Yes, but it's a Gucci handbasket

[Ti Kan]

Fisher, Scott writes:
> Ti Kan talks about:
> >"brand names" were conjured up by marketeers, unlike the European makes
> >whose names have a real company behind it, actually mean something, and
> >has a rich heritage associated.
> 
> In a sort of psychological parallel to the contemporary inability to design
> (or at least bring to market) any motor vehicle that doesn't shamelessly ape
> the styling fads of long ago, there is an even more depressing and
> infuriating trend -- unfortunately, one participated in by our own marque of
> common interest, I am ashamed to say -- of exhuming the names of Grands
> Marques long dead and tack-welding them onto objects of varied intrinsic
> quality and appeal, but with absolutely ZERO connection to the heritage,
> history and traditions they are attempting to appropriate.  The idea, it
> appears, is to cash in on the heritage and meaning of some dead marque's
> beloved memory, then use that to give panache to a product that would
> otherwise have to succeed or fail on its own merits.

Yup, I actually agree whole heartly with you.  VW is guilty of this
with the new Beetle, BMW with the new Mini, Ford with the upcoming T-bird.
Somewhat less so but pretty much along the same vein, the Chrysler
PT-Cruiser and Plymouth Prowler.

That said, this practice has not occurred with any production model
bearing the four rings.  The TT may seem a tad "retro", and is named
similarly to an old NSU model, but it doesn't pretend to be a new
incarnation of some historic product of the Audi lineage.  Rather,
it's Freeman Thomas' expression of a rather futuristic concept.

Audi did recently show the "Super Sports prototype", an abominable concept
car with lots of styling cues stolen from the old Auto Union silver arrows.
Those cues were awkwardly combined with more styling cues from the TT and
applied to an ungraceful shape that very much runs against the simple and
elegant theme in all other Audis.  Fortunately it is unlikely to make it
into production.

Also, the Audi "Steppenwolf" concept car's interior looks rather 70's garish
with its overuse of bright switches and panels -- reminds me of a cheap
ghettoblaster from those days.  The TT has some brightwork in its interior,
but just enough and not overbearing.  Contrast that with the interiors
of, say, the BMW Z8.  If the Steppenwolf were to become a production
I sincerely hope they tone that interior down many notches.

> If you can't compete on your own merits, it's the worst sort of bourgeois
> fakery and hokum to pretend to be something you think is better (or more
> pointedly, something you think your target market will think is better) in
> the hopes of deceiving customers.  It may even be worse than changing the
> name of your product line in midyear, in the hopes that buyers will either
> remember great vehicles from the past ("Oooh, it's a 1750 Veloce") or forget
> awful ones from the present ("it's a 100 -- no, it's a 5000 -- nope, now
> it's a 100 again, dang!").  And if you CAN compete on your own merits and
> you stoop to this bourgeois fakery and hokum, well, that's merely pathetic.

I think Audi of America's marketing people did drop the ball on that
one when they renamed the 100 to be a 5000 and a 80 to a 4000 just for the
North American market.  It's a bit insulting to our intelligence isn't it?
As if Americans (and Canadians) are somehow more gullible than our European
friends to this "bigger number must be better" nonsense.  What's even more
humorous is when Pontiac decided to name a model the "6000" to one-up on
Audi.  At any rate, those times are past and I hope it would never happen
again.  Audi now uses the same model designations worldwide and that's the
way it should be.

> But that doesn't make it right, morally or ethically or (more to the point)
> intrinsically, to buy the rights to the name of someone who has shuffled off
> this mortal coil and slap it on a design pressed by robots 30 or 40 or 50
> years after the death of the eponymous artist (never mind that the robots
> probably do a much better job of critical assembly than the laborers of the
> Twenties and Thirties); it fails to honor the dead, any more than it would
> to make him the main course at a ghoul's banquet.  And that, of course, is
> the twist: in this automotive Night of the Living Dead, it's the living who
> shamble about sucking the brains of the dead, desperate for some creative
> flicker that will make their insipid mass-produced gewgaw a
> putrefaction-encrusted hair more trendy than the one being slammed out in
> the millions by the ghoul in the next seat.

That's quite a piece of creative writing on your part and I rather enjoyed
it.  Again, I agree!

> Which is why my estimation for Ferdinand Piech -- whose pedigree (literally
> as well as figuratively) in the world of motorsports is unimpeachable, and
> whom I have described as the last living automaker with any real balls --
> went down several notches when he commissioned Giorgio Giugiaro (an
> automotive artist, a Name in his own right, and one with an established
> history with VWAG) to design a very interesting vehicle with a very
> interesting Audi-developed engine -- so far so good -- and then painted it
> blue and named it after a dead automotive artist (whose factory made some of
> the most magnificent automobiles ever conceived and executed).  I guess the
> 917, the ur-quattro, and two successive Le Mans victories aren't enough to
> overshadow the names of his grandfather and uncle.  
> Which, of course, were Ferdinand.

Bentley?  Well I didn't know that Giugiaro had anything to do with the
design of the race cars, but indeed it was amusing that many Brit fans
warmed up to these cars as if they had anything to do with other cars bearing
that name.  To me it's an Audi in disguise, and the fact that one made a
great showing at this year's Le Mans is partially a testament to the
great engine therein... :-)

> (So, audifans, a reader survey: Scott needs a) more b) less coffee... choose
> one. :-)

Gee, I don't drink coffee and sometimes I get into this mode of thinking
myself! :-)

-Ti
01 S4 2.7 biturbo quattro
84 5000S 2.1 turbo
80 4000 2.0
-- 
    ///  Ti Kan                Vorsprung durch Technik
   ///   AMB Research Laboratories, Sunnyvale, CA. USA
  ///    ti at amb.org
 //////  http://www.amb.org/ti/
///