban, Impala and Corvette. Nothing new or fancy or renamed, just basic old reliable American fare. Doesn’t surprise me at all that these vehicles have loyal buyers.
@dean
I was aware of the company history, I believe Nissan dates to about 1933 and the older Datsun name evolved from D.A.T and later Datson. All of my vehicles had “Nissan Motor Company” on the door post. Call me a hot-head, but apparently the name change issue was one of the factors that almost killed Nissan. I can’t give you a source, but I have read somewhere that that brilliant move cost Nissan $60 million and lost them a lot of customers.
Harkens back to that TTAC article where there was a list of the dizzying variety of monikers that GM has used for their small and mid-sized cars. If I remember correctly, the list plus user contributions totaled more than 100. Ridiculous.
“Sad part, the kewl looking European B car is now named Fiesta :( What a marketing non genius move that was! Don’t get me started on the whole MKa-z crap. When the executives can’t keep the names straight, you know the customers never will.”
—
Uh, the small Ford in Europe has ALWAYS been named the Fiesta. Since the 70’s. Now in its sixth generation. We only ever got the 1st generation in the US. ’78 – ’80. Replaced by the Escort in ’81. Which is another Ford of Europe nameplate that dated back to the ’60s. I am frankly amazed that they have not renamed the Focus to Escort.
I agree with the Lincoln naming – obviously the same idiots who thought everything starting with “F” was a grand idea.
I believe the names are changed on the ‘stinkers’ in the same way a dog tries to shake off fleas. In other words, after the marque has gotten a few years of reliability black balls, everyone that at least thumbs the April edition of CR is hip to fact that it’s a stinker. So, fresh platform, fresh name, to get a clean slate with respect to CR tracking.
Chevy ought to quit naming cars with “C”.
As a Gen 1 xB owner, I wouldn’t touch the Gen 2 xB, no matter what it’s called.
I got rid of a lemon Odyssey while the same design was current, and even told the district manager I wished I had bought another Chrysler minivan instead of a Honda – he didn’t understand. I eventually did this.
And I got rid of a lemon Passat by switching to Toyota (Scion).
It will be a very long time before I buy another Honda or VW product.
I’ve been saying for years that the fad of ditching old names for new was a big mistake, and now there is data to back it up. This disease has afflicted makers around the globe. Has the Acura RL ever lived up to the sales levels the Acura Legend once enjoyed? How did Ford’s brain dead “Fords start with “F”, Mercurys start with “M”, and Lincolns are all MKsomething marketing disaster work out? Pontiacs G-spots, Cadillac’s I-wanna-be-like-the-Germans nonsense … the list is endless. Meanwhile, ancient names like F150, Camry and Accord continue to hit the record books. New names for really new segments is fine, but arbitrarily killing the name of a product line up from one generation to the next is just plain stupid.
How is it that the extremely well paid executives at these companies miss this? I thought they were paid those boatloads of money for their uniquely exceptional talents.
I don’t see anything inherently wrong with Ford having every name start with F, as the alliteration does help keep the Ford name stuck with each car, but the whole Taurus thing was odd.
The biggest issue with the Taurus, is the name came back with a different segment car than the original. We get plenty of elderly customers coming in with an old Taurus wanting a new car about the same size, but they ask to see a new Taurus, see it is much larger than the old one, and have trouble understanding that the Fusion fills the roll of the old Taurus. I have no rightly idea why the Freestyle, which had good name cache and was a nice vehicle, became the Taurus X, which is a horrible name.
The people coming in for Windstars/Freestars are a bit different. They come in, want to see the new minivan, are told there is no new minivan, but hey, check out this Edge or Flex. Some end up taking to one of the crossovers, the rest just drive off to some manufacturer who makes minivans.
I think changing names is a mistake as well. Most people think they changed names to try to hide something. Toyota and Honda doesn’t do it for a reason.
I’ve owned several Mercury Grand Marquis – it has had that name for 30 years. You know exactly what you are getting, and if Ford is so desperate to find different customers by changing names, then maybe it is also interpreted by their old customers as Ford telling us to get lost – we want to hang out with the “cool” people.
Lincoln and Cadillac threw out some of the coolest names;
Lincoln Continental; it’s just so in your face.
Cadillac is the real shame though. How could you throw out names like Eldorado, Sedan de Ville, and Fleetwood Brougham.
STS, DTS, how about STD
One thing I didn’t see mentioned: if a model name has a very long lineage, cars with that nameplate will be everywhere, lending a certain amount of free advertising and bandwagon effect. Camry, Accords, Civics, and Corollas are simply everywhere. GM sold a lot of Cavaliers and Cobalts, and the combined road presence with one name would be quite frightening.
Of course, Chevy has a weird tendency to give its compact cars names with unfortunate implications (The Chevrolet Speeding Ticket?), so who knows if that would help at all.
I was very disappointed to see the report. It truly gives all consultants a bad name, having a study being done in such a poor fashion.
First of all the number of respondents if fairly limited. Second of all it is over a very short period of time, without accounting for several potential biases present. When it goes to the classes of vehicles, they do not look at general loyalty levels in the segments, what type of buyers generally tend to purchase those vehicles, etc. – for instance some types of car will more strongly draw brand loyal purchasers than others.
I do not generally think that dropping a name is a good idea, I do see, however, how really poor performers with horrible images warrant a renaming for the next generation. However the renaming only makes sense if the product with the new name is actually something decent, if it’s another poor effort like the predecessor, no amount of renaming will help.
