COPYCENSE

“For decades auto makers preferred to give comprehensible names to their cars. To lend an air of prestige, Lincoln called its top-of-the-line model the Town Car. Cadillac was already playing that game, with models including the DeVille and Eldorado. But in the past several years, car companies, particularly luxury auto makers, have favored combinations of letters and numbers, like the BMW X5 and Lexus LS 450. Their thinking is that this build the image of a whole brand, not just one model.

“But with a finite number of letters available, and some of them way sexier than others, car makers find it more and more difficult to think up letter combinations they can call their own and that haven’t been take by products in other industries.”

Gina Chon. “Henry Ford’s Model A Would Be at Home in Car-Name Game.” The Wall Street Journal. April 20, 2006. p. A1.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.