Choosing good names is EXTREMELY important, which means that if a name is properly done (AND the car is properly done), then it’s imperative to keep good cars & good names together.
It’s perhaps not so much that GM, Ford and Chrysler had the unfortunate and foolish habit of changing names all the time, but that they felt they needed new “model” names to interest new buyers into trying their vehicles because the previous cars were drek!
How much more common sense and intelligent to actually make the damned cars right in the first place, and not have to worry about trying to catch-penny new customers (mostly from the other Detroit car companies, in fact) with “new” monikers on new POS’s? Idiots….
Datsun changing to Nissan was a direct result of timidity on the part of management when they started selling cars in the US. Yeah, I know, it’s a cultural thing for the Japanese to not want to lose face (the concern was if the company failed, it would be better to fail as “Datsun” which was only a car brand, rather than “Nissan” which was the corporate name and car brand).
Likewise, when American Motors started to see the market move away from them in the early 1960’s, towards sportier cars instead of good quality economy cars, the foolish management threw away the baby and the bath water by dumping the Rambler marque name in lieu of – letters “AMC”.
They would have been far more intelligent to have set-up a sporty “sub-brand” to be sold by all Rambler dealers (like AMC, AMX or even bring back Hudson, which had racing heritage) and kept the well known Rambler name on the market; by 1974, the market for smaller economy cars (not stripped down models, either) came back and AMC was ill equipped to reverse course.
Which brings me back to car series / models; what is this idiotic fascination with letters? Totally undecipherable. The only ones which make any sense seem to be BMW, but then again, they have had a somewhat logical and continuous method of numbering their cars by series (3, 5, 7, 8, etc) and decalitres (2 numbers) starting in the 1930’s, abandoned for a few decades (when they were nearly moribund) and brought back by the 1970’s.
Some of my favorite car series names (with marque in parenthases)
Lark (Studebaker). A play on words; Lark means both a bird, and “a carefree romp or prank” (i.e. “fun”)
Hawk (Studebaker). Another bird, which matches the personality of the car. Powerful. Fast. Often supercharged. Not TOO showy, but by-God down to business, just as a Hawk snags its prey in nature.
Ambassador (Nash, then Rambler, then AMC). Is this not a good name for a middle-class marque’s top-of-the-line vehicle? Dignified. Used from the 1930’s through 1974.
Corvette. (Chevrolet). Named after a fast light gunship. Perfect name for what it is, really. One thing that GM has managed NOT to mess up.
Mustang. (Ford). Freedom. American. The one thing Ford has managed NOT to mess up.
Continental. (Lincoln, it’s own corporate division under Ford, then Lincoln again). What idiots at Ford renamed Lincolns with letters, again? Morons.
Civic. (Honda). Look it up. It’s a good word and meaning. Honda are extremely intelligent and have used this since 1973.
Accord. (Honda). Again, same thing. Look it up. Used since 1979.
Believe it or not, Ripley:
Sonata. (Hyundai). A musical word, with a nice “tone” to it (pun intended); you also have to apparently understand the fact that South Korean mothers exhort their daughters, particularly, about practicing sonatas on piano, so it’s a sort of play on words in the country of origin, I gather. Point is, despite not being top-drawer cars, Hyundai had enough stick-to-it-iveness to continue on and not just change names for the sake of change.
Here is my random list of car series names which were most valuable (go look up the sales numbers for goodness sake!) and were dropped in the US for no good reasons:
Falcon (Ford) (though the early cars were drek)
Fairlane (Ford)
Dart (Dodge)
Valiant (Plymouth; itself, dead)
Riviera (Buick)(don’t you think “exclusive – luxury” when you hear that? I do)
Roadmaster (Buick) (“master of the road?!”)
Grand Prix (Pontiac)
Bonneville (Pontiac)
LeMans (Pontiac)
(Do you sense a “speed racer” theme here?)
Now go look at pontiac.com and seek out a G3 “Aveo clone” and see where Ponticrap is now…
Or how about a Vibe? (Do they offer a Dild, too?)
I think Ford has some of the coolest names: Focus, Edge, etc. They are generic and sharp. All they need is another 20 years of Camry-grade car making to make these models truly iconic.
As for luxury brands, I like the old Acura Legend and NSX. Legend is, of course, legend.
NSX is probably what started this whole capital-letter-model-name thing in the first place. It sounds like a mad scientist’s lab project and does fit the futuristic and exclusive sports car.
Just keeping the same name is no guarantor of success either. The Honda Legend is still called that in Europe, yet it’s sales can hardly be described as anything but abysmal. Same with the Camry, only it was removed from most European markets because it sold so poorly – there were years when more Enzos were sold in the UK than Camrys.
Changing the Opel Kadett name to Astra did not seem to harm the franchise, either. The renaming of the Rekord to Omega, though, might have harmed on the other hand.
I don’t like numerical names, particularly if they don’t follow engine size.
I can never keep track of M-B’s ever-changing list, for instance, but everyone knows what a “Gullwing” is.
BMW has stayed somewhat under control with its ‘series’ designations, but they are all sterile. But again, everyone remembers the “M1”.
Lotus names confuse me worse than most.
I’m glad Porsche is using real names for things like Cayenne and Panamera, instead of 9xx.
I think Chrysler does a great job naming its vehicles. One exception is the use of the retro “Charger” for the current 4-door: “Charger” good, 4-door bad